How to Play Ladderball
Ladderball is one of those outdoor games that is great to bring with you to cookouts, tailgate parties or the beach. It is a game played with a tower made of two PVC pipes with three rungs in between. The goal is to throw your three bolos onto the rungs. Bolos are golf balls attached to a six-inch length of rope on each end. Ladderball is usually played between two individuals. There is also a version played with partners, and using two towers.
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Instructions
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How To Play Ladderball
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Find an area to play. You will want to locate somewhere that has at least 30 feet of open playing area. If you are playing a game of ladderball with one other player, you only need to set up one tower and a throwing line 30 feet away. If you are playing a team game, you will need two towers facing each other, 30 feet apart.
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Each player in the game of ladderball gets to throw three bolos in each round. The player who scored the most points in the last round goes first. For the first round, let the youngest player go first. Your object is to throw the bolos so they land and preferably wrap around one of the three rungs on the tower.
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When throwing a bolo, you can make the throw using one of two methods. Some people prefer to hold one golf ball and let the other hang on the rope and toss it in a pinwheeling motion in the air. The other method for throwing a bolo is to hold the middle of the rope and toss it towards the tower. This will also result in a pinwheeling motion of one ball over the other.
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Scoring in ladderball is up to house rules. The traditional scoring is three points for balls on the top rung, two points for balls on the middle rung and one point for balls on the bottom rung. The reason for this scoring is that if your opponent knocks your bolo of the top rung and yours falls onto one of the lower rungs and sticks you will get fewer points than you would have for the direct shot onto the top rung. Others play the scoring in the opposite order; the thinking on that is it can be harder to land a ball on the bottom rung than the top because you have to avoid the top and middle rungs to get to the bottom rung. Whichever way you play, if you wrap the bolo around one of the side poles you score five points.
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Scoring is just like in horseshoes. If you and one of your opponents have a bolo on the same rung they cancel each other out. If one of you has more than the other on that rung they score additional points.
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The game of ladderball is played until the score of 21. As in some other outdoor games, you must reach the winning score of 21 exactly. There are two sets of house rules dealing with if a team or player scores more than 21 on their turn. Their score either reverts back to what it was before that round, or their score for the next round is 21 minus the amount of points by which they exceeded 21. As an example, if player A had 18 points and scored five in a round, they would either go back to 18 points, or have 19 points depending on the house rules.
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Tips & Warnings
Make sure you anchor your ladderball toss game to the ground. The force with which the bolos hit the rungs can pull on the frame with significant force, toppeling the tower if it is not properly anchored.
Be aware of any young children in the area. The bolos will hurt if they hit a young child. They can hurt an unsuspecting adult as well.
