On a warm spring weekend morning, a group of kids are joyfully engaged in a belly ball battle on a patch of trampled grass near a playground climbing structure. They range in age from about 4 to nearly 12.

I quickly became a big fan of belly ball. It reminded me of all the silly, made-up games we played back in the olden times.

What’s belly ball?

Well, as near as I can tell, the game goes like this:

• The first two opponents are selected via a series of counting out rhymes like eeny, meeny, miny, moe.
• Each combatant places a large bouncy ball under his or her shirt.
• Standing about 10 feet apart, they run at each other, colliding belly ball to belly ball.
• Composition continues until a combatant loses their ball. The other child is declared the winner.
• The winner picks a challenger, and the next battle takes place.
• Abundant chanting of “belly ball, belly ball” accompany the games—as do lots of laughing and a fair amount of good-natured teasing.
• Play continues until as long as there are at least two kids. Interested in playing. However, once I observed a lone child, probably 5 years old, playing belly ball solitaire. Ball securely under her Unicorn Power t-shirt, she battled with a light pole.

Belly Ball Battle Wrap Up

I saw this game a lot throughout the spring and then it disappeared as the core group of children moved on to other interests. Belly ball is a great example of kids self-organizing and creating the structure and rules for their play. Beyond trying not to intentionally hurt one another, there didn’t seem to be a lot of rules. They did accommodate smaller kids by letting them strike first when battling bigger kids. Sometimes they allowed the smaller kids more than one ‘free shot’.

It was also an exemplary example of power play, play where kids demonstrate their physical prowess or pretend to be powerful.

Finally, the belly ball players were tuned in and engaged in this game for big hunks of time. Adults sometimes fret about children’s attention spans, but most can stick with an activity they enjoy for long hunks of time.

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