street_games

A street game used to be played in Portsaid, Egypt around late 90s early 2000.

Characteristics ¶

• Outdoor game: It needs an outdoor space, not too empty like a football playground nor too dense like a jungle or a field.
• Requires some obstables and turns to give the runners team a way to manuver.
• Requires a football: the ball shouldn’t be too hard like a basketball nor too soft like plastic beach ball. the ball is used by one team to hit the other so it needs a weight but not too hard that causes injuries. Also can’t be too small or too large. a football is perfect
• It’s a group game: you need at least 4 to play it.

How to play ¶

• 7 stones of different sizes should be collected and must be stackable. Stack the stones on the ground.
• The players are divided to 2 equal teams, (Team A: Owns the ball, Team B: runners)
• Team A goal is to make the ball touch every member of Team B
• Team B goal is to order the stones in the correct order
• Team B is not allowed to touch the ball
• Team A is not allowed to touch the stones
• The game starts with 1 player from Team B hitting the stack of stones with the ball from a 10 feet away.
• The game ends with the team that reached their goal first. it’s a zero sum game.

Usual course of play ¶

• 4, 6 players come around. 2 leaders picking players for their team
• Everyone collect stones the largest is the size of a hand.
• Stack all stones from larger to smaller
• One player from Team A measure 10 steps from the stones a normal stride. Draws a line in the sand/street
• One player from Team B stand on the line, holding the ball, hits the stones with the ball in a way that scatter the stones and pushes the ball as far as possible
• Players from Team A, 1 of them fetch the ball, others strategize the pin down Team B players. (They’re not allowed to touch each other)
• Players from Team B meanwhile try to stack the stones
• When Team A player fetch the ball, they pass it around to his team. to hit one of the Team B players.
• Team B players strategize so that they’re both far away and luring Team A players away from the stones to another Team B player has the chance to arrange the remaining stones
• There are techniques where you can sacrifice one of the Team B players in order to have some stones arranged.
• Sometimes the stones are not perfectly stackable and they fall off mid game and Team B has to rearrange them. This is usual.

Notes ¶

I believe this game isn’t popular anymore. It was popular to me during my childhood but I guess kids don’t play on the streets anymore and there are no more stones to collect to play the game.
I live in an area where it was new project so sand and stones were normal to find around. Maybe stones can be replaced by a some plastic disks or wooden plates. The idea is that it should be stackable but not too perfect. it has to add a challenge and require hand dexterity to stack them.

Thanks for Ahmed Elemam for reminding me about this game