Prompted by what the instructors of the sports class for middle-aged people that I take part set up from time to time: a soccer game in the gymasium with 2 teams, 4 goals and 2 balls in play at a time, each team defending two goals diagonally opposite from each other.
That makes for interesting tactics, and a lot more running than would be the case with 2 goals and 1 ball. It’s not a game played in a league or even really competitively, of course.
The only game with > 1 ball-like object in play at a time that I am aware of is a fictional one - Quidditch.
Is there any that is in fact played somewhere on a regular basis, not just on an ad hoc exercise as with our group?
When we played dodgeball in high school gym class, there were always several balls used at once. I’m not sure if there’s any formal rules for dodgeball which would codify the number of balls to be used.
My school intramural department runs a two ball indoor soccer tournament every year. Normal field, just with two balls - crazy hight scoring.
Dodgeball is probably the best answer here.
Together with the bocce-type games, there’s curling, (I think) shuffleboard, and whatever the bar version of shuffleboard is called. There are probably other similar games in the family of ‘aiming balls/pucks at a target’ where some balls/pucks are left on the court for subsequent throws.
Dodgeball is a good call. I can’t think of any others outside of the bocce-type family.
I wouldn’t call bocce, lawn bowling, pétanque, billiards, marbles, curling or bowling an answer to the OP, because in those sports, only one person is doing something to the balls at any one time, and that person can only do something directly to one of those balls. E.g. in pétanque the player throws one ball at a time, in billiards you can only touch the white ball with your cure, etc.
Dodgeball is the only sport where you have several people throwing different balls at the same time.
