Table ball
Table ball or showdown is the Air Hockey similar sport where two players on a table playing against each other and trying to convey with a bat a ball into the opponent's goal. It is played by blind , visually impaired and sighted people in 30 countries. Sometimes table ball is also called "blind table tennis" because of the similar racket .
Similar to table football , the playing field is limited by a 14 cm high board, in which openings are made as goals on the narrow sides. The corners of the playing field are rounded. At the level of the center line, a vertical board is attached above the side walls, the so-called center board. It prevents the ball from exceeding the height of the side rails when shooting. If the ball hits the surface of the center board or if it leaves the plate, the opponent scores a point.
Equipment includes a sound-making ball (6 cm in diameter), elongated rectangular wooden clubs and protective gloves. To compensate for differences in vision, each player wears dark glasses.
In competitions you play with a sighted referee who announces the goals and points. A goal counts two points, for certain rule violations the opponent receives one single point.
A sentence usually lasts until 'eleven'. If the score is 11 to 10, the set continues until a lead of two points is achieved or the maximum set duration of 15 minutes is exceeded (the latter does not apply to tournament finals). A match has two or three winning sets depending on the agreement.
Blind Canadian Joe Lewis invented the game in the 1960s. Table ball is currently not a Paralympic sport , but official German championships have been taking place since 2010. In Germany there are currently (March 2014) well over 100 active players and the trend is still rising sharply. In 2015 Showdown (table ball) was represented for the first time at the IBSA World Games and Championships . The hope is to achieve an even greater spread of the sport worldwide and to establish it as a Paralympic discipline in the long term .
In Germany the players are organized in the German Showdown Association.
In Switzerland, the Swiss Showdown Association was founded in May 2018, the umbrella organization for showdown locations in Switzerland.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Description of the game
- ↑ BSV
- ↑ IBSA website
- ↑ http://www.dbsv.org/infothek/sport/showdown/
- ↑ http://www.swiss-showdown.ch