Capture the Flag is one of those agreeable sports, like Tag or Catch, whose name happens to also be the rules of the game. Capture the Ball is much the same. In a game of Capture the Ball, two rival teams, pitted against each other in a struggle of will, endurance, and cunning, both strive to Capture the Ball hidden by the other team.
The principal difference between Capture the Flag and Capture the Ball, other than the difference in the object to be captured, is that Capture the Ball is really huge – it is played out over all the land owned by Carleton. One team hides a large exercise ball somewhere on campus, the other team hides another ball somewhere in the Arboretum, and the capturing begins.
Last Sunday, a big group of students met up in front of the Rec Center to play a few rounds of Capture the Ball. Little maps (blurrily visible in one of the photos at the bottom of the page) were distributed among the players, marking the territorial boundaries of the Pink Team and the Orange Team and the locations of their respective jails. The two rival factions formed, donning pink or orange wristbands and headbands.
The students running the game explained that, since it might be hard to tell when the game was over, an air-horn would sound after someone successfully brought the enemy's ball back to his or her own side, and that, in the event that one of the balls popped, its fragments should be treated collectively as the ball.
The teams separated and went to their respective bases. I, unable to follow both teams, was drafted onto the Pink Team and followed them to the Bald Spot, where we concocted our master plan. We decided that the game would be a lot more fair if the ball were hidden somewhere outdoors where it was possible to see it- we decided we would put it behind Severance. We then split up into defenders and attackers, and took it from there.
I followed one group of attackers, who decided to be sneaky and enter enemy territory though a barely visible little trail into the Arb. After an intrepid hike through the brambles, we found ourselves on one of the Arb's main trails. Hoping to increase our odds of finding the ball, we split up into several groups and snuck in different directions.
Then we kind of wandered around for a while. An exercise ball is a big thing, but, as it turns out, the Arb is much bigger, and it is fairly difficult to find even large things when they are hidden in a forest. Once, we came across a bunch of people hanging out in a clump of trees, but they turned out to be throwing some sort of dance party- not hiding an exercise ball.
Once we got a glimpse of a player on Orange Team from a distance, leaving the Arb and crossing into our territory, but she was too far away for us to do anything about it.
Then, unexpectedly, the air horn blew, signaling that an Orange Team player had managed to find our ball and bring it into the Arb. Apparently the Orange Team strike force and the Pink Team defense force had not encountered each other at all during the winning assault.
It was mutually decided that the next game should not include the Arboretum, but should instead be confined wholly to the campus. That way there would be less hacking through the brush and more interaction. The second game went quite smoothly- at least, for those people who did not get lost in the Arb during the first game.
Fortunately, neither ball was popped during gameplay, and both were safely returned to the Rec Center.
Now what we need is a huge campus-wide game of Kick the Can, with an oil drum for the can and with all players riding in golf carts.
