Just a few days ago my partner and I were talking about how we should be exercising more and what sports we could try that are fun to do, fit within our budget, and won't exacerbate the old injuries she got from overwork; tennis puts too much stress on her arm and shoulder, for example.
We said "it would be nice if we had a bunch of people to play dodgeball with" and lo and behold, shortly after that someone sent a message in my university's group chat inviting people for dodgeball! They were two people who had been playing it competitively in another city before they moved here so they wanted to start it back up. Since it was pretty short notice, we ended up with them, me, my partner, and one other person, but we still had a lot of fun. That was Sunday, and I'm still sore today.
Interestingly, we were talking about dodgeball variants and all three of us Dutch people were familiar with what I want to call backline dodgeball, but neither of the dodgeball club people were. It's a variant where, instead of going to sit on the bench when you're out, you instead move to the other side of the opposing team, behind the furthest line on the court. From there, you can pick up any balls that you can reach without crossing the line and you can hit people on the opposing team, which puts them on your team's backline and gets you back on the main court. It makes the game a lot more dynamic and fun for everyone, but you need a large group for best results.
I asked around and apparently this variant is commonly played in schools around the world, and now I realize it also appears on Wikipedia on the List of dodgeball variations and on its own page as Prisonball. I have no idea if this is ever played in competitive dodgeball, but it seems like there's a lot you could improve on the typical rules.
