A 13-year-old boy has been charged with misdemeanor assault after a school dodgeball game is alleged to have escalated rather further than most PE teachers would expect.
Abel Schipper says he never meant to hurt his ex-girlfriend while admitting he did target her ‘a little bit’ because you ‘have to target somebody’ during the lesson at Mayer High School in Arizona.
She was reportedly left with two large bruises and the matter eventually landed in juvenile court.
The incident happened during a warm-up for a class in December 2025, with Schipper and two of his friends accused of ‘relentlessly’ pelting her with dodgeballs.
‘We threw around the dodgeballs, and then, I throw it at her. I hit her,’ Abel said in a TV interview with Arizona’s Family. ‘One of the kids missed. The other kid also hit.’
Two days after the class, the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office was contacted by a social worker from Banner Health.
According to a police report, the whistleblower said that the three boys had ‘relentlessly assaulted her with dodgeballs when she came out of the bathroom’.
The social worker also reportedly said the girl had been taken to hospital.
Pictures taken by her mum claim to show two blue and purple bruises, each roughly the size of a softball. One was on her upper-right rib cage and the other was on her lower-right abdomen.
A deputy interviewed all three boys involved and each denied intending to hurt the girl.
Abel did acknowledge deliberately aiming at his ex in his TV appearance.
‘I’m not going to lie. I did target her a little bit,’ he said, before arguing that choosing another player to throw the ball at is essentially the entire point of dodgeball.
‘Obviously, I’m going to have to target somebody for dodgeball. It’s dodgeball,’ he told the news statopm. ‘You have to choose somebody, throw the ball, then try to get them out. I didn’t want to hurt her at all.’
He said the balls being used were small, soft and compressible. ‘I didn’t think a dodgeball would hurt, and these are small ones too,’ he said. ‘So, you can squeeze them and they compress and stuff.’
The teenager said he and the girl weren’t particularly friendly or hostile towards one another when the incident happened.
‘I wouldn’t say we were on good terms, but I also wouldn’t say we were on bad terms,’ Abel said. ‘She used to hit me a lot, and then, she kind of just broke it off after that.’
His mum, Cecily Schipper, claimed the school didn’t contact her about the incident and that her son wasn’t disciplined.
She also said she didn’t know a deputy had interviewed Abel on school grounds.
Cecily said she only discovered there had been an investigation months later, when the Yavapai County Juvenile Justice Center sent her a letter. It informed her that Abel had been charged with misdemeanor assault.
‘It is absolutely ridiculous. This is a game that every kid in the nation plays at some point in their life,’ she said.
‘They’re considering the dodgeball a weapon and that he knowingly or willingly, recklessly harmed this girl just playing dodgeball in PE.’
Cecily also questioned whether the incident had caused any lasting dispute between the two teenagers. She said the girl continued asking the family for lifts home afterwards.
‘I have text messages from her asking for rides home after this incident happened in December. So, it’s just strange,’ she said.
‘And I was friends with her mom as well. If it was a situation where boys will be boys, then he deserves punishment for that. But I also think… my son is getting injustice here when it comes to the court situation.’
A judge is due to hear the case on Monday, with the Schipper family saying two of the three boys charged are expected to appear. The school and the girl’s family have so far dodged requests to comment.