By Brett Kosinski
Double dribbles are legal. Drop kicks are common. And in a game with no bats or bases, K’s can still determine the outcome.
In a mix between handball, basketball, and soccer, there is nothing conventional about kronum. It is a newer sport, but here at Delaware it has already developed a following.
At first, kronum comes off as overwhelming, with many rules to remember. Once the game begins the rules become second nature just as in any other sport, and the action takes over.
To begin, Kronum consists of three, twenty-minute periods. Kronum is typically played on a turf field. Here at Delaware, practices either occur on the Harrington turf, or on the turf fields behind the Little Bob. The playing field is broken into three zones, with each zone consisting of different rules. To keep it simple, when you get within a certain distance of a net, players can no longer use their hands. This is the middle zone. When a player gets close enough to the goal, they can once again use their hands. This is the goalie zone, in kronum goalies are known as wedgebacks.
By the way, there are four nets players can attack at any given time, thus each team has four goalies.
There are three “positions” in kronum, but the game is free-flowing so players are always sliding between positions in some extent. There are the wedgebacks, as discussed before.
Then there are the rangers. Imagine this position being an outside defender in soccer. They primarily defend, but when the opportunity arises, they can push forward on offense. Rangers often stay in “their” goals area, attacking and defending the same one depending on which team has possession.
Crossers hold the final position. They are the equivalent of soccer midfielders. Whether they keep possession, switch the field, or attack a net, their main goal is to keep the ball moving.
The key to kronum is finding the balance between being aggressive and taking what the defense gives you. When the balance is struck, and the ball stays moving, the game starts flowing, and points begin piling up.
There are multiple ways score, and there are different point rewards for different goals. According to “Kronumrecleague.com’s” official rule book, there are multiple ways to score, with points ranging from one to eight points for a goal, with just about every number in between a possibility.
The eight pointer is awarded when a player scores from the cross zone, the center circle, and throws or kicks the ball through one of the rings into a net. This also called a Kronum, the name of the game.
The games are often high scoring, and, like almost every other sport, a kronum game is won by the team that scores the most points when the clock runs out.