Wallyball

I learned and played a new game/sport the other day. It was interesting. We went back to Tillensburg (week 8) for their community outreach day. We got to church just in time for some coffee and to meet some people before the service began. As we were wearing our AIA jackets, we were easily recognized as the “soccer coaches from the summer.” One of the guys that came up to us, started the conversation like this: “So you’re the soccer coaches we’re going to beat in Wallyball – we’re the defending champs you know.” As I processed this, I was thinking: “What is wallyball??” I wasn’t the only one thinking this as we all looked at each other bewildered. We tried to figure out was wallyball was, but there wasn’t enough time – church was beginning.

After the service, we reconnected with the coordinators of camp and our host families. They all mentioned this wallyball tournament. Apparently wallyball is pretty big at Tillensburg, so big that one team had a practice the night before – one player ended up in emergency with a dislocated shoulder and another wasn’t able to move in the morning. We were able to learn that it was like volleyball, only it was played in a squash court and walls were fair game – except on serves. Ok, so that helped a little to explain it, but it was still fuzzy.

After lunch and catching up, we made our way to the community centre. We were met by the organizers of the wallyball tournament. In their hands they held a ball that had ‘wallyball’ written on it. Now, I have to admit that until this point, I just thought that wallyball was a game made up by the church. We had about half an hour before we were scheduled to play our first game, so we decided to play two against two to get the feel of the game. By the time the other team showed up, we were ready: we were used to the walls and the small space.

We played back-to-back games, winning the first game and losing the second by two points. We ended up coming in second in our pool – we were going to the semi’s. We had a bit of a break as the other pool played their games. On to the semi’s: we had time to watch the other team so we knew what we had to do. We won that game and went to the finals. In the finals we played against the team we lost against. This time, we played best out of three. We took the first game, but lost the second; down to the third game. The lead went back and forth for a bit, but AIA was able to come out on top. So we arrive at the church having no idea what wallyball was to winning the tournament. It was pretty sweet and a lot of fun. I can’t wait to play wallyball again.