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The days have passed when an unpopular fourth-grader would tremble for his life as he stood in a gym, facing an ambush of hard red rubber dodgeballs aimed directly at his face. These days, kids are turning to kinder, gentler fare with a game called gaga. In no way related to the pants-optional pop tart, gaga is a hybrid dodgeball/playground game that has kids of all sizes working up a sweat — and Upper East Side parents plopping down hundreds of bucks for classes and birthday parties.
Childhood friends Marcy Singer and Alissa Schmelkin, both 36, stumbled across the game when their children came back from sleep-away camp, totally obsessed.
“We got back from the summer, and the kids started playing gaga in the park, and I said, ‘I would love to sign my son up for a class like that,’ ” says Schmelkin, a mother of two boys and a girl.
“But there’s nowhere in Manhattan. And then Marcy said, ‘Let’s do it!’ ”
That was in the summer of 2010. A year-and-a-half later, the two mothers took matters into their own hands, opening the Gaga Center in February (230 E. 93rd St.; 212-920-7884, gagacenter.com), Manhattan’s only space dedicated to the game. The center boasts a full stand-alone facility with three octagonal gaga pits and an overlooking party room.
The game is simple: Players begin with one hand on the side of the pit, a “coach” bounces the ball twice (one for each “ga” uttered) and the kids are off. The objective is to hit opponents below the knees with the light foam ball, without getting touched yourself. If you’re hit, you’re out. The last person left in the game, which lasts about 10 minutes, wins eternal glory — until the next round.
“Our biggest problem is getting people to leave,” says Singer, a mother of two boys, with a laugh. “The kids love it so much.”
Whereas dodgeball can be a brutal attempt to break noses and inflict “Lord of the Flies”-style humiliation on the weak, gaga is a defensive, rather than offensive, game. The balls are pleasantly soft, and the kids leave laughing, not crying. While no one can trace its exact origin (the game has been enjoyed at summer camps for years), it only recently landed in NYC.
“[The game is] fun because you move around, and you have to be ready for the ball at all times,” says Schmelkin’s 9-year-old son, Ben.
“The thing that’s so great about this game is that it’s high-energy,” says Singer. “You don’t have to be this amazing athlete to get in there and do well. It’s really any man’s game.”
“There’s an element of luck involved in the play,” adds Schmelkin.
Skill or luck aside, the kids come out of the pit grinning — and sweaty.
“The kids don’t realize that they’re exercising,” says Singer. “But they’re getting this amazing workout.”
Maybe that’s why the moms of the Upper East Side have been flocking to gaga as fast as they do to the new spring arrivals at Barneys. Within two weeks of opening, the center was already booking parties through June. That’s no small feat, given that a 20-kid basic party package, which includes 90 minutes of gaga time, plus pizza and juice, will set parents back $995. A $1,395 package allows for 20 kids, plus fruit-and-vegetable platters and soda for adults. You can also customize your package with anything from a DJ to goody-bag items such as eye black (for the real pros). Classes and “open gaga” time, for $40 a pop, are also available.
Prior to opening the center, both Singer, a former teacher, and Schmelkin, an ex-financial journalist, were stay-at-home moms.
“We both left our careers to be moms, and we were able to start this together because we’re moms, and that’s important to us,” says Singer.
As for the Lady Gaga connection, “it’s totally coincidental,” says Schmelkin.
“The game of gaga preceded Lady Gaga. But people ask us if we’ll play her music, and of course we will!”
gregorymiller@nypost.com