A rapidly evolving sport was born from the international version of one the utmost favourite PE class games, with simple and straightforward rules and World and European Championship events.
Our team is working hard to spread the word of this new ball game, so that more and more people will know, try and regularly play it here in Hungary too. Hungary Dodgeball is a member of the European Dodgeball Federation and the World Dodgeball Federation organisations.
In March 2018 we started with a Charity Dodgeball Tournament where we collected donations for the Ments Életet Alapítvány [Save Lives Foundation]. In September we played our first international game at Murska Sobota against Slovenia, a World Championship participant. At the end of October – for the first time in the sport’s history – we participated at the European Dodgeball Championship, which was held in Italy.
In 2019 we organized the first five-ball Dodgeball tournaments for primary and high schools and in June we hosted the university champion team of the World Champion England. In September, with the participation of the teams of Slovenia and Croatia, we held the first Pannon Dodgeball Cup at Siófok.
In November we organised two university Dodgeball tournaments: the BEFS Universitas Dodgeball Cup with the co-operation of the Budapest University Sport Association and Corvinus University, and the Eszterházy Dodgeball Cup in Eger with the Eszterházy University. At two locations, with 24 teams, more than 200 students participated at these events.
For 2020, we had set up a very busy schedule: there was a primary school cup held at Kisújszállás already in the first week. In the beginning of February, we played friendly scrimmages with Croatia, while at the end of the month we participated in the Central European Championship in Switzerland, where, qualifying from their group, the Hungarian National Team finished at 6th place.
The virus was not easy on our sport either. Many national and international tournaments had to be cancelled and the World Championship and the Dutch European Championship were both postponed to 2021. We tried to make the most out of this situation and in April we set up the second painted Dodgeball court of the continent. Furthermore, in August, we launched our school program, to which more schools joined than expected, and the special cloth Dodgeballs are being sent out to the schools continuously.