Futsal and Tetherball
January 25, 2010
A facebook friend of mine was discussing her son playing Futsal, which she calls, “a funny little game.” It’s similar to soccer. She and her family live in Nebraska, where it’s stupid-cold, so in the winter, the game is played inside … sort of. She reports: “…six tiny fields under this gi-normous inflated dome – your ears pop when you enter.”
Each team has only four players and a goalie on the field. There are no refs, and there are no time-outs. The game is quick, it only lasts forty minutes. And the ball is different – heavier with less bounce.
After describing the ball, she asks, “What’s that about?”
Uh-oh.
I have always thought it one of my jobs to answer all rhetorical questions, even if the questions are not necessarily addressed specifically to me. The less I know of a subject, the more verbose I become. So here goes:
It’s all physics: inertia and momentum. The heavier, less bouncy ball used in Futsal slows the game down and allows for the smaller playing space – there’s less REaction to the action (thank you Sir Isaac Newton County). A golf ball goes farther than the less bouncy, wooden croquet ball. A baseball goes farther than the softer softball. A basketball goes farther than a medicine ball, the latter of which has no apparent bounce at all. Doctors and physical therapists have concluded that the medicine ball is overweight due to its sedentary lifestyle, and is no longer allowed to play.
A tetherball would go far beyond its playing area, as far, perhaps as a volleyball, but, alas, it is tied to a pole.
Yet, there are many who believe the humble tetherball yearns to be free. There are those from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Athletic-equipment) who shudder at seeing the T.B. so restrained. Many have taken action. In 1986, in a mass act of civil disobedience, balls all over the country were set free in a weekend dubbed, “Untie the Tether!” Alas, being domesticated to the pole, most tetherballs could no longer function in the wild. Many, perhaps, would be happy to be a sort of volleyball, but the little corner tab with the grommet where the rope was attached, got in the way.
Some tetherballs were successfully rehabilitated and turned into advanced kickballs – advanced because the pitcher (or “bowler”) would roll the ball to the kicker by slinging it in a variety of “serves” by the corner tab, thus putting “English” on the ball. This however became problematic on school playgrounds as it came clear that ESL (English Second Language) students were often left out of the game.
One would hope that it was more than just good public relations when a few kind employees from Voit volunteered to remove the rope-tabs and create volleyballs, but in so doing, many balls were punctured, deflated, and destroyed in the process. One such worker was quoted as saying, “This is stupid. i’m going home.”
Also, counter-protesters and vandals reacted violently to PETA‘s Untie the Tether! campaign. And playground bullies in a fierce show of strength, grasped the balls by the tabs and slammed them against the poles (and each other), until the balls burst and split. I’ve seen actual film footage of this. It’s horrible.
