At the Snowden Family Clambake they have bocce courts and volley ball nets for the guests to use before they serve the clambake meal. In a more genteel day, there might have been croquet and badminton on the great lawn. Then there are the touch football games, the seasonal activities like snowball fights…
Wickeds, what are your lawn games of choice? Fill us in on the wins and the crushing defeats, the pure athleticism and the sports injuries.
Edith/Maddie: I am fond of bocce and own a set. When I (rarely now) go to the beach with my sons, we always play it. I have very little coordination between my eye and my hand, so I never win, but it’s fun! We own an antique croquet set. Maybe I’ll pull that out once the world opens up again.
Julie: We have a croquet set that gets hauled out when the family is gathered at the Cape. But for lawn games, nothing beats the Jart games we used to play when I was a kid. Honestly, I’m not sure how we all survived with the sharp metal and flying pointy objects. I also used to love tether ball back in the day.
Edith/Maddie: I LOVED tether ball, too, Julie! That I could play, because the ball was big, and it never escaped.
Liz: Have I mentioned I’m not very coordinated? My parents (especially my father) tried desperately to make me like sports even just a little bit. As the kid who’s been wearing glasses since age nine and always got picked last for teams at school, let’s just say he wasn’t super successful. One particularly failed attempt happened when I was probably somewhere around 10. We had a volleyball net in the backyard that my parents put up whenever we were going to have a family cookout or some other gathering. Well, somehow I forgot it was there (despite it being strung up in the middle of the yard). I was running around and ran smack into it, full force, and had a giant gash across the bridge of my nose for weeks…Needless to say, volleyball was on my bad list after that.
Barb: Liz, I get it completely. I somehow got between a pitcher and catcher before the start of a little league game and took a ball right in the mouth. As for lawn games, while the Snowden Family in my books supports them completely, my family is more likely to play these types of games at the beach. There’s paddle ball, frisbee, and bean bag. But you’ll more likely find me nearby in a chair reading a mystery.
Sherry: I always loved to play badminton! My dad would set up a net in our backyard occasionally. It wasn’t very dangerous, you didn’t have to be super coordinated to play, and if you got hit with the gamecock it didn’t hurt that bad. Now that I think about it, I think we also use to play volleyball occasionally. I have this vague memory of being in junior high and high school and groups of kids playing. We also had a croquet set that we played once in awhile.
Barb: Gamecock? We always called them shuttlecocks or birdies. Is that a regional thing?
Readers: What about you? Favorite lawn and outdoor games. Go!