Introducing Summer Pitchball

At a ski resort near you

Stephanie Wilson
The Press Box
5 min readJul 1, 2022

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Image by author

VAIL, Co. (SP) — When Tom Blakely first got the idea for Pitchball, his family thought he was nuts. “My dad said, ‘A ballgame in the pitch dark?’ And I just said, hey, why not?” Blakely is now about to host the world’s first amateur tournament of Pitchball at Vail Mountain this summer, and his father has long since gotten on board.

“Let’s just put it this way.” Blakey says with a grin, “My dad oversees sponsor relations for the tournament, and he’s working round the clock. He’s a believer now.”

Blakely’s family is in the ski resort business and is well acquainted with the excitement that competition brings to the local scene and clientele. Tom and his father are always looking for the next big summer thing. Pitchball just might be it.

High, Low, Whack, Gate

Pitchball is the amalgamation of cards, Colorado, and croquet, all culminating in the dead of night. Several years back, Blakely was at his family’s Aspen home playing the card game Pitch with his kids, when he looked out the window and realized you could make a sport of the game if you thought hard enough. The card game rests on four objectives, referred to as High, Low, Jack, and Game. Pitchball is derivative with High, Low, Whack, and Gate.

But first, what is Pitchball?

Set on the steep drop of the expert ski slopes, Pitchball is essentially a team race to the top and then to the bottom or vice versa. Each team begins at an end line of the Pitchball course, of which there are two — the upper and lower end lines. A team will start at one respectively. The course is a fifty-foot-wide span of a ski run that extends up the mountain for a mile. At the whistle, the members of each team are off, working to move their own individual ball either up or down the course with a hockeylike stick, ultimately to cross the opposing end line. That comprises the first run.

The second run is in the opposite direction, and the final score of the members of each team determines the winner.

Pitchball Is Night Ball

So, how do you play? Well, that’s where things get interesting, and the pitch dark enters the play because Pitchball is played at night.

Competitors are equipped with a regulation headlamp which throws a very faint glow onto the ground in front of them, only marginally adding to their range of vision. This adds playability to the game while allowing the course to remain relatively dark. Each player’s ball glows the team’s color in the dark via an internal battery, with the player’s number noted on it.

There are two focus areas of Pitchball for the player. The first is to move your ball through the numerous 6” high gates set randomly throughout the course. Each gate you hit your ball through earns you a point, but only if your ball passes through once. If you hit your ball through a gate twice — usually on your way through the second run of the game — then your score is docked two points. Memory and bearings are key skills here.

The other focus in Pitchball is to thwart your opponent’s ball. If you come across an unmanned ball that isn’t yours, you have two options. You can bend down and turn off the light of the ball, or you can whack it as hard as you like in any direction. The former renders the ball dark for one minute, the latter sends the ball flying. The only caveat is that if your own ball is motionless for thirty seconds while you do this, its own light turns off for one minute.

No Mercy

In Pitchball, mercy can be bought with points. If you can’t locate your ball, you can ask for a point penalty to have it flash brightly for thirty seconds. Sometimes this mercy is merciless. The course is long, and it bends through the tree line. You never know if you’ll see your flashing ball in time.

Finally, once you’ve reached the turnaround line to head back across the course in the opposite direction, all your teammates’ balls light back up regardless. Pitchball might lack mercy, but it isn’t without incentive. The fans are the money, as Blakely points out, and they won’t be buying the game if all they can see is the dark.

When it comes to scoring, Pitchball holds up to its legacy. Points are earned for the highest team score for the fastest times going up the course and going down: High and Low. Because the balls have an internal motion sensor, the number of whacks of the opposing team’s balls can be determined and points awarded: Whack. And the final tally on the number of gates wins you the Gate score.

A challenge for players presents in how they will need to finesse their ball along the course. Between the motionless penalty, the danger of being whacked, and the slow pace of coddling the ball, progress is a delicate balance.

As for this summer’s competition, there will be a sound system broadcasting to the ski lodge the progress on the course. Fans can spectate along the edge of the course too, but no lights, no how. And no sound. One of the key skills of Pitchball is that of the ear.

Blakley has already sold three thousand tickets for the tournament. “I think the novelty of this thing is getting us off to a solid start. We’ve got all kinds of swag ready for the fans. We see this as a big party. We encourage everyone to come to check it out. Don’t be left in the dark, folks.”

Look for coverage of the Amateur Pitchball Summer Tournament this August as we report on the face-off between the Whackadoodles and the Gatetakers.

Sign up for the Sports Press Pitchball newsletter: spnews.com/pitchball

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I don’t know so much about pool, but I watch my son and husband play it regularly. This is such a fabulously written story:

Here’s a wonderful look back on three key athletic moments in the author’s childhood and teens. It’s terrific:

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Stephanie Wilson
The Press Box

Neurodiversity coach. Editor at MuddyUm and Age of Empathy. Impassioned public speaker in front of my bathroom mirror.