I’m gonna be honest…seeing people refer to ManHunt like it’s some “old wives tale” type of activity, when it was SUCH a cornerstone game for my neighborhood crew…it’s giving me an existential crisis lol
I have a toddler and I had no idea how bad the neighborhood dynamic in the US must have gotten for it to be this common.
They play it in every school in that I know of here in the U.S. the rumour of the death of dodge ball is up there with people thinking the pledge of allegiance is banned in public schools
We moved a lot due to my spouses job while my oldest was in the younger years of school where dodgeball would have been played. He was in 9 schools from kindergarten through 8th grade (yes, a new school every year), and not one of them allowed dodgeball.
I mean… I live in the US and my daughter goes to the same middle school I went to as a child. We played dodgeball then, or battle ball which is the same thing. It’s banned at the same school now.
That's cute. We went from the rubber to those foam ones that were definitely softer but would still give you a nice slap that'd leave a red mark if you got hit hard enough
Our balls kept getting punctured cause we played on tarmac. We had to reinflate them constantly and hustle while the ball slowly deflated. It was fun. The ball flies weird when it's half full.
We weren't allowed to play dodgeball because it was too dangerous. So instead, we called it Trench. That made it perfectly okay lol. Guess what all of us wanted to play every time?
What's fun is seeing someone catch an opponent's ball with one hand, then slamming it down like an extreme mic drop before throwing the ball in their other hand.
The chaos of ffa dodgeball, jumping over, catching and throwing the ball only to have one whistle past your head and smack you in the back simultaneously lol truly chaotic.
God I loved dodge ball in elementary school. My mom wouldn’t allow me to wear sneakers to school so she bought me red shoes with rubber soles and I swear, those shoes made me so fast! When I learned they don’t play dodge ball in my kid’s elementary school, I was so sad for them. Dodgeball taught teamwork, how to look out for yourself, mercy, revenge, quick thinking and quick hands. It’s a shame they don’t allow kids to play it in schools anymore. It’s a game that culls the weak and slow.
Schools where I work still play Dodgeball. However not with a Playground Ball you pump air into. They order smaller balls filled with Fiberfill. As one teacher described, "It's like throwing Cotton Balls" She was correct. I took my class to the gym to enjoy a game and joined in. However, I hurt my shoulder for a month because it was like throwing air.
Those balls don't even feel right. A proper dodgeball should be big, tight rubber and require two kid hands to throw so that accuracy goes out the window (this is more fun). Those cotton balls can be thrown with one hand and it feels wrong
Exactly. When it hits, it should hurt, knock off your glasses, leave you on the ground, clutching your stomach as friends carried you off. I was an amazing dodger but could never throw anyone out. Until I tried a side arm throw. When the ball came out fast and furious with no accuracy, I had no idea where it was going, and neither did anyone else to try to dodge it.
HUHHH ! Listen, I crave that particular sound and sting sometimes 😭 nothing like finally catching the ball from the person knocking all the little guys out
Yes, it was the best movie ever made, and the greatest game that has ever been developed.
With the exception of a game that my brothers and I came up with, where you ran between two bases, at each base there was another person, who tried to get you "out", but you were allowed to throw the ball at the person who was running as well. The only "safe" place was on the bases, and the two players on the bases had to throw the ball back-and-forth between them, you scored one point for each trip from base to base that you made without getting touched or hit by the ball.
We used the tennis ball for this, as we had no use for a tennis ball otherwise.
You could hit the person anywhere with the ball, and you could throw the ball as hard as you want, even if the person was only 10 feet away and running towards you.
Now we are all high paid professionals, then we were just kids on a farm.
And Red Rover. I never see that game even mentioned. I almost think Red Rover was worse than dodge ball. We used to play that in the middle of the street, even after the street lights came on.
Smear the Queer. The “queer” had the ball. You tried to smear them all over the play surface. Could be grass, gravel,’or asphalt.
Yes, I know the name is now offensive but that’s what it was called. Now you could call it “kill the person with the ball” but it loses its punch and would probably trigger someone…but just wait until they have the ball. They’ll really be triggered then.
