by Josie Jack
On most sunny Friday afternoons, small, trampoline-like nets are scattered across the University of Maryland’s fields with students surrounding the nets.
Spikeball began as a game in the 1980s and has now become so popular that UMD has a Spikeball club, with some members who play competitively and some who play casually. The club holds competitive practices on Mondays and Wednesdays and casual practices open to all on Fridays on McKeldin Mall.
The objective of the game is to pass a small ball between players by hitting the ball off of a net low to the ground for a series of volleys. If the ball doesn’t bounce off the net within three passes between the teammates, the opposing team earns a point. They play until one team reaches 21 points.
Kory Steinberg, the president of UMD’s Spikeball club and a senior information science major, said the Spikeball club was an instant hit. Over 500 people signed up during the club’s First Look Fair in 2018. Nowadays, there are almost 700 people in the club’s GroupMe chat today, Steinberg said.
A huge part of the club’s success on campus is the social aspect to it, said freshman computer science and mathematics double major Avinash Komarlingam.
“I’m from Virginia, so I come to play Spikeball just to meet new people,” he said. “We’ve met a lot of our friends through Spikeball.”
Sophomore computer science major Brandon Fung said another big part of the sport’s popularity is its simplicity. Unlike football or basketball, Spikeball has very few rules when played casually and doesn’t require much space, he said.
“The sport’s easy to pick up, literally anyone can play and you can play pretty much anywhere,” said Fung. “They don’t even need to be athletic in order to have fun.”
Professional Spikeball isn’t that easy, Fung and Steinberg said — its rules are constantly changing to make the sport more interesting. Last year, the Spikeball Roundnet Association added a one-and-a-half foot line surrounding the net to prevent players from moving in too close and increased the number of serving attempts two. Those changes make the game more difficult for advanced players and more interesting for viewers, Fung and Steinberg said — but the constant rule changes have also prevented more professionals from playing Spikeball.
“Once Spikeball figures out how to make it like a consistent solid sport, kind of similar to volleyball, then I can definitely see it being in the Olympics,” Steinberg said.
Featured image: Students playing Spikeball on McKeldin Mall. Photo by Anna Lucas.