Benchball is a team sport played with the primary objective of scoring by passing the ball to a teammate standing on a bench.
[1][2][3] It is commonly used by physical education teachers as a method of introducing concepts of ball handling and spatial awareness.
The sport as commonly played in schools is typically communicated through word-of-mouth and so many different rulesets have all been called benchball.
One of the five competitively viable versions of benchball, played by many university societies in the United Kingdom, adopts rules akin to netball.
The court is set up with a single bench at each end, and two teams of eight players starting in opposite halves.
The game starts with the ball thrown in the air between two players in the centre of the court who compete to knock it back to their teammates.
[11][12][13] The 2009 book "Cross My Heart" by Helen Slavin mentions “the wet-weather game of Benchball in the assembly hall.”[17]