The tools familiar to hunters, or action heroes like Katniss Everdeen and Robin Hood, are showing up in a new version of the popular middle school game of dodgeball. It's called archery dodgeball, also known as combat archery or archery tag, and it now has a home in Colorado Springs.
The sport is still relatively new, getting its start in 2011, and in northeastern Colorado Springs, Sherwood Showdown Archery Dodgeball recently celebrated its grand opening.
“We get a lot of people thinking it's either archery or dodgeball,” said Sherwood Showdown co-owner Eliza Hill, “but it is in fact both.”
The games play similarly to dodgeball: teams on opposite sides try to win by hitting the most people on the opposite team. But when the game starts, instead of running to the center for balls, competitors run to collect arrows that have marshmallow-shaped foam tips at the end.
“The foam is designed to absorb the impact. That way, when it hits you, it hurts far less than anything like airsoft or paintball would,” said Hill.
Players shoot the arrows with a real bow called a recurve bow, which gets its name from its shape. Bows are often categorized by the force, or pressure per pound, it takes to pull the string back. Sherwood Showdown offers bows at either 20 or 25lbs.
A safety briefing before the games begin covers how to shoot the bow and provides some opportunity to practice.
“The first few times that we play at the beginning of their hour of play, people are a little rusty,” said Hill. “But toward the end, the games are lasting a lot longer because people have figured out how to load their bow a lot quicker … how to hide, how to look while they're loading their bow. So it's definitely something that you can become pretty good at in just an hour of playtime.”
The games require anywhere from two to 20 players.
“It does get really fun in the 8-10 range,” said Hill. “Once you have quite a few people running around, dodging, shooting, aiming, all of those fun things.”
Hill said they're planning to start archery dodgeball leagues this year.
