Spikeball is becoming for the mainstream and if you don’t know about it, you know now.
It’s a combination of tennis, wall ball, and volleyball, and is played in a 360 degree court by slapping a small ball into a small personal trampoline size net on the ground.
If this is your first time, and you say to yourself, “How tight does the Spikeball net need to be?” – without any sophisticated physics reaction software, you’ll have to go through the trial and error method to set it up appropriately.
The net needs to stay tight enough so you drop the ball from 3′ above the net, it has to bounce a minimum of 12″ and maximum of 15″.
The net is one of the more important aspects of the game of spikeball. It needs to be tight enough that you get a good bounce and anyone can reasonably spike the ball into without bouncing it into the stratosphere.
How to Install the Net Properly
Upon removing the equipment from the box, you’ll find a couple of balls, which are aired up but generally feel soft and squishy, a separate net, game instructions, and the framework to assemble the bet ring.
The product visually looks very much like a mini personal trampoline, where you piece together the separate parts to make a ring that is about 1 yard for diameter.
The net comes in its designated bag, separate from the assembled frame again, the net takes a moment to expand and lay out over the frame you constructed earlier.
This net ring also has foldable legs for some degree of portability once the legs are positioned on the ground to hold the round (inflated) ring in place.
It’s very much like putting the trampoline fabric (if you’ve installed this previously) onto a larger/smaller trampoline.
- When you go to put the net on, the sides go over the top of the rails and hook underneath.
- Hook the net onto the ring at a single point.
- Then repeat this at the exact opposite directon on the same rail.
- Next repeat the process for both opposing sides to form a cross.
- Now you have four quadrants to work with.
- Start at any quadrant and work the net over the ring and hook it underneath to connect.
- Whichever quadrant you picked, you work the opposing quadrants until you connect it as well.
- You do this for each quadrant and then the opposing area until complete.
Once you have the net up at the right height, you can go ahead and try out the bounce you’re going to get, but first make sure you have pumped some air in the balls because that is another important thing to sort in the game setup.
How Much Air Should be in the Ball?
To ensure you have a net that’s tight enough to make for a fun game, you’ll need to get the right amount of air in the ball. You may think this step is silly, who cares as long as it has air in it right?
The amount of air in the ball will dictate the kind of bounce you’re going to get off the net.
As mentioned earlier, it won’t make for a very fun game if you smack the ball into the net and it re-bounds so high that it ends up on your house.
You want it to be slightly squishy, as in, you can squish it in your hand. It has to maintain enough air so that it is still a perfect circle and bounces, but not so hard you dribble a ball and it goes 3 or 4 feet in the air off your dribble.
Your standard bounce should be enough to bounce the ball back into your hand. Once you get the ball to an adequate inflation amount, you can proceed to adjust the net.
Tightening Your Net
Keep in mind, you want the net to be snugged enough so that you can drop the ball from three feet up, and get a 12″ to 15″ bounce off of it.
The game is called Spikeball because you will be spiking the ball into the net from deep and sharp angles.
And while a 12″ to 15″ bounce may not feel like enough, you will quickly realize this distance will be more than enough, when you are purposely aiming to spike the ball to the net and allow the other players not to get to it on the bounce off.
By an over-inflated ball and super tight net it will end up that no one will ever get the ball after it has been spiked because it will fly off at least 20 yards or more every time it is spiked. That’s no fun for anyone.
The way it hooks to the ring makes it work to your advantage, because even the smallest adjustments make a dramatic change.
So, just use common sense, and begin pulls links on the net around the hook on the ring, pulling it taut and then put it over and under it.
Just don’t indiscriminately start pulling links on the edges of your net that you think look tight, and think you are good.
There is plenty of readjusting happening during a game, so just change one links equal distance taut, and continue to do that at each adjustment until you get to your desired bounce off.
And you don’t have to change every link one by one on each side. If you pull one link on one side, just eyeball a similar distance from the edge, do the same for the other edge.
Final Thoughts
You’re not looking to accomplish perfection, as that is pretty much impossible in this scenario. What you’re looking for is a solid and consistent “Bounce” each time you hit the ball with a spike.
This allows all players to participate and make a play on the ball for that particular situation.