The Bowling Green Community Center offers a variety of camps and activities for kids in the community, but the winter dodgeball sessions on Fridays are growing in popularity.

Dodgeball has not always been popular with children, but these kids come every week and love to meet and spend time with other kids, who they also get to chuck balls at.

Jared Main, Conner Main and Levi Spoores are cousins who have participated in the community center programs for years. They all agreed the dodgeball sessions are fun.

Jared, 11, likes that he gets to play with other people. He also participated in the basketball program.

Conner, 9, likes that he learned to play dodgeball.

“It’s fun!” he said. “You get a lot of exercise and you get to meet lots of other people.”

Their grandmother, Melinda Spoores, is extremely happy with the dodgeball program and other programs offered by the Community Center.

“Everything that they’ve enrolled in is extremely well-run. All the kids are included, no matter the age,” she said.

Spoores gave multiple examples of very young kids, two or three years old, being let in and playing with the “big kids.”

“They don’t hesitate to let them in,” she said.

Melinda chalks this up to the culture the volunteers and program runners create in these programs. The college kids coaching or running the sessions are very involved and even though there is very little whining or bullying, the adults make sure to talk to those kids, she said.

“It teaches them sportsmanship,” she said. “I’ve never picked them up and they were unhappy.”

Ivan Kovacevic, the Parks and Recreation program coordinator, said these programs are a good introduction to sports and are geared towards beginners. All children get to participate and the sessions are good to teach them practical skills, like throwing a ball or soft skills, like teamwork.

Dodgeball is a six-week session that is offered for $33 for Bowling Green residents or $7 for drop-in weeks. However, the Community Center and the Parks and Recreation department have sessions going on all year round.

This includes day-camps, basketball, t-ball and swim lessons. The full list of activities available for children can be found at http://www.bgohio.org/departments/parks-and-recreation/programs/.

College students can also get involved. There are many ways to volunteer with these programs as well as internship opportunities through the Parks and Recreation department. Students involved can even develop and carry-out their programs offered to children, Kovacevic said.

More information on internships can be found at bgohio.org.