Kickball (also known as soccer baseball in most of Canada and football rounders in the United Kingdom) is a team sport and league game, similar to baseball. Like baseball, it is a safe haven game in which one team tries to score by having its players return a ball from home base to the field and then circle the bases. Meanwhile, the other team tries to stop them by tagging them "out" with the ball before they can return to home base. However, instead of hitting a small, hard ball with a bat, players kick an inflated rubber ball; this makes it more accessible to young children. As in baseball, teams alternate half-innings. The team with the most runs after a predefined number of innings wins.
Kickball is typically played among young, school-age children,[citation needed] both as a playground game and as part of physical education (PE). The lack of both specialized equipment and highly skill-based positions (like the pitcher) makes the game an accessible introduction to related sports such as baseball and softball. In recent decades, it has gained popularity among adults, and today many cities are home to one or more organized kickball leagues for adults.[1]
Kickball was likely invented around 1910 in the United States and began to spread from about the 1920s onward, mainly via PE classes in public schools. It became an especially popular recess sport on playgrounds across the country in the 1970s,[2] and is now played in various forms in countries around the world, such as Canada, England, Japan, South Korea, and South America.
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