When I was in
Boy Scouts, we used to play a highly-structured version of dodgeball; we had another name for it, but it's been two years and many life changes and I can't remember what it was. It was fairly similar to the dodgeball described in
moJoe's
excellent writeup, incorporating some of the
house rules as "official" rules:
- We always played with two Foursquare balls, no more, no less.
- When someone was "out", they went into an "Out zone" outside the opposite team's boundary line. If the ball crossed the boundary line, say from a powerful throw by Team 1, any 1 (pun intended) Out could get the ball and throw it at Team 2; if they hit a 2, the thrower ran back to Team 1's "in" territory (they were immune from hits until they reentered the In) and the 2 hit was Out.
A popular strategy was for a team to hold onto one ball and throw the other over the heads of the opposing team to their purgatory, creating a "squeeze play".
- If someone was thrown at and they were holding a ball, they sometimes were able to bounce the incoming away using their held ball; this did not count as a "hit" against the holder.
If, however, someone holding a ball was hit, they could not take the ball with them to Out.
- If the ball was thrown and someone from the other team caught it, the thrower was "out"; if it bounced against multiple people and then touched the ground without being caught, everyone hit was "out"; if it bounced against someone and got stuck in the bushes lining the commercial driveway where we always played, it hadn't touched the ground and so didn't count as an "out".
The court was shaped thusly:
2222|------------------------------------|1111
2222| | |1111
2222| | |1111
2222| Team | Team |1111
2222| 1 | 2 |1111
2222| | |1111
2222| | |1111
2222| | |1111
2222|------------------------------------|1111
where the shaded areas were where the "out" people went,
numerals indicating which team went where.