Dodgeball-mania has arrived in Utah

Thanks to Ben Stiller and his hit movie, "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story," people all around Utah are looking for opportunities to play the sport.

On Saturday, more than 90 people paid $10 for an opportunity to relive their childhood dodgeball memories in a tournament at Open Court in Lehi. While no one named "Slasher" or "Viper" appeared, players did name their teams: names like The Drillers, The Fighting Rainbows and the Sitting Ducks.

The opportunity to play dodgeball also brought out the likes of former BYU football players Reno Mahe, Luke Staley and Charlie Peterson.

When Staley first saw the advertisement, he said to himself, "Who's going to show up for that?"

After receiving a phone call from a friend, Staley was one of the 90 involved in the tournament. And just like his days at BYU, chants of "Luuuuuke" could be heard during his dodgeball games.

"I always played dodgeball back in high school in weight training class," he said. "It was just chaos."

For Mahe, the dodgeball tournament was too good to pass up. Not long after watching Stiller, Mahe and his wife were driving past Open Court where he saw an advertisement for the tournament.

"I called (Open Court) after hours and left a message for them to call me about the dodgeball tournament," Mahe said. Not long after that, Mahe was on the phone with his friends putting together his team.

"He's looked forward to this all week," Mahe's wife, Sunny, said.

Mahe has fond memories of playing dodgeball during his grade school years. In fourth grade, "I was awesome at dodgeball," he said.

Two years later, Mahe said he was the best dodgeball player in his school.

Although Mahe's competitiveness wasn't enough to win the coveted Dodgeball Champions T-shirt, it was worth the $10. "The fun thing about this is that you can do this anywhere," he said.

And because of the movie, people are now looking for any opportunity to play it. So holding a tournament only seemed like the practical thing to do for Marie McFadden and Matt Rickards, the braintrusts behind Saturday's event.

The two presented the idea of holding a dodgeball tournament to the higher-ups at Open Court before the movie was released.