Deathball – A New Kind of Youth Group Game

Introduction to Deathball

While the origins of the game are a bit murky and not really fully clear, the concept has been around for centuries and has been played by youth groups all over the world. The game of Deathball can be played by any number of kids, but it is highly recommended that you play with at least 10 individuals.

The game is extremely fast-paced and doesn’t have a whole lot of very complicated base rules and it is highly recommended that your youth group adopt some unique rules in order to improve the gameplay for all involved.

Suggested Items for Deathball

Since Deathball is a very simple game that should be played indoors, you would want to be sure that the room that you are setting up the game in has plenty of open areas. The setup is extremely important and it depends on how many participants will be playing. In order to play properly, you will need enough of everything to fit in with the exact number of participants. Below is a list of the items that are required to play Deathball:

• Large, Rubber 4 Square Ball
• Chairs (number of chairs to match number of participants, minus one)
• Large open area (big enough to hold the number of chairs)
• One person is “it” at the beginning

The chairs are evenly spaced around the floor in a circle at the beginning and the person who is it starts off in the middle.

How to Play Deathball

Before the game starts one person is selected to be in the middle when the game begins and all other kids are to be seated in one of the chairs that have been set up in a large circle. The game begins and the players in the chair take turns throwing the ball away from the person in the middle in order to keep it away from the person in the middle.

The set rules are very simple you cannot throw the ball to the person next to you until after the first throw has been made. The players throwing the ball to each other can pick anyone to throw the ball to depending on which one they prefer. If the ball leaves the circle the only two players that can chase the ball is the person in the middle and if anyone was hit by the ball just before it left the circle. The person remains in the middle until one of a couple things happen:

They catch or chase down the ball that left the circle
They are able to tag one of the seated players while still holding the ball

The game continues until all the participants are ready to stop or once the predetermined amount of time has passed.

Special thanks to Refreshing Mountain for sponsoring this article.

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