DIY Sport: Wallshot

Cooped up in our Chicago apartment, too poor to buy even skateboards, my friend Rob Ray and I took a soccer ball to the schoolyard down the street and invented a game. Combining the best aspects of soccer and racquetball, the game can be played anywhere there is a high, wide wall and adjacent clearing of (preferably concrete) land. While it probably has been played elsewhere for centuries, Rob and I named our game “wallshot” and created the following rules.

The play

• Play wallshot with one to eight players. Two is best.
• A “stopline” should be drawn one to two feet from the bottom of the wall. Chalk is good for stoplines, although you can usually scratch them in with a rock. Players must kick the ball above the stopline; one who fails gives the opposing player the point and serve.
• A server (player A) kicks the ball to the wall. After hitting the wall, the ball can bounce twice before the opponent (player B) must kick, head, or knee it back to the wall. Players can trap the ball and kick it, or kick it immediately, but only two bounces are allowed. Player A then returns player B’s kick off the wall, and a volley ensues.
• When one player allows more than two bounces on the ground, or fails to return the ball below the stopline or kicks the ball out of bounds (where the wall ends), the play stops and the opposing player receives the point and the serve. Whoever accumulates 21 points first wins.
• Players serve the ball from a mutually determined line (made with chalk or naturally occurring, such as a crack in the concrete) somewhere between five and ten yards from the wall. The server may kick the ball from the ground, or drop it and kick it while it’s bouncing. The server is allowed one fault—a serve that fails to hit the wall above the stopline, or bounces before hitting the wall, or misses the wall, or hits the opposing player. If the second serve is also a fault, the opposing player receives the point and the serve.
• Any part of the body except the arm (below the shoulder) may be used for trapping the ball or returning it to the wall. If a “hand ball” occurs, the opposing player gets the point and the serve.
• Wallshot boundaries are dictated in part by the playing space and must be mutually predetermined by the players.
• In a game of more than two participants, players must rotate their turns at the ball. When one player loses, the immediately preceding player receives the point and the serve.
• For a single player, the goal is to keep the ball in play as long as possible, challenging oneself and having fun.