Dead Ball

For Dead Ball, you need a large ball that is easy to hit. The group is divided into two teams: an outfield team and an infield team. Which team starts in the outfield is decided by drawing lots or a coin toss.

At one end of the hall, a goal line is drawn (see illustration). Behind this, the following are created:

• a ring for the server
• a line where the infield team players stand, waiting for their turn to hit

On the field, four rings are made with good distance between them, adapted to age and desired difficulty level.

A player from the outfield team is the server and stands in the ring behind the goal line. The infield team hits in turn. Each player must hit the ball with their fist as far as possible, and then run towards the first ring. With a long hit, one can choose to run further through all the rings and all the way to the goal. With a poor or short hit, one stands behind the goal line and waits – one cannot run until the next player has hit.

The outfield team must throw the ball as quickly as possible to the server, who dabs the ball down into the ring and shouts «DEAD». When this happens, all infield players who are not inside a ring or behind the goal line are «dead» and out of the game, until a player on the team manages to run around all the rings on their own hit.

The outfield team becomes the infield team in one of these ways:

• they catch the ball in the air
• all players on the infield team are «dead»

The last player on the infield team gets three attempts (three hits).

Variation

If it becomes too easy for the outfield team to catch the ball in the air, and the teams thus switch very often, a rule can be introduced that:

"teams do not switch until the outfield team has caught the ball, for example, three times in the air"

You can also:

• vary the number of rings and the distance between them
• adjust how far the infield team must run (e.g., a requirement of at least two rings per hit) to adapt the difficulty level according to age and skill.