How I Play Splatball in Physed Class

Greeting PE Nation!

In this episode I share my accidental invention of "Splatball," a creative PE game using water-filled tennis ball canisters that explode on impact. This game emerged while seeking wind-resistant alternatives to traditional bowling pins for outdoor play.

• Game involves two teams trying to knock down opponent's water-filled canisters
• Can be played with bowling balls, hockey sticks, or other equipment
• Students whose pins get knocked down join offensive play so no one sits out
• Works best outdoors where splashing water evaporates quickly
• Various modifications possible based on age group and available space

Grab the free Splatball PDF in the episode notes to try this game with your students, and check out the video link to see the game in action. 

Take care,

Dave

FREE Splatball PDF

Splatball Video 1

Splatball Video 2

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Chapters

• 0:10 Welcome and Game Introduction
• 0:44 Origins of Splatball
• 2:04 Setting Up the Game
• 4:45 Why It's Called Splatball
• 6:27 Game Modifications and Rules
• 8:00 Closing and Free PDF Offer

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Hello and welcome to the Supersize Fizzhead podcast. My name is Dave and I want to tell you about a new game that I made up by accident. Yes, these things happen, and I have a fun and free PDF to share with you on how to play the game. Just stick around to the end. So, without further ado, here we go. All right, everybody. So I want to tell you all about Splatball. It's really cool.

Speaker 1: 0:47

So the way this started was I was going to play my game that I call Pinball, which I also have an episode on a while ago, and Pinball is just. It's basically for hockey, where I'd set up pins and the teams would try to knock down their team's pins with using tennis balls. Like I just have like a bazillion tennis balls and I just throw them all out there and they just start shooting. And I decided to change it a little bit this year because it was the wind was picking up a little bit and I have two choices with pins. I have like real pins, like real bowling pins. They're old, there's probably 20 or 30 years old. They've been in my PE storage unit for I guess, probably ever. And you know they're, they're heavy, they're super old, they're heavy, but I could use them. My other option, and the one I usually use, are the ones from a certain company that I don't try to do too much business with, but they're these foam pins and they rip at the necks all the time. Let's say, picture a bowling pin, kind of the neck area, I guess, of a pin, and I have to tape them up with duct tape all the time. It's like, oh my gosh, and they're very light, I mean they're okay, but with a decent amount of wind they won't stay up.

Speaker 1: 2:09

So I decided that, hey, I got some tennis balls donated to me from a teacher and like her son plays high school or college or something like that, and like all these tennis balls she gave me and they were in their canisters. So I decided to, uh, well, you know what am I gonna do with these empty canisters? So I filled them up. Um, like I mean I'm talking like, if you can picture a tennis, uh canister, I guess tennis ball canister. I filled them up Like I mean not that much with water, I mean like maybe a fourth of the way, and I put the cap on and I was like, okay, well, I'm going to do this today because I'm just kind of thinking of this. Right now. I'm doing 10 of them and I'm going to fill up 10 of them just a little ways. It'll help stay up from the wind, but if they fall, no big deal, and what I'll eventually do is put sand in them and then kind of tape them up and those would be new pins. I'd be like, oh, that'd be cool, because I used to have pins in my old school that you could fill up with sand, like they're plastic, and you just kind of pour sand in there and we can make them like as heavy as we wanted to. But I don't have those anymore, I'm not at that school anymore.

Speaker 1: 3:19

So I put these out there and there's two different ways to play. Now the younger kids I was just playing a bowling game with them, like they're just bowling at the pins and knocking them over, and then there could be guards, and I have one guard per pin. There's five kind of in the. If you picture a basketball court, there are five in the area of like the circle, like the key. I guess If you're ready to throw like a free throw, it'd be right in that area. So there's five pins and five students on one team and then the rest of the other teams on the other side of the court and you try to knock down the other team's pins. Basically, now it's a little complicated in how, and I show it in the PDF that I have in the episode notes, if you want to check it out. It's a free PDF. What you can do is put the and I definitely do this in hockey Now, I don't have kids to do this with a younger group but you put the, let's say, the blue team.

Speaker 1: 4:22

I'm just making this up. The blue team is defending the first area. Well, the red team is actually the ones surrounding that area, and then it's the opposite with the other group. So the red team is defending one area and the blue team is surrounding that box. And it might get a little complicated, but if you could visualize that and again it's in the PDF you could see that that they're trying to knock down the other team's pins.

Speaker 1: 4:45

Now, the reason why I call it Splat Ball and I guess you could probably figure this out is because they were knocking them down and some of them were almost like exploding and there's water going everywhere, not on the kids, necessarily, but on the ground. So for me and for our PE program. We're outside and it was a kind of a sunny day. So when they exploded let's just call it exploded, because it sounds cool or they splat, they were splatted, I don't know. They were splatting, they would go on the ground and water would come out, not a ton, and it would dry up relatively soon because it was a I mean, it wasn't 95 degrees out or anything, but it was in, you know, in the high seventies, low eighties and it would just evaporate and at the end of the round the kids would just have to fill them back up a little bit and we start over. The last team that knocks down or last team that has a pin standing wins.

Speaker 1: 5:36

So again, that's with bowling or hockey, really anything you want it to be, with a ball or some kind of object, and the kids love it. Because sometimes they don't splatter and you could make modifications here where, hey, if they don't splatter, you can put them back up. I don't think I did that, but as I'm talking, I'm like, hey, we can make that a little modification. So you have to splatter them to knock the team out of the game or knock that person out of the guard spot, knock that pin down. And I do tell them, if they get their pin knocked down, they just join the offense. They just start shooting tennis balls at the other team's pins. So nobody's ever out of the game. It's just if you get your pin knocked down, you join your team, either on the sidelines or at midcourt where you can kind of shoot at the other team's pins.

Speaker 1: 6:24

So I don't have to go into great detail about this game. I just thought it was cool. It was something I came up with by accident, and if you're inside, if you're an inside gym, this might not work, but if you're outside, like me, I think you'd have a lot of fun with this, especially if it's a warm sunny day where it would evaporate right away. The kids would enjoy it. And there's different ways to modify it as well. I will say for other modifications you can have a round where they can't go behind the team, like in the back court area, I guess behind the basketball net, if you want to think of it that way. They can't go back there. Or you could say they can surround the other team with either hockey players or bowlers.

Speaker 1: 7:10

What I also do this might help is I put down either poly spots or Xs with chalk, especially for hockey, because I don't want kids hitting each other and I tell them they can't do slap shots. I show them how to do a wrist shot or kind of like a snapshot. That no slap shots. I don't want to make it hurt and of course we're always aiming low. You could make this an overhand throwing game, but I could see that getting a little out of hand, maybe if you're not watching or just in general some kids get out of hand with those. But we're definitely either bowling or hockey is probably the best way to go.

Speaker 1: 7:45

So that's Splatball and I'm not going to give you a top of the day because I'll just say this Just grab the free PDF in the show notes. I have it linked for you and I'm going to put a link of at least part of the Splatball if you want to check out the video, and that's it. We'll make this a quick one. Pe Nation, it. We'll make this a quick one. Pe nation. You guys and girls are awesome. Check out my sub stack, check out the free PDF and have a great day, week, weekend, whenever you're listening to this, and let's keep pushing our profession forward. Thank you.