Kin - Ball: History

Hello again!

In this week's section we are going to talk about the history of Kin-Ball.

Its origin dates from 1986, when Mario Demers, a physical education teacher from Canada, concluded that most collective sports are based on the individual skills of certain players.

For this reason, he tried to create a game whose characteristics allowed the teams involved to promote other qualities and values that encourage teamwork, cooperation, integration, respect and sportsmanship.

Then, he came up with the idea of designing a new sport. The proposal of a game in which three teams participate was seen as innovative and interesting. It was considered that three would be ideal, since an odd number always narrows the ties of collaboration in the core of a team. In this way Kin-Ball was born, a sport that was based on rules of other sports that were combined with their own rules.

Since that first gym class in which he put it to the test, this sport has become popular and spread around the world. Kin-ball expanded beyond Canada and soon Japan saw Kin-ball spread across the island. From there, over the years, it arrived in South Korea and China, and lately, it is developing in other Asian places, such as Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.

In Europe, France and Belgium have been the pillars of Kin-ball for years. It has also arrived in Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden or Germany. Currently, Kin-ball is expanding through Central Europe: Czech Republic, Slovakia or Austria are already playing. In America, they begin to hear news about Kin-ball clubs in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil.

There is already the International Federation of Kin-Ball, which has almost four million federated practitioners. In fact, it is recognized as a federated sport in Canada, Japan, the United States and Belgium. On two occasions, it has been presented as an exhibition sport at the Quebec Games and efforts have been made to present it as an Olympic sport.

In June 2001, the first International Tournament was celebrated in Quebec, and in December 2003, the first European Championship.

Goodbye and see you next week!