Dodgeball may look ‘goofy,’ but for Philly’s Sam Sayward and Team USA, a world title is at stake

Sam Sayward knows playing dodgeball can look a bit silly.

When Sayward, who this week became the first Philadelphian to compete at the Dodgeball World Championships, tells people she plays the sport, she hears about their recollections from school gym class or the Dodgeball movie. So she’s used to people not taking it seriously.

The first dodgeball league she joined after moving to Philadelphia in 2018 was a prime example. The players used substandard equipment, didn’t receive championship medals they’d paid for, and faced a number of other “basic” issues, according to Sayward. Although a group asked the league for changes, they never came.

So the 33-year-old Fishtown resident decided to use her event-management experience and connections within the league to found her own organization. She started with an open gym to gauge interest, and it was such a success that Sayward officially launched Philly Dodgeball in September 2022 with 40 members. It has grown every year since.

“I think good ideas or inventions or businesses get started because they’re trying to fix a problem, and that’s what I was trying to do,” Sayward told The Inquirer. “I was trying to fix a problem that we saw in our community.”

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But she’s been playing dodgeball far longer. Sayward, originally from the greater Boston area, first played dodgeball at summer camp when she was 13, and kept playing through her years in the Navy as part of her physical fitness training. In 2020, just before the pandemic, she attended her first competitive dodgeball tournament.

The pandemic paused her plans to attend future tournaments, but she’d already “gotten the itch.”

“I loved it,” Sayward said. “The fact that it was run by women, for women, and all the women were so talented. I thought I was the [expletive] when I played at the rec level, but then when I saw these women, their competitive level, it was like, ‘Oh, my God. There are so many more talented women that I can learn from.’”

In late 2022, Sayward and a group of her friends from Philly Dodgeball signed up for their first USA Dodgeball Tournament in Erie, Pa. They named themselves the Broad Street Bullies, in honor of the famous Flyers teams and the way they wanted to play — “loud and boisterous and confrontational.”

In 2023, Sayward got the opportunity to try out for Team USA, and she decided to give it a shot. To her surprise, she was selected.

“I really didn’t think I would make it, because I’m so new to the scene,” Sayward said. “When I got chosen, I cried.”

The Dodgeball World Championships, which started in 2012, is a relatively new tournament. In 2022, the tournament expanded to six divisions — men’s, women’s, and mixed divisions in foam, in which Sayward competes, and cloth. Foam and cloth describe the materials the different balls are made from.

This year, the tournament is in Graz, Austria, from Aug. 11-17.

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Most of Sayward’s friends are dodgeball people and recognize that being selected is a huge honor. Her boyfriend and friends wake up early to watch her and Team USA, which was undefeated as of Wednesday afternoon, play in the tournament. But her parents and family were more hesitant about her competitive dodgeball career.

“My family was so confused when I first started playing,” Sayward said. “They didn’t get it. They thought it was goofy. They’re like, ‘Look at you spending all this money on this playground game,’ essentially. But when I got on the practice squad for Team USA, back when we were building up the practice squad, they started taking it a little bit more seriously, and then they started watching the tournaments I would go to. This is the first time that they’ve been that invested in watching me play at this level.”

“I don’t care if you’ve never thrown a ball in your life, or you’ve played baseball Division I, you have a place in our league.”

Her family is a big fan of the Olympics. With the world championships coming just after the end of the Paris Games, it’s been like an extra week of the Olympics, only with dodgeball. Some thought Sayward was competing in the actual Olympics — and while the sport’s not there yet, she hopes one day dodgeball can make its way to the big stage.

For now, Sayward and Team USA are on to the knockout phase, as they look to win their first world title in the mixed foam division. And she hopes the increased attention from the event can help bring more people, especially women, into Philly Dodgeball.

“Dodgeball at its basic, simplest form, is one of the most inclusive and easiest sports to play,” Sayward said. “As an adult, you literally just have to be able to pick up a ball and throw it, and most people can do that. We bring the fun, no matter how competitive it gets. We encourage people to come in with the right mindset, which I think is different than a lot of sports in the city.

“You look at a sport like volleyball, you have to be a certain level to play that sport in the city right now, whereas dodgeball, I don’t care if you’ve never thrown a ball in your life, or you’ve played baseball Division I, you have a place in our league.”