Initial impressions of a new sport
Made in Singapore, made for all ages, made for family fun...
Its called AZ-ball cos anybody from A to Z can play, invented by a Singapore businessman. I went to a community club near my house this morning to give it a shot! Hey its supposed to be a sport, that means that there is winning and losing! I like!
Here are some pics and my first impressions (I mean the sport is only 5 months old)
The game is like "mini-tennis" and uses quite a bit of mini tennis equipment. Specialists equipment is suppoed to be in production and arriving soon. Its played on a badminton court and has a 38 inch high net. Same kind of thing, I hit to you, you hit to me. If the ball is inbounds, and you miss, I get a point. Games can last anywhere from 5 to 10 or more points. You do not need service to win a point.
Some additional rules are that serving must be below shoulder height and there are no volleys allowed until after the service return is over, i.e. I serve, you can't volley, you return, I can't volley... After that its volley anytime. Volleys are only allowed from a certain distance behind the net (the "t" on the badminton court) so that makes it a bit harder to volley.
Impressions of "AZ-ball"
Positives:
Easy to learn- my brother and I who are not good at racquet sports picked it up in 5 mins, and were doing ok even against more experienced coaches. Admittedly we are fairly athletic so kinesthetic things come easier to us. Maybe an average person will take 15 mins of instruction and examples.
VERY low risk of injury- Unless I whack my teammate with the racquet, which is hard to do accidentally because the game is not fast, and the racquet is light and easy to control, its hard to get injured.
Can play anywhere- If there is a badminton court we can play. These are easy to find and fairly cheap to rent.
Things I did not really like (actually only 1 thing... but its big):
SLOW!!- I like action, I like movement, I like power, I like speed. You can be fairly successful at this game with none of those attributes. If you hit too hard AT ALL, the ball will fly all over the place and you will lose. The court is so small and the ball so slow that foot-speed is not important. In this sense the game is more like billiards than basketball.
Because of this, highly competitive athletes will find that the game may not be inherently fun, although, as ususal, winning is!:) For e.g. I can play a good game of basketball, or rugby and even if my team loses, the match is still fun. I am not sure I can say that about AZ-ball at the moment.
I do not believe that it is much better exercise that brisk walking, much of the game is spent standing and not really moving. I was drenched in sweat after 45 mins because the hall was very hot, not because the exercise was very demanding. I would rate this sport as NEPE in exercise science its called "non-exercise-physical-activity" that means, it burns calories, its easy on joints, it doesn't eat into my recovery ability to recover from har dtraining like weightlifting and sprints.
I'm not sure how far this sport can go as a "spectator sport" because its too slow to be exciting to watch on TV. And the people who play need not be exceptional physical specimens. People watch sports because often the athletes do things that they themselves are not able to do. I'm not sure a spectator can get this feeling from AZ-ball.
Possible excellent uses:
Mass participation events e.g. company functions, mentoring large groups of youth, at camps for schools, for teaching motor skills to young children, therapy for patients, elderly activity centers, getting obese kids to move around.
posted by Coach Jonathan Wong @ 3/25/2006 08:25:00 PM
Comments: 1
