Picigin - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Picigin is an amateur sport game, created on "Bačvice" beach in Split,Croatia and played on some beach

Beach

A beach is a geological landform along the shoreline of an ocean, sea, lake or river. It usually consists of loose particles which are often composed of rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles or cobblestones...

es in Croatia

Croatia

Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...

and Montenegro

Montenegro

Montenegro Montenegrin: Crna Gora Црна Гора , meaning "Black Mountain") is a country located in Southeastern Europe. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the south-west and is bordered by Croatia to the west, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the northwest, Serbia to the northeast and Albania to the...

, but also widely popular in Novi Sad

Novi Sad

Novi Sad is the capital of the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, and the administrative centre of the South Bačka District. The city is located in the southern part of Pannonian Plain on the Danube river....

, Serbia

Serbia

Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

where it is being played on a Danube

Danube

The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....

river beach. It is played with a ball. In Croatia, it is very popular, especially in Dalmatia

Dalmatia

Dalmatia is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south....

and Split

Split (city)

Split is a Mediterranean city on the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea, centered around the ancient Roman Palace of the Emperor Diocletian and its wide port bay. With a population of 178,192 citizens, and a metropolitan area numbering up to 467,899, Split is by far the largest Dalmatian city and...

, where it is played by people of all ages and both sexes. Recently the game has been exported to other places like Cala Gració in Ibiza.

Origin

Its origins are in Split

Split (city)

, a city in Dalmatia, where Picigin evolved from a game of water polo

Water polo

Water polo is a team water sport. The playing team consists of six field players and one goalkeeper. The winner of the game is the team that scores more goals. Game play involves swimming, treading water , players passing the ball while being defended by opponents, and scoring by throwing into a...

. Water polo was first played in 1908 by a group of Croatian students who brought it from Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

. They played it on a shallow, sandy beach in Split called Bačvice.

Description

The game involves several players in a circle passing around a small ball and keeping it in the air and out of the water for as long as possible. As such, the game somewhat resembles volleyball

Volleyball

Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules.The complete rules are extensive...

but it is played with a much smaller ball, the size of a tennis ball. There are usually five players and much running and diving in the shallow water. Picigin is a non-competitive sport: there are no opposing sides, no points, neither winners nor losers.
It is a relaxing game where players start slowly and speed up when they want to. In the heat of the game, players are forced to run fast through the water and make acrobatic manoeuvres to keep the ball in play. Players don't catch the ball, they bounce it around with the palm of the hand.

Rules

Since picigin is an amateur sport, there are no strict or formal rules, but it is played according to tradition, with little variation.

Players

There are 5 players in the game. Two of them are called sidruni (sidro = anchor, they are called so because they do not move from their places) and the other three are runners (trkači). The groups are often mixed both by gender and age.

Terrain

Picigin must be played on a sandy beach in shallow water. The beach must be sandy because otherwise players could easily get hurt. It's best if the water is ankle-deep, because of mobility and also to soften falls, which are common because there's a lot of jumping around trying to reach the ball.

Ball

The traditional ball, called balun (otherwhise a dialectal name for a ball, but this name is strictly used, especially by expert players) in picigin is actually a peeled tennis ball, polished off a few milimetres. This kind of ball is best suited for bouncing. It is smooth and lighter than a normal tennis ball.

Tradition

The most fanatical players believe it to be impossible to play picigin anywhere but on the sandy beach Bačvice in the historic city centre of Split

Split (city)

, Croatia

Croatia

. There is also a widely distributed belief that the only proper garment to wear while playing Picigin is a tight speedo

Swim briefs

A swim brief, or racing brief, refers to any briefs style male swimsuit such as those worn in competitive swimming and diving. The popularity of the Australian Speedo brand racing brief has led to the use of its name to refer to any racing brief, regardless of the maker...

, "mudantine" in Croatian dialect spoken in Dalmatia.

Picigin is played on Bačvice year round and, in summer also often at night (reflectors can be used in the dark), and there is also a tradition of playing picigin on New Year's Day

New Year's Day

New Year's Day is observed on January 1, the first day of the year on the modern Gregorian calendar as well as the Julian calendar used in ancient Rome...

, regardless of weather conditions, and when the sea temperature is rarely above 10 °C

Celsius

Celsius is a scale and unit of measurement for temperature. It is named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius , who developed a similar temperature scale two years before his death...

.

Some of the best known players from Split are writer Đermano Senjanović, music professor Josip Veršić, Vili Jakovčević, theatre critic Anatolij Kudrjavcev and retired shipyard worker Roko Vrandečić.

Events

Since 2005, the Picigin World Championship in picigin (Prvenstvo svita u piciginu) is organized every year on Bačvice beach in Split

Split (city)

. Until 2008, players were given a task to do certain jumps, but from 2008, the winner is selected according to the artistic impression of a whole group.

In June 2008, picigin was pronounced a Croatia

Croatia

n unmaterial cultural good, for a period of three years, and it is planned to get a permanent protection after that.

Soccer version

There is even a more recent version of Picigin played on land with a soccer ball. Its origin is unknown but it is believed to be created by soccer fanatics a few decades ago for amusement. While it shares the same name as the beach version of the game, the rules are somewhat different.
The game can be played from three and up to ten people. More than ten people would be to crowded and not as fun. The game starts off with kick-ups and the person with the lowest number of successive kick-ups has to be goalie, and stays in that position until he/she catches the ball, at which point the shooter has to exchange positions with the goalie. The other players position themselves behind the goal line from where they can shoot at the goal but only from air when they get a pass from the other player. The passing can occur any number of times until a clear opportunity for shot on target develops. The ball can touch the ground but the person who takes the shot on target has to do it from air. Every person starts off with ten points, which is decremented by one point of the goalies score for every goal he/she receives. Just like in regular soccer, when the goalie attempts to make a safe but the ball ricochets off him/her into the no play zone, a throw-in is given. This is often referred to as "Kecelja" in this game. The throw-in can be taken by any player which is a quick and dirty way of scoring a goal. The game stops when the first person reaches a score of zero points.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.