Instead of just relying on the same old sports as have been taught in Physical Education classes for the past century or more, Eagle Grove’s schools continue to shake things up, introducing the kids to new and exciting games.
Two of the latest are “Tchoukball” (which is pronounced as chook-ball) and Kin-ball, which were recently taught at the Robert Blue Middle School.
The fifth and sixth graders started learning Kin-Ball, which involves the use of a truly massive ball that dwarfs most other sports balls, on Friday the 16th. “There are a lot of activities you can do with this unit,” wrote teacher Amy Ascherl on Facebook, explaining that the game involves defensive play as well as offensive. “They are picking up on it quickly,” Ascherl noted. “They will eventually start playing faster, which will make it even more fun.”
The game was developed by Mario Demers, a professor of Physical Education in Quebec, Canada in 1986.
Meanwhile the seventh and eighth graders have been playing Tchoukball. Invented in Switzerland in the 1970’s by Hermann Brandt, and is a mashup of handball, volleyball, and squash, which is a lot like basketball but with less physical contact between players, and often played on a basketball court, substituting a floor net for the basket.
The game features some interesting rules. First of all, there’s no defensive play. It’s all fast paced offense. Players aren’t allowed to hold the ball for longer than three seconds, and are limited to just three steps after catching the ball. After three passes, players have to take their shot and throw the ball at the “net”. A red box around the net is the “forbidden zone”, and players aren’t allowed to throw the ball at the net from inside the forbidden zone, and if the ball rebounds into the forbidden zone off the net, that’s a foul. Players score when their opponents fail to catch the ball off the net. The unique rules give rise to “lots of different strategies,” according to Ascherl, which the players need to “figure out on their own.” The game is “really fun to play,” Ascherl wrote.
Videos of the kids playing each game are up on the Robert Blue Middle School page on Facebook.
