Dodgeball
выбивалы
Two players with a ball stand at the edges and throw it across the ones in the middle, trying to hit them.
Dodgeball rewards standing still rather than running. Whoever dashes about the field takes the ball in the back; whoever watches the thrower has time to step aside, and sometimes to catch.
Hence the game's central fork: a ball flying at you can not only be avoided but appropriated. A turns the passage over — a moment ago you were the target, and now you hold an extra .
Two different arrangements
The yard form is asymmetric: two throw from outside, the rest stand between them and do not throw at all. It is a game about evasion in which one side has no ball.
The two-team form is symmetric: a line divides the court, both sides hold balls, and both throw and dodge at once. That is already a different game, though the ball and the hits are the same.
Soft Ball
Under these rules: One ball for the game.
A ball that does not hurt to be hit by: here being hit is the ordinary case.
A volleyball, a rubber ball or a foam one. Nobody plays this game with a hard ball: it strikes somebody every minute.
The rules of the yard form
Standing
Two face each other several paces apart — seven or eight metres is usual. Everyone else stands between them.
Play
The throwers pass the ball to each other and at any moment throw it at those in the field. It pays to throw so that a miss carries through to your partner.
Those in the field dodge. Stepping past the throwers' lines is not allowed.
Hits
Only a hit out of the air knocks a player out. A ball that has bounced off the ground knocks out nobody.
A player hit leaves the field.
The catch
A ball caught out of the air buys the catcher an extra life: to put them out now takes another hit, and so on for every life gathered.
The last in the field
When one player is left, they are given a trial: to dodge as many throws in a row as they have years. Survive it, and their whole team comes back into the field.
Swapping over
When the field empties, the sides change: the throwers step into the field and the others go out to throw.
Called throws
Before throwing, a thrower may call the throw aloud. One call means high in the air, another low along the ground, a third a lob to be ducked. A called throw says what to expect and changes how it is avoided.
Worth knowing
The distance between the throwers is put anywhere from five to ten metres. What a catch buys is likewise agreed: in some places an extra life, in others the right to bring a knocked-out player back. The trial of the last player is not found everywhere.
Glossary of terms
- Catch
- A ball taken out of the air in the middle, before it touches the ground. It buys an extra life or brings a teammate back.
- Life
- The right to survive one hit. Lives accumulate through catches.
- Thrower
- A player who throws the ball at those standing in the middle. They do not enter the middle themselves.