Unexpected Learning - Handball

Handball players

I didn't learn what I thought I was going to yesterday.

A few days before, I had told my roommate, Tim, about our assignment to learn something new from an 'expert,' and I said that I wasn't sure yet who I could ask to learn from, or what it could be. Seemingly out of nowhere, he came up with the idea that he could teach me racquetball. It was a game I've never tried before, though I'd seen it being played from a distance once or twice without actually knowing what it involved.

On our way to the Richards Building and the raquetball courts, he already taught me something else new: a very convenient shortcut that didn't involve hiking up the hill that leads from Helaman Halls to the rest of the campus.

Once we got there, we tried to rent the racquetball equipment. However, we failed to notice at first a paper sign that read

"We are no longer renting out racquetball racquets."

Something about people breaking them too often, I think.

Anyway, I thought the plan to learn this new sport was completely ruined, since it's impossible to play racquetball without the racquets... that's why they're in the name of the sport. But then Tim said "Maybe I could teach you handball instead."

That I'd never even heard of before. Not quite sure what it was, I nevertheless agreed that that would be a good alternative. So we rented a small blue ball, smaller and softer than a tennis ball, and went to the racquetball courts.

Handball, I came to learn, can be played with only two people. Standing in the center rectangle, as shown above, the server serves the ball. This is done by dropping it and then hitting it with your hand after the bounce. The rule is that the ball must hit the far wall before it hits the floor. After it hits the floor, the second player must hit it into the wall before the second bounce, and so on back and forth until someone misses or hits it into the floor before the wall.

Seems simple, right?

(Here's a website with a more in depth/technical explanation, for anyone interested: http://www.falloutsheltersports.com/?p=2030)

And just to show you what the game itself can look like, I found a video of some guys who are actually good at it (as opposed to me). I'd suggest watching the volleys that start at 0:48 and 2:31: Click here

Even though the basic rules that I learned weren't too hard to figure out, there is a lot of coordination and knowledge that goes into this game that you wouldn't expect. For instance, I learned that if your opponent hit the ball way over to one side, it was much harder to get to it in time. This seems like a common-sense idea, but I wasn't able to fully comprehend it until we were physically playing the game. I also learned a basic technical term that describes an action in the game: ace. An ace is when the ball hits the wall and floor right where they meet and then bounces so low that the other player can't return it before it hits again. Like before, it took me a while to 'master' this skill (I did it successfully once).

This really drove home to me the fact that, although you can explain almost anything to some degree or another, there are certain types of knowledge that you simply cannot learn by reading, listening, or even observation. You have to actually do them in order to understand what is involved. Even when you can learn something from reading about it, like I hope you learned from this post, you still would have to actually try it out in order to say you truly knew how to do it.