Remember back in elementary school when you would look forward to the time you got to spend outside playing games with your friends? With your own home basketball court in your backyard, bringing those nostalgic playground games back to your Sport Court game court is easy. Here are just a couple of ways to relive the fun with your family and friends any day of the week
Foursquare
One of the most memorable childhood games is Foursquare. One great thing about Foursquare is that it’s inexpensive to create and takes little time to set up.
For those that need a quick refresh on how to play foursquare, you can find official rules online. Luckily the basics of the game are pretty simple: Make a 10X10 square with tape, and within that square make four smaller squares. Once the squares are made, indicate which squares will be squares one, two, three and four.
The person in square four will start the game by dropping the ball into their square, and then they bounce the ball into another player’s square. The ball can only bounce once in any square, and if a player misses bouncing the ball back to another person, then they’re sent to the designated first square.
All you really need for Foursquare is a good playground ball and some strong tape like duct or electrical tape. The rest you can leave up to your home basketball court. You can find these materials at any local sporting goods store.
Freeze Tag and Red Rover
If you don’t have time to grab Fousquare materials from the store, there are playground games that require no additional materials. Some of those games include Freeze Tag and Red Rover.
Freeze Tag is essentially the same as tag, except instead of being “it” once you’re tag, you become “frozen” and you have to stay in place until everyone has been tagged. There are plenty of variations to the game, so make sure to take a look online or ask your friends or family on how to spice up the game.
Red Rover requires two teams to line up about half a home basketball court away from each other. The first team decides which player to call over from the opposite team by chanting, “Red Rover, Red Rover, send (named player) on over.” The named player then runs over to the other team to try and break their line or “chain.” If the player doesn’t break the chain, he has to join that team. If he does break the chain, he can make either of the two players that were a part of the broken chain go to his team. Whatever team runs out of players first loses the game.
The perks of Red Rover and Freeze Tag is that there’s no cost to play but also that you can play them usually with as many people as you want. A home basketball court is a prime location to play these games because the boundaries of the basketball court can double as the boundaries for the game. This way you can have clear lines established for your game, leaving no question as to when someone was out of bounds or not.
All it takes is a little creativity and imagination and your home basketball court can turn into the number one gaming venue in the neighborhood. There are hundreds of games you can play on your home basketball court. For more game ideas take some time to go online or talk to your family to see what other games you’d want to play together.