Angleball

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Angleball is a fitness game developed by Rip Engle, onetime head football coach at Penn State. Engle devised the game as a way for his players to maintain physical fitness in the off-season. It has deliberately light contact and minimal rules.[1]

Contents

[edit] Gameplay

Two large balls are placed atop standards at opposite sides of a field. In a mixture of soccer and basketball, teams pass a smaller ball back and forth, attempting to knock the other team's ball off its perch with the smaller ball. A goal is worth one point and any offensive player who is touched by a defensive player has three seconds to pass the ball to avoid a turnover.

Like basketball, teams don't have goalies and the goal is surrounded by a key area where offensive players aren't permitted. Teams do not have a set number of players—the number of participants is simply divided in half, although five or six per side is considered ideal.

There is no regulation field size and out-of-bounds are arbitrarily set.

[edit] History

The first angleball game played was in the late 1960s when the Corry High School Beavers hosted the Rockets of Titusville High School. Corry's athletic director, Lou Hanna and Titusville's athletic director, Roy Van Horn, had been teammates on the 1939 Slippery Rock State Teachers College undefeated championship football team. The game was won by Corry.

Van Horn was the owner of Pioneer Ranch, a boys camp on the Allegheny River near Tidioute, Pennsylvania. With Hanna, he founded the Northwestern Pennsylvania Football Camp at Pioneer Ranch in 1961, the nation's first summertime football camp for high school gridders, and hired Penn State's coaches to staff it.[2] It was here a relationship with Rip Engle was formed, and they were first introduced to angleball.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Vickey, Ted (2008). 101 Fitness Games for Kids at Camp. Coaches Choice Books, 73. ISBN 978-1585180707. 
  2. ^ Dohrmann, George (2001-06-25). Sweat Shopping: Though rife with NCAA violations, college-run football camps have become bull markets for recruiters. Sports Illustrated. Retrieved on 2008-03-20.

[edit] External links