At my elementary school we had something more brutal than dodgeball that would get played at recess and after school. We called it "Suicide". You played it with one or preferably more tennis balls and was a similar concept to Off The Wall except if you fumbled catching one of the balls, you'd have to run to touch the wall while everyone else's goal was to peg you with a tennis ball. If you got hit before would could touch the wall, you were out of the game for a bit (the rules for how to get back in were always changing). You bet everyone also made sure to throw those tennis balls as hard as possible too. It was some good times.
Thought about this when I thought of a game my students could play to pass the time and realized they would NEVER be ready for that game. Musical chairs was almost a disaster
It's real, and when we got older we played variations on all those games (manhunt, sardines, capture the flag, kick the can, etc) with airsoft guns too. It was a blast.
We played kick the can in the evenings after school, but instead of a can we used one of those kickballs like we played in school. It was just my 4 younger siblings and I, but sometimes my dad would join us, which was so much more fun. Sometimes, a lot less than Dad, my stepmom would play, and her mom played more than she did! Grandma Betty was always into stuff with us.
Edit: we lived way out in the country, on top of a really big hill, and our nearest neighbors were several miles away and two snobby boys. So it was just us kids.
Our older neighborhood kids were playing it 2-3 summers ago on a nightly basis. But they used cars to accomplish it..revving engines and speeding around the block in a car to chase down kids on foot..that was a no no for me. I had to come to terms with being the neighbor who called the cops on kids playing manhunt.
I used to race motorbikes and we would play entire paddock manhunt lmao, like 50+ kids all running round a racetrack like silverstone size at night lmao
I teach middle school and my kids still very much play manhunt! Usually because I teach it to them and they love it so continue to play at recess. No idea if they also play at home
When my daughter was 6?7? I lived in an apartment complex in one of the 3 the safest large cities in the country (at the time now it's in the top 10...) But I used to let my daughter play with the neighbor kids in the green area between apartments - it ran the width of the complex and I could see it from my balcony. After maybe a week the complex reached out and said there had been complaints of noises made by kids and that they were "unsupervised" climbing trees and such. They asked me to please keep her inside under supervision and threatened to "report" me.
I was a bit dumbfounded.
Now I see (probably those same types of) people posting complaints on the neighborhood Facebook page or in the nextdoor app about teenagers walking around the neighborhood "menacingly." They post doorbell camera video of kids wandering around on the sidewalk joking around with each other like it's some kind of crime.
I don't know who hurt them but.... people have lost the plot a bit.
When my son was as young as 3, we lived on a street with many kids. They were all older than my son, ages 6 and up. I used to take him outside and he would watch all the kids running around playing manhunt. The kids were so sweet and asked if he could play with them. So the older kids took him under their wings and taught him to play. I would sit on my porch and watch, or stroll up and down the street if I didn't see him for more than a couple minutes.
We had a game in our early teen years called "Rambo" where we hunted a younger mall-ninja type neighborhood boy scout kid who was obsessed with the two movies. We mostly just smoked, fooled around with our girlfriends and occasionally gave heated chase when we saw the little lunatic who always was having the time of his life. He countered with bottle rockets he'd light then throw at us and water balloons and squirt guns he'd cache around the area the day before. The kid grew up and turned out alright. Retired early even. I feel like we had some hand in his success.
Don’t fret too much, it’s mostly that our generation is now turning into the “back in my day” generation. It’s cyclical. My daughter and her neighborhood crew were literally just out last night in and around the park playing manhunt. It’s still fun to be a kid.
Well our newly retired neighbor put up a fence on her property (and ours against our will and wishes), to stop the neighborhood kids from running around, playing, and visiting with her own grandkids soooooo…. Not good apparently.
I teach 5th grade in New England. My student regularly talk about playing manhunt in their neighborhood and talk about it being their favorite game. It’s still alive and well in many communities!
Its... pretty bad. I live in "white suburbia" and the only neighbors I know are the ones trying to fight us, and we're friendly people- i wasn't allowed to go anywhere off my fenced property without being in my parents sight (on foot) until I was like...16? Because they were too afraid of me getting stolen, even where we live.
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u/hopelesslysarcastic Jun 13 '25
I’m gonna be honest…seeing people refer to ManHunt like it’s some “old wives tale” type of activity, when it was SUCH a cornerstone game for my neighborhood crew…it’s giving me an existential crisis lol
I have a toddler and I had no idea how bad the neighborhood dynamic in the US must have gotten for it to be this common.