Circle Rules Football (soccer) wins Come Out and Play Best Sport award

It removes significant plaque from my playful heart when I learn that Circle Rules Football was recognized as "Best Sport" in the recent Come out and Play festival here in the States. (Read the well-illustrated rules here.) Not because it's any less competitive than soccer or any less demanding of teamwork or significant athletic prowess, but simply because it's new. Because, as a new sport, it's still free from all those commercial/official interests that turns sport into something other than an invitation to play.

And maybe just a tad because it uses a "a swiss ball, a body ball, a yoga ball, or an exercise ball, whatever you want to call it." Todd Strong and I and Human Kinetics chose to call it an "Activity Ball" in our soon-to-be-published Great Games for Big Activity Balls - a collection of significantly fun games to play with the aforementioned. Which, in retrospect, makes the success of Circle Rules Football even more celebration-worthy, for Todd, myself, our publisher, the manufacturers, distributors and owners of these over-sized bouncy wonders, and especially for those of us who get to play with them.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith