Dodge ball

My son is in a dodge ball team and practices everyday.

I don't know if dodge ball is worldly known sports as its name but in Japan it is popular particularly as kid's sports. When I was an elementary school students dodge ball was very popular and we used to play after school in the park.

For people who don't know what is dodge ball like please look at the following movies.

My son is wearing No.7 yellow bib.

One team consists of 8 to 12 players according to ages group and rules introduced in the match.

Per team there is usually one outfield player and other players try to catch the ball which was thrown by opponent players. Although all players are younger than 13 but some good players can throw a volleyball size ball, which is used in an official match of dodge ball, at more than 80 km/h. The outfield player throw the ball to attack the opponent inner-field player. The inner filed is 10m square field. If he hits an opponent inner-field player he can move to his team's inner field, on the other hand the attacked inner fielder has to move to outfield. Winning or losing is determined by the number of inner-field players.

My son's team is quite a good team in Chiba. This year they won the championship in Chiba tournament and were supposed to challenge Kanto championship in March. But because of the earthquake Kanto championship tournament was cancelled and my son's team had to give up their hope to proceed to All Japan championship tournament.

In the past son's team has the record of the third place in All Japan 2009 in summer. I hope they can get good result in the next championship. But the problem is that they don't have places to practice as before because of energy saving after the disaster. Until the disaster they used to practice in the school gym two weekdays and every Sunday evening. But after the disaster every public facility is closed after 5 pm to save energy. Children are trying to keep up the past practice volume by doing self practice at home or in the school ground after school but daytime practice is difficult to get cooperation of adult for coaching and supervision.

Kanto: means the area including Tokyo metropolis and surrounding 6 prefectures.