by Robert Wiley

Created on: September 19, 2009   Last Updated: September 24, 2009

Tetherball

Tetherball is a game that I played way back in elementary school. I was quite good at it thank you. My friends and I would line up on the tetherball courts during recess and after lunch daily. We generated our own hierarchy of players over time. There were constant challenges for dominance on the brutal courts. Tetherball overtook the king of the mountain game during the kindergarten and first grade years.

Tetherball is pretty simple, basically, you have a ball hanging from a rope and a pole which the ball hangs from. The direction that each player is to hit is determined before the game. The object of the game is to wrap the ball around the pole in the direction that you are hitting in. Your opposing player hits in the opposite direction. The game is won once the ball wraps all the way around the pole.

There are a few rules when it comes to tetherball. First, there are sides, usually painted onto the playing surface. There is a circle painted around the pole with the pole in place in the center of the circle. There will usually be two pie sections painted within the circle directly opposite each other, these are off limits and each player must stay within the remaining pie sections opposite each other. If an offensive player were to step inside the out of bounds territory it usually resulted in a loss of turn, the defensive player would have the ball in hand and now be on the offensive. If the defensive player were to step into the out of bounds it usually resulted in the offensive player adding a rotation of the ball around the pole. Additional rules can be determined by the players. Sometimes players will agree to allow swinging where they hold the rope just above the ball and attempt to throw it above the others head and catch it once it returns to them. More experienced players do not like this rule. A player on the defensive can block the ball with any part of his body without touching the rope (unless swinging rule is allowed) and catch it. At his point they are the offensive player.

Watching a really good tetherball player hit a ball on consecutive strikes is pretty impressive, combining hand-eye coordination and power to supply enough energy to the ball to travel over their opponents head and back to a suitable location to hit the ball again. Combining a good player with a poor player is a quick game and the opponent is quickly vanquished.

Once the rules are learned and the players get some practice the game becomes really fun to play and watch. If any of you have any little ones of your own you too can show them how to play this fun and enjoyable game.

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