During our lecture on maths in sport we were instructed to either improve the rules of an existing sport or to create our own sport. We decided that since none of us knew enough about one particular sport we would create our own.

We created a game called smack ball. The aim of the game is to smack he ball against the opposing team’s wall. The players have to keep the ball in the air by hitting it upwards with your hands. You can defend by smacking the ball out of the opposing team’s hands. Once the ball is dropped the first person to pick it up again gets the ball.

There are three players on each team and the teams play on a court which is 10m by 5m with the shorter walls being the goals. We wanted the ball to be hand-span sized, weigh 196g and be kind of like a smaller volleyball. Each game lasts around 10 minutes and there is no extra time or substitutions.

We discovered that there are many ways maths could be used in smack ball. For example Pythagoras could be used to determine what the perfect pass looks like. Maths could also be used to figure out the force needed to hit the ball off the wall from a distance or how to create the perfect ball spin. Maths could even be used for figuring out when is the perfect time to hit the ball out of someone’s hand.

After presenting our game to the class we discovered that a similar game was played by the ancient Mayans who used a rubber ball which they hit off their elbows to make passes.