Synopsis: Also known as softball, this game concentrates on both serve receive and free ball play in a way which has one teams strongly focused on scoring while the other is equally strongly focused on not allowing a point.
Age/Skill Level: This game is suitable for all skill levels.
Requirements: two teams, full court, 6 balls
Execution: This game begins Team A serving to Team B. If Team B fails to win the service rally, an out is registered. If Team B wins the rally and gets a point (run), it then receives a free ball. If it wins that rally, it gets another point and receives another free ball. This continues until Team B loses the point, at which stage an out is registered. Team A then serves again. This continues until three outs are made, at which point Team B becomes the serving side. An inning is complete when Team A reaches 3 outs, at which time the teams rotate and a new inning starts. The team with the most runs at the end of six innings wins.
Variations:
- The game could be played with fewer than 6 players, in which case there would be less than 6 innings, but you could double up to extend the game.
- To increase focus on winning the serve receive rally you could make that worth more points and/or make a first ball rally win worth extra.
- And of course there’s plenty of room for bonus points if you want to encourage (or discourage) certain things.
- You can add on an extra inning at the end which pits the best rotation from each team against each other either as a last inning or as some kind of winner take all.
Additional Comments:
- Since only the team receiving serve can score points (kind of an opposite to sideout) there is the opportunity for that team to be more aggressive than might otherwise be the case. As a result, this can be a good game to use if you want to encourage the players to take chances hitting hard, using new plays, etc.
- Keep the tempo up by having a new free ball initiated as soon as the rally is dead. This gets players focused on the next play and adds a conditioning element.
- Consider the impact anything you might do with the serve receive rally to make it more meaningful will have on serving. Certainly if the receivers get more points for winning a first ball, for example, then the servers will quickly realize how penal a missed serve becomes – unless you don’t count that in the scoring structure.
- If you play this regularly, you’ll want to consider how you set the starting line-ups for each side to either mix up the match-ups for balanced appraisal or to concentrate of certain rotations in different ways (like matching strong vs. weak).
- This can be a quite helpful game in identifying problem rotations for further concentrated work. Unfortunately, the stronger offensive rotations will tend to get a lot more opportunities in this particular game. On the flip side, from the perspective of the serving team the rotations which struggle to stop points being score will actually tend to get more work.
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