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| Dec. 2, 2004 | ||||||
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The Toli Tradition
Combine the roughness of football, the concept of lacrosse, rugby and soccer, along with bare feet and what do you get? An ultra fast paced game of rough stickball, called toli. “It’s got quite a tradition, five times the tradition of baseball,” advisor to the Appalachian State University team Dr. Eric E. Bowne said. Katie G. Thomson, a senior recreation management and geography major, first heard about toli early this semester from her three roommates who intrigued her enough to start playing in late August. Hundreds of years ago, Native Americans would play toli to settle disputes. The playing field then was often several miles long with the two goalposts to mark each end, Thomson explained. Toli equipment is similar to lacrosse. The ball is about the size of a golf ball, covered with leather and is called a towa. Each player uses two wooden sticks, called the kapucha, with small woven baskets on each end. There are no set boundaries and a team scores when a player hits the opposing team’s goalpost with their ball, either by throwing it or by touching the post with the ball clamped between their sticks. There are basically two established rules. A player cannot touch the towa with their hands or feet. The second, which Thomson said is debatable, that a player can only tackle someone who has the ball.
She added they first learned the basic idea of toli but since have developed the game together as a group. During his undergraduate and graduate years at the University of Georgia, Bowne was first introduced to the game of toli. Bowne, who started playing this past April, said that then it looked a little too rough for him. Georgia, and now Appalachian State University, are the only non-Native American teams. Toli has been played at Georgia for about 15 years. This past March, Bowne, an anthropology instructor, took a group of Appalachian State students to Georgia to see them play the Mississippi Choctaw Native Americans. Soon after, the Georgia team came to Boone to give a toli demonstration. Two weeks ago, they met again when the team traveled to Athens, Ga., for a toli match. The team’s status as a university club is pending. The group meets at the State Farm Fields every Sunday afternoon and play until dark or they are too tired, or cold. Body checks and tackles are frequent movements in the game. There are several females that make it out to the field to play each week. Thomson is one of them. “I think at first [the guys] didn’t want to tackle us, but now they don’t care,” Thomson said, who enjoys the tackle aspect of toli. As for the future, Bowne would like to someday see a league develop and “for ASU to say it was the second founded team in the league.” For the team itself, “I would like to see the team get good enough to challenge the Choctaw,” Bowne said. Thomson explained that there are newcomers every week and after your first try at the game, it is easy to pick up. “Everyone gets better each week,” Thomson said. For someone who might be interested, Thomson suggested not to be too intimidated because you can make it as physical as you want. “People come from all backgrounds who are into it,” Bowne said in regards to gender, majors, etc. “For the people who play, the game draws them for some reason, it’s like a bug, you sort of get bit.” |
© 2004 ASU Student Publications
