Her sons Mark and John Collins are well-known locally for their success in adventure racing of all kinds and for putting Knysna on the map for eco-friendly activities. With their international reputation and their supportive wives, who both come from similar adventure racing backgrounds in Spain and Germany, they could have set up business anywhere, but they chose to support the Garden Route.
There has been considerable publicity in this newspaper and in the media internationally about the Collins brothers and their latest success, the launching of a game they invented, 360Ball, which was crowned overall winner at the ISPO BrandNew Awards (ISPO is the biggest annual sporting expo in Europe).
Mum Sheila was delighted to learn that they had won first prize against stiff competition from 300 other inventions. A very skilled panel of 22 judges, according to Sheila, gave the game an enthusiastic thumbs-up as one of the best new games they had ever seen. It is now being marketed internationally as 360Ball and is attracting a lot of interest.
Beginnings
What makes their latest success so thrilling for Sheila is the long road the new game has travelled and the way in which she has been able to observe its development right from its earliest beginnings.
Her elder son, Mark, started to experiment at the age of about 15 in the garden of their home in Mooi River, Natal. As he developed his idea, he had to rope in his brother John (five years younger) to help him as the opposing player. The two boys have stayed close together ever since and Sheila confirms that they make a great team.
In the game’s embryo form, Sheila explained, her boys used all sorts of experimental materials, starting with a door mat and any sort of ball they could get their hands on, to refine the rules of the game and to develop the best form of equipment. She noticed even in those early days just how much fun it gave two opposing players, bouncing a ball by hand and later by racquet off a central playing surface and in a 360° circle. The first playing circle she remembers them making was on her lawn with the garden hose.
At the time she was a single mum teaching art at the nearby Treverton School, where all three of her children, Mark, John and daughter Jean, who falls between them in age, completed their schooling. Sheila is full of praise for Treverton, which has a well established reputation for outdoor activities, and the positive influence its staff had on her children. In the case of Mark and John she feels this was very important, as her ex-husband was only able to be a distant father figure. It was at this school that their love of outdoor activities and competition was fostered.
Sