>SocCourt is my new sport

>First, I just noticed that the title rhymes (plus I got to spell rhymes which is always fun). Ok, so what is SocCourt, you ask. Well, imagine Racquetball rules with a soccer ball. You use any part of your body except your hands to return the (volley) ball. (sorry, just noticed that this video doesn’t seem to load anymore) Simple rules beyond the racquetball ones: 1. The ball can hit you or the floor twice before the return shot. Examples include bouncing twice with a single hit, bouncing once and juggling once before the return shot, hitting you once, bouncing, and then the return shot. 2. You have to bounce ball before “serving” it 3. [goalie rule] if a ball hits the back wall without bouncing you can try to catch it before it bounces twice after the rebound from the back wall. When you catch it your feet must be in the front-most section of the court. If you catch it in the air, you have to land in that section. You have to be in control of your body as you can’t touch the front wall. 4. Use a volley ball. My buddy Leif and I broke a light when using a soccer ball. The volley ball is lighter and you can’t drive it as hard (since it’s smaller and harder to hit square). I learned a variant of this game from a physics major (who happens to be the captain of the Hamline women’s team) where we couldn’t use the “bounce twice” variant above. It was a lot of fun but as we got better we found that a good serve could smoke the opponent. The two-bounce rule really helps extend the rallies. The coach of the women’s team likes his team to do this in the off season as it helps with having good command of your touches, especially the first touch. I really enjoy this sport. I want to play it all the time and I find it’s really challenging. My strengths are that I can juggle quite well (a p.r. of 1,234 set earlier this year) and I play racquetball well so I know where to stand. One cool feature Leif and I have come up with is that if the volleyball has stripes you can really see the spin well. It’s a lot easier than picking up the spin on a racquetball, that’s for sure.

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