Muncie, Ind – The Ball State Spike ball club aims to shine light on a sport that has not been around for long.
Spikeball was created by toy maker Jeff Knurek in 1989 and was marketed by the Japanese entertainment company Tomy. Although there was a brief spike in popularity from 1989 to 1995, it quickly faded due to the outdated nature of the equipment.
Spikeball, also known as Roundnet, is a 2-on-2 team sport where players aim to hit a ball off a trampoline-like net so the opposing team cannot return it within three touches.
Club president Colin Prior thinks the game most resembles another sport that involves a net volleyball.
“It kind of follows weird rules; it’s kind of like double serves from Pickleball,” said Prior. “It’s a yard game that turned into a quote unquote like professional sport, imagine the rules of volleyball but the net is on the ground.”
Spike ball is a game that requires players to have good reaction times and hand-eye coordination. With Spikeball being a game with wide ranges of skill, prior wants to make sure that club members don’t feel overwhelmed from the games.
“It’s called gentleman’s and non-gentleman’s serves; essentially, gentleman’s means like a little bit lighter serves kinda just messing around like backyard games style, whereas non-gentleman’s is more like really hard serves more professional serves and competitive,” said Prior.
Practices are starting to get more competitive as a Spikeball tournament is coming up. The tournament will be played at Indiana University and will consist of spikeball players from other colleges playing against one another.
“We have a tournament coming up… the next few weeks we’ll be kind of you know getting a little more like practice oriented kind of getting people who are in the same division playing with each other,” said Prior.
The Spikeball club meets every Tuesday and Thursday between 8 p.m.-10 p.m. on the indoor turf fields in the Ball State Recreation Center. The club is looking for members who want to join and compete in the upcoming tournament.
Contact Jalen Mckissic with comments at Jalen.mckissic@bsu.edu.
