Wallyball is a lot like Monopoly. Every group that plays has different rules and most seem to think that they are correct.
What rule variations do you use and why? When I play, we do this:
[list]
[li]You can’t hit the back wall on the serve, but you can when the ball is in play. This includes walloping the ball of the back wall, spike style, forcing the other team to turn around and dig it out from that direction. You can’t wallop the ball off the back wall, then over the net again back to your side. Automatic point or sideout.[/li]
[li]You can hit the net with your hand to spike the ball.[/li]
[li]You can NEVER hit the ceiling with the ball. Automatic sideout or point for the other team.[/li]
[li]The ball can hit the net on the serve; if it goes over, it counts.[/li]
[li]You can not hit more than two walls on the serve, but you can hit as many as you want when the ball is in play.[/li]
As you can see, pretty much everything goes in our style. We do this because it forces the teams to be pretty good. You would think that all it would be is constant spiking against the back wall, but it isn’t. This eventually becomes easy to return, so we play it off the walls whenever possible.
I haven’t played since the early 90’s, but the gang I played with used these rules, to the best of my recollection:
Back Wall: There was a line drawn on each end wall, roughly 6 feet off the ground. If you hit the ball into the other team’s back wall above that line, it was considered out and they got the point/sideout. Below the line was in play. We allowed this even on serves, which I suspect was a mistake. With some practice, several of us learned how to hit essentially unreturnable serves by sizzling the ball over the net with enough topspin to drop below the line before it slammed into the back wall. If we’d have gotten better, the game would have degenerated into an ace contest. However, accuracy wasn’t great so the demon server would hit the net or above the line before long.
Ceiling: Always out. Point/sideout if you hit the ceiling.
Contact with net: We played pretty fast and loose. Only if somebody really mauled the net was this called - much like most outdoor games I’ve played.
Ball hits net on serve: I believe we played on (if it goes over the net, it’s a live ball), but I’m not certain.
Number of walls: I can’t really recall. The 2-wall maximum sounds pretty familiar. I think we allowed teams to use their own back wall on returns, but again I’m not certain.
We were hacks. Our games didn’t degenerate into anything boring, so we saw no reason to modify the rules - they worked for us. Like I said, I really think that our back-wall-on-serves rule was not so kosher - get somebody good serving and you might run the table. We just didn’t have anybody that consistent (above the line or into the net eventually), so it wasn’t such an issue.
**Back wall ** We could use our own anytime, but the opponents back wall was always considered out. Two walls on serve Side out Ball hitting net on serve Side out Hands or body touching net We used the honor system. If the contact was light or accidental we’d play on.
Another variation from 6 per side was that anybody could spike. The leagues and tournaments we did were always mixed sex 4 per side, but for a better workout we’d play 2 on 2. I won a friendly game once playing by myself against 2 decent players.