HEADIS, a new hybrid sport
There are a few hybrid sports around and over time they seem to getting more numerous and more interesting. The newest hybrid sport to emerge originated from a couple of university students in Germany. It is called HEADIS and it is a combination of a few
different sports.
The objective of the game is to play table tennis with a 7 inch ball but only using your head. No racquets or hands are used to hit the ball and it requires a certain football type skill with using your head. It looks like this game is going to become very
popular soon with all the attention it is receiving.
HEADIS was invented in Germany in 2006, by a sports science student named René Wegner. He along with a friend invented the game while they were waiting to play football. They went to the table tennis tables and started to try and use their heads to hit the
ball back and forth to each other. With that smart use of their heads, a new sport was born. They called their sport HEADIS, no one is sure why it is written in all caps, and it started to get really popular.
The sport was in its infancy in 2006 and 2007 with only a few players around who took part in it and played it seriously. But then in 2008, the new fledgling game became part of the sports programme at the University of Saarbruecken and it then really took
off. It started to get a lot of media coverage in print and on TV throughout Germany and it looked like the sport would actually become huge.
The two founders could not believe that a sport they came up with in their free time would become something that started to be played all over Germany, but it did. The rules of the game that they came up with were very simple.
A 7 inch ball, that is designed to bounce in a way as to make it easier to hit with the head, is used and a player cannot use their hands to hit the ball. A game goes up to 11 points and the winner is the first one to get to 11 by being 2 points ahead of
the other player. A match consists of 2 sets which is similar to table tennis. A player is allowed to volley the ball and they are also allowed to touch the table with their hands.
The sport seems to be a merger of numerous sports but table tennis and football are the two main ones. It is played on a table tennis table and the objectives and some of the rules are the same as well. The point is to get the ball across the net in a way
so that your opponent cannot return the ball and you score a point. It takes the header aspect from football and a player is only allowed to touch the ball with their head and so skills of heading the ball in different directions really come in handy here.
It is also similar to sepak takraw; the Thai game which is basically volleyball, but a player is only allowed to use their feet to get the ball over the net.
Some people have also said that since in HEADIS a player has to bend down and then hit the ball, their whole bodies are used. This makes the game similar to badminton where a player has to twist and turn their whole bodies to hit a good return shot. It looks
like the new sport has developed its own identity and character by borrowing from many different sports.
One thing which might hold the sport back and not allow it to truly free itself from simply being known as another form of table tennis is the table that is used. If the sport used a different type of table instead of a table tennis table, it might make
the sport unique and different enough to gain widespread recognition.
Anyway one looks at it though, with the various tournaments being held in Germany, the sport will probably spread across Europe in a few years time. Then it might even make its way to North America and then one day maybe the world.
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