Sunday, August 16, 2009

Ladder Ball

When I went on the Fathers and Sons campout this year, one of the guys had brought a game he called Boku Ball or something. Well, I couldn't find on the game on the internet under that name, but I did find Ladder Ball, which is the same game. Wikipedia said that this game goes by many names, but it didn't enumerate them all, so I'm sticking with Ladder Ball.

I thought I would cut all 2 foot lengths and it would turn out just like Brother Hatch's, because his was homemade like mine, and I had measured with my hands and I thought that all of his lengths were 2 feet. Apparently, I didn't look very closely (or think very carefully either) because the game would have turned out 6 feet tall and his were only 3 or 4 feet tall. I ended up testing 18 inch lengths and 14 inch lengths, but I decided to go with 1 foot lengths for verticle bars and 2 foot lenghts for horizontal. It's a good thing I didn't pick longer than a foot too because I thought I had several feet more pipe than I needed, but it turned out to be just barely enough.

Tamara and I had a great time playing our new game.

9 comments:

Tamara Robertson Turner said...

You get 3 points if you get your ball hung on the top rung, 2 points for the middle, and 1 point for the bottom. If your ball bounces of the ground and gets hung on any rung, it's 5 points. You win by getting exactly 21 points. If you go over 21 points, then you are automatically back at 11.
Jack won several times. I won twice.

Joanne said...

Sounds like a fun game! We'll have to get your pattern for the game to Brent so he can make one up for the Cub Scouts.

Andrea said...

Do you throw the ball?

Grammyzanne said...

Sounds like fun.

Jack Turner said...

Exact rules can be important sometimes. Looking for a set of rules, I came across the exact game that I copied. Looking at the measurements listed, I got it right finally on my own set.

Pattern for brent:
20 pipes 1 foot long
10 pipes 2 feet long
12 corner connectors
12 'T' connectors
Connect as shown in picture, preferably with bars colored somehow.
6 Golf balls one color
half a dozen golf balls of another color
drill hole in each ball and connect pairs with rope to create bolas.

Andrea: yeah, we toss the balls to try to get them to hang on the rungs.

I found official rules, but they're not the rules I was taught.

Andrea said...

Thanks for the explanation-looks like a lot of fun!

Joanne said...

Thanks for the pattern. How long should the rope be between the two golf balls? Do you drill all the way through the golf ball and tie knots at both ends of the ball?

Michael said...

Looks like you had a great time. Happy Anniversary.

Chelsea said...

this game is a lot of fun, I'm glad that you gave it to brent for his birthday