Facticity

We have a double tennis court just down the street from us. This court has the usual high fence walls and is surrounded by trees. My boys are about to turn 9 and have the coordination to play real tennis, but just barely. What we needed was something that was fun for an extended period, had us running a lot, and was not particularly demanding as far as large muscle coordination.

Tennising is a very fluid sport and it’s better if I describe it by telling you some of its characteristics.

• Tennising is like Calvinball, in that no rule is set in stone and anyone is free to add a rule at any time.
• You get points for style – for example, bouncing the ball off the shelter roof to the side of the courts and back into play earns you more points than just hitting it back over the net.
• The ball must land in play to get points. Hitting the ball over the fence and into the trees, known as “Feeding the squirrels”, might be fun but it doesn’t get you any points.
• You can restrict (by consensus) the number of bounces allowed until the ball is considered dead. We usually play with the rule that a ball is live as long as you can actually hit it without damaging the racket.
• You get points for ball height, again as long as the ball lands somewhere in the court.
• Hurling insults at the other players, the more ridiculous the better, is a perfectly fair way to distract them from hitting the ball.
• The boundaries of the court are defined as the fenced area, unless there’s someone playing on the other court, in which case the boundaries are the area in which you can play without annoying those on the other court.
• There are no points.

Play modifiers – These modifiers are introduced to add variety to the play.

• Scarifying – This involves running around the net and onto the other side of the court while yelling, waving your racket, and making faces in an attempt to scare your opponent(s) into missing the ball and losing the point.
• Switch Sides – If “Switch Sides” is in effect, you can run onto the opponents side of the court and if you are able to gather a dead ball from their side, you yell “Switch sides!” and the opponent has to run over to your (former) side of the court before you hit the dead ball past them. This adds to the amount of running (and mayhem) in the game. You can choose to require that someone pick up 2 or 3 dead balls to effect a Switch Sides, depending on how many people and how many balls you’re playing with.
• Multiball Play – This one is obvious. You put two or more balls in play at once to make the game more difficult, exciting, and tiring.
• Insanity – Pretty much what it sounds like. This involves running around the entire fenced in area of the courts, picking up balls and hitting them at people, trying to deflect or return those hit at you, etc.

I’ll be adding more to the game description later on. This should be enough to give you a flavor for how to play Tennising and an idea of whether it would be fun for you and your kids (or drunken friends).