I’ve seen these things (top left pic) all over playgrounds, but they didn’t exist when I was a kid. We had a rusty hoop loosely bolted to a concrete wall.
What exactly do you do with this thing? Why are there several (usually 3 or 4) holes? Are there any dopers with elementary school-aged children who could explain to me what games are played on this equipment?
Usually what we did was have at least two kids playing. Each kid covers a certain number of holes, so if you have a 4-holer and 4 kids, each kid gets one hole; 2 kids, then each kid gets 2 holes, etc. One kid starts by throwing the ball up into the funnel. The ball comes out one hole and that kid catches it, throws it into the funnel, rinse and repeat.
We didn’t have any scoring system or anything – it was just something to do.
We always played it where whoever’s funnel the ball came out of was “it” and had to chase the others down and drill them with the ball.
Don’t know if those are the official rules though.
Back in the 70’s, we played like Scarlett67 described. Mostly it was a way to make playing Catch a little more interesting.
So these things have been around for a while, then? I had never seen them until a few years ago, and they seem to be in every school playground now. I suppose funnel ball got boring, they retired it for a while, and now they brought it back for a whole new generation of kids, who think it’s new and fun.