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Rocball starts preseason matches next month
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Posted on Sep 20 2008
The islands’ only indigenous sport, Rocball, returns for its 26th year early next month at the Marianas High School Gymnasium.
The sport’s founder, Jim Feger, said the longest uninterrupted extra-curricular sport activity of the CNMI’s Public School System will start with its preseason games on Oct. 6.
“Team net sport players interested in competing in this year’s Rocball games need to form a team, choose a captain, and register with me at the MHS Gym during the MHS Drug and Violent Free Safe Haven Program,” said Feger.
The aforementioned program runs between 5pm and 8pm Monday through Thursday, and Saturday.
Feger said seven teams have already signed up for this year’s season of Rocball competition. They are led by last year’s champion Evenflow, No-Mercy, Soul Rebels, Okies, Naturals, Uraiwak, Section A, and Ghasias Brothers.
The Ghasias Brothers were former triple crown champions and are raring to make a comeback in the 2008 season.
Feger first wrote about the rules for Rocball in Ebisu, Japan in 1979. The sport itself went through a two-year experimental period at Hopwood Junior High School from 1981 to 1983. Rocball started being played as a regular sporting activity in 1983.
Feger said Rocball is unique because it is the first team net sport to develop offensive and defensive scoring, multiple-point scoring, penalty point scoring, and included goals for scoring in this kind of sport.
The offensive and defensive scoring developed for the indigenous sport of Saipan predated the Federation International de Volleyball’s adoption of rally point scoring by 15 years.
Rocball is also the first sport of this kind that developed a scoring system, where a team could win a game by total amount of points scored using a set system of play.
The unique sport is played on a slightly modified standard volleyball court with an overhead net bisecting team courts and a 6×12-foot soccer type goal located 10 feet behind each court. [B][I](Saipan Tribune)[/I][/B]
