Hooverball

Sundays – Patterson Park, Baltimore.

Meet at the volleyball courts adjacent to Montford Ave – Games Begin at 2:00 p.m

What is Hooverball?

A game that’s about heaving medicine balls across a volleyball court, Hooverball was once the most popular sport at the White House, played daily by the President, Supreme Court justices, Cabinet members and other government officials. But when Herbert Hoover left the White House in 1933, Hooverball vanished from the American sporting scene.

The game was invented by White House physician Admiral Joel T. Boone to keep Hoover physically fit.

“It is more strenuous than either boxing, wrestling or football," wrote Will Irwin, a friend of Hoover’s, in a 1931 article in Physical Culture magazine. "It has the virtue of getting at nearly every muscle in the body." The sport was without a name until New York Times Magazine reporter William Atherton DuPuy christened the game "Hooverball" for his 1931 article "At the White House at 7 a.m."

It is a distinctly strenuous affair, best understood as exactly like tennis except that the net is eight feet high, there are no rackets and the ball is a hefty medicine ball weighing six pounds.
The New York Times, 1931

How do you play Hooverball?

Teams of up to five members field three players at a time on a court measuring 30 feet by 66 feet and use a four- or six-pound medicine ball. Play begins when the server throws the ball over the eight-foot net. The opponent must catch the ball on the fly and immediately return it. It is scored like tennis, and the side that misses the ball or throws it out of bounds loses the point.

Good sportsmanship is required. There are no officials and points in question are played over.

For more information
Visit our website at www.fishcore.com/balthoover/hoover.html – Visit the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association,
online at www.hooverassoc.org – Or write to us at baltimorehooverball@yahoogroups.com