Tchoukball’s promise

KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan – You go where the work takes you. That should be on a t-shirt. It aptly describes the path of a journalist, the wavy, unforeseeable line that’s a cross between a purposeful, directed path and, well, being tossed by the wind, frankly. And for this first go-around with tchoukball, this writer found himself at the second edition of the World Beach Tchoukball Championships in Kaohsiung, almost two hours away from Taipei by high-speed train. That ride was an eye-opening experience in itself, but that is another story for another time.

Whenever a sports journalist travels with a Philippine team – any Philippine team – one is generally treated as much a part of the team as anybody else, almost. Of course, there are things you are not going to comment on unless asked, like strategy and so on. And since tchoukball is a new sport (just seven years in the Philippines), one can safely say he knows nothing or next to nothing about it. Through The STAR, the Tchoukball Association of the Philippines invited this writer to this event. The learning is always invaluable.

As is typical of many new, low-key sports, there are a few things that stand out, like the familial bonds, the prayerfulness, the humility of everyone in the delegation, the smallness of the group. There are no crowds here, except when either of the world champion Taiwan’s home teams (or their men’s B team) plays. The Filipinos all take the 40-minute ride on the number 50 bus to the port area, and walk close to two kilometers through a tunnel drilled through the foot of a mountain, and through the New Sun Yat-Sen University (NSYSU) to The Sunset Beach Resort here. That is every day, round-trip, once or twice a day, depending on the schedule of matches (as many as three a day). No grousing, no complaints. The youngest team in the tournament is also one of the most behaved and most courteous, and most photographed. And that is saying a lot, given the moral code of the sport.

Bear in mind that the men’s and women’s squads had just come off an exhausting week of practice at the National Taiwan Sport University (NTSU) with trainers of the host nation’s own national team. They were up early, pounding the beach, doing drills, getting burned by the sun and abraded by the sand. No nights out, no shopping escapades, just the hospitality and camaraderie of their Taiwanese mentors and contemporaries. Spiritual and emotional, not material, comfort. After that intense week, they then boarded a bus for the four-hour trip from Taipei to Kaohsiung, where they still had to learn the route to the venue, scout more of the opposition, and find out where they could stay while waiting for matches, get drinking water, go to the restroom, change, and cool off. Oh, and the ever-present heat was unrelentingly oppressive.

For the majority of the uninitiated, tchoukball was created in the 1970’s as a means for handball teams to practice. It made no sense to throw the ball into the goal and have to keep retrieving it. So Swiss doctor Hermann Brandt designed a frame that looks like a square trampoline, and mounted it upright at an angle, so the ball would rebound back in the direction of the player who threw it. The frame is surrounded by a semicircular forbidden zone which has a radius of two meters. Soon, those practicing started getting creative. Now, players with the ball cannot step into this area. The object is to launch a shot from outside the forbidden zone, bounce the ball off the net and have the ball bounce outside the forbidden zone before the other team catches it. Teams are not allowed to interfere with each other. Soon, players started challenging each other, bouncing the tchoukball off the frame at angles so it would be difficult to catch. A player could score at either end of the court. A failed attempt to score gave the point to the opposing team. This exciting variation caught fire in parts of Europe, and later crossed the ocean to Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the Americas. Taiwan has been the dominant force in tchoukball in the last decade, and is where the international federation, the FITB, is based.

The game is ruled by the number three. It is played over three 12-minute periods. A player has three seconds to make a pass or try to score, and can only take three steps along the way. A team can only pass the ball a maximum of three times before making an attempt. And you can only make three consecutive attempts on the same side of the playing court. It is precisely these limitations that make it a high-flying, dynamic, action-packed sport, more so the beach version, where players can fly into the air or dive for a save with abandon.