What games did you play at school?

Baseball mostly. And hockey with a milk carton puck.

Also some marbles.

In primary school, it was pretty simple. We jumped rope, played hopscotch, marbles, jacks, mumbly-pegs. With a larger group, there was Capture-the-Flag, Simon Says, Red Rover, Hide-and-Seek, Sardines (that was exciting as we moved into adolescence).

The horrible sports for the girls, like softball, soccer, field hockey and basketball were part of official gym.

On the dead-end street behind my home, we played one-a-cat with a tennis ball and broom stick.

A little hopscotch, some jump rope, dodgeball, kickball, and foursquare.

All the regular sports, baseball, basketball, football, soccer, dodgeball, and volleyball.

Childhood: lots of imaginative games, pogs, marbles, hopscotch and off-the-wall, netball, tetherball, and rolling around at high velocity on those sweet gym scooters.

Adolescence: Magic the Gathering, hacky sack, trying to disappear completely.

Car Wars 2nd edition, and BattleTech. I was always more of a tabletop gamer than an athlete even at a young age.

Duck, Duck, Goose. Tag. For a while there was a big fad of these elastic bands called Chinese jump ropes. Those were pretty fun. We also played “Red Light, Green Light” and I actually broke my arm playing that, but it was my sister’s fault!

I adored hopscotch, also skipping, and would spend hours on a trampoline. I also loved conkers and had the biggest best one in the whole school one season. I loved Barbie and would make my friend make sort of movies which remind me now of the Bold and The Beautiful with Brooke and Ridge! We also used to love to knock on doors and run away, oh what fun! I yearn for hopscotch now, but my boobs would probably knock me out.

In my British primary school, the most popular games in the playground were: British Bulldog, which we called “Bulldogs Charge”, and then some other name we invented to get around the imposed ban; Kingy, which I don’t remember well, but involved throwing a tennis ball at another player; tig, which you Americans call “tag”; marbles, and conkers during autumn.

A lot of the fun was had with large scale battles which basically involved wrestling and throwing each other to the ground.

Only girls played hopscotch.

Stackenblochen

I usually played on my own on the monkey bars and uneven bars. I would then find a place to sit and rest my hands while I picked at the blisters the bars gave me. I did like to play tether ball, dodgeball, kickball and Red Rover now and then.

@Kropotkin I remember British Bulldogs being banned at my school as well mainly because it was just full on assault and the school nurse could not cope with the injuries that she had to deal with.

I was terrible at sports, but once in junior high I caught an amazing (or so I recall) fly that had my team-mates cheering.

Mumblety-peg

Mumblety peg is generally played between two people with the aid of a pocket knife. In one version of the game, two opponents stand opposite one another with their feet shoulder-width apart. The first player then takes the knife and throws it to “stick” in the ground as near his own foot as possible. The second player then repeats the process. Whichever player “sticks” the knife closest to his own foot wins the game.
If a player “sticks” the knife in his own foot, he wins the game by default, although few players find this option appealing because of the possibility of bodily harm. The game combines not only precision in the knife-throwing, but also a good deal of bravado and proper assessment of one’s own skills.

I was crap at sports. I hated it to be honest. I was never good at running, I could still tackle in rugby pretty well though, I was just shit at running with the ball. I have a cracked tooth thanks to a rugby match – which at 9 hurt very bloody much.
I hated Football (Soccer) (I don’t rate American Football either to be honest – even though of course we don’t have that here in schools).
Free time consisted of playing Trumps which were usually made of the decks involving Supercars or Jet Fighters. Played marbles too. And occasionally snooker. Or pool.

When I was little Meccano first appeared and I was hooked.
Loved the Lego too.

When I was a teen there was a knife-in-the-ground game we played as well called Land: you’d scratch out a circle on the ground, and throw the knife into the ground, drawing a line in the direction the blade ran, dividing the circle The next player would have to throw their knife into the larger part of the remaining area, which they would then divide by drawing a line in the direction their blade ran. Repeat, shrinking the area you could throw into each time. Loser is the first person to miss the target or have their knife not stick into the ground.

We also Pitched Pennies

The nuns always took our money when they caught us.

@Zensky…or not embedded in their foot. Awesome.

I just read up a bit more on Meccano and it seems it was invented in 1901.

My experience with school yard games was similar, lots of tether ball and foursquare, kickball, basketball, and playing catch. A lot of tag of various sorts.

When I was in third grade at a parish school in a New York suburb, all the boys got into collecting base ball cards. Then, at school, we gambled by flipping them against the wall, much like pitching pennies. The nuns put the kibosh on that when one boy lost his entire collection of about 200 cards, and complained to his mom.

@TheProfoundPorcupine You may remember hunch cuddy hunch where a group of boys lined up at a wall bent over and the rest then ran and jumped onto their backs, more and more piling on until the whole group collapsed in a heap. It was good fun though technically banned at our school.

Oh man, I almost forgot playing Knuckles. I only played that b.s. one time. I still have a scar on my hand from it too.

@zensky are you saying that you invented it?~

@flutherother That sounded kinda kinky to start off with.

I was kinda thinking that when I wrote the above. I don’t think so and it didn’t seem that way at the time but you never know. Freud might have explained it. Girls were strictly forbidden from taking part.

Wallball! It was the only sport I was good at.

Hopscotch, tag, hide and seek and soccer

Hopscotch, ticky-it, skipping, marbles, conkers, hide-and-seek.

Formal games were hockey, netball, tennis, table-tennis.

Soccer and football.

hopscotch
marbles
skipping (jump rope)
we girls played pretend houses
patter tennis
eden ball
4-square
bullrush
what’s the time Mister Wolf?
Netball
softball

In elementary school, the game was four-square (which we referred to as eighth-grade). It was pretty viscous. We would play Wall-ball, which was like four-square against a wall. I played it every day during recess like it was nothing. When I was 18, I played it with some of the younger kids on the block, and it nearly killed me. At this point, I was a State Championship level fencer, and in what I thought was pretty damn good shape. That shit is brutal.

I mostly just read books in the school yard, or did some drawing. I liked playing on the monkey bars, but all the popular girls always made fun of me if I showed up haha. They pretty much dominated the monkey bars. fuck em. bitches

I totally forgot leap frog which was my favorite. :)

Games?
Just trying to survive life.

Dodgeball
Volleyball
Basketball
Foursquare
Tetherball
Hopscotch
Cops and robbers
Softball
Flag football
Simon Says
Red Rover
Tennis