The World Roundnet Championships
When skateboarding made its official debut at the Tokyo Olympics, it was amazing to see what was once considered a niche sport being performed at the highest level of athleticism.
Roundnet also started as a niche sport that has quickly catapulted into the hearts and minds of its many devoted fans around the world and this past September, 33 countries sent teams to Belgium to compete in the first ever World Roundnet Championships.
What is Roundnet?
Roundnet started back in 1989 and was made by Jeff Knurek as a fun casual outdoor game drawing its influences from volleyball and foursquare. After initial success the game fell into obscurity until it was revived and put back on the map in 2007 by Chris Ruder who founded the company Spikeball that manufactures all the equipment to play roundnet.
How do you play?
The game of Roundnet is played using a Spikeball set which consists of a mini circular netted trampoline and a set of Spikeballs. Teams of two people will start a rally by serving a Spikeball off the net to the other team. The other team now has three hits in order to intercept the ball and return it by bouncing it off the Spikeball net. Both teams can move and use the 360 degrees around the Spikeball net and there are no boundaries of play. A point is scored if the ball hits the ground or isn’t returned in three hits or by other game infractions. It is exactly because of the 360 degree radius and there being no boundaries of play where Spikeball really showcases it’s talent for high speed hand, eye coordination as well as frenetic teamwork to outmanoeuvre the other team.
The World Roundnet Championships has been organised by the International Roundnet Federation as a platform to gain the sport wider recognition and to start the process of getting the sport ready for consideration by the Olympics in the future.
The championships were held between September 8th and September 11th and allowed for multiple categories including a coed mixed gender teams championship, and two days of national squads going up against each other in brackets to get to the finals.
You can still watch the best that the championships had to offer over on youtube where fully commentated streams of the games are available to watch.
Results
Being a very popular college campus sport, Team USA did extremely well across the weeknd taking first place in both the Mens and Women’s Squad tournaments winning the majority of their games. Canada came second in the Men's tournament and were one of the biggest competitors throughout the weekend next to Team USA. Team Germany came second in the Women’s tournament and had some of the best rallies of the weekend against Team USA as both teams were very evenly matched. There are some amazing games featuring Team GB who came seventh in both the mens and women’s squad tournaments.
