The game
Spikeball, also called Roundnet, came over from the United States. It is getting quite popular in the Netherlands too. The Maastricht student association has existed for about four years. Yuan Tjiam (31) has been their trainer for a year now, the only non-student among the students, and at the same time ‘captain’ of the ‘barefoot club’. Do your feet not slip easily? “On wet grass like today, yes, but I personally feel as if I am more agile this way.” He enthusiastically waits to start. “Everyone is too late, because it is raining. They are wimps,” he says laughing. As more members start to arrive, the others have already begun. Four nets with four people each. A small yellow ball, the size of an orange, is thrown back and forth. Nobody is standing still; they are running, diving, and jumping. Tjiam explains: “You play two against two. First, the ball is served by throwing it onto the net. After that, the other team is allowed to touch the ball a maximum of three times, after which the final time is a smash onto the net. After the serve, there are no fixed positions; everyone can run around the net.” Touching the ball, by the way, is not just done with the hand, the whole body is used. “If you want to prevent the ball from landing on the ground when your opponent has just hit it onto the net, you use your whole body to stop it,” says Tjiam.
Team spirit
Whereas Tjiam is in charge of the training, 21-year-old Nicolas Manneback (bachelor’s of European Studies) is their chairman, responsible for everything else; from tournaments to barbecues. He set up a group app with all the members at the beginning of this year. “When we are not training, we can still play with the gear, which you then borrow from the club. If someone is in the mood to play, they just need to send a message to the group. There are always people who fancy a game.” Manneback believes that team spirit is important too. “There is plenty of that here. Everyone is friendly, which comes in handy during games, because there is no referee. So, you have to work it out together. It works most of the time.” In addition, the teams also have to decide when the game is over. Sometimes, it is when the first team has gained 15 points, at other times, the game runs up to 21 points.
Various levels
The levels within the group vary greatly. Manneback himself only started a year ago with no prior knowledge of the game. “A friend invited me to come and join in. I had never heard of it before, now I play it every day.” According to him, it is a game that you can get good at quickly. “I was not all that great when I started, but within two months, I had gotten to grips with it.” How does that work in a team with varying levels? Trainer Tjiam has come up with a solution for that; “The players are divided into levels. As there are four nets, there are four levels. When a team wins, it can pass on to the next net and hence to a higher level.” Those who think that this is just a game, would be wrong. Competitions are organised at both national and international levels. Last year, for example, there was one in Prague.
Women
What about the men-to-women ratio? The association has about twenty members, including five women. One of them is 21-year-old UCM student Elena Theile, who is the only female playing this evening among all that testosterone. “It makes no difference to me that there are more men. I don’t feel less than them.” Theile didn’t know the sport before either. “I used to play tennis, but after Covid I wanted to try something else. I saw Spikeball on the UM Sport’s website. It seemed like fun.” That expectation proved right, because even though everyone is fanatical, Theile says that during training sessions it is still about one thing: having fun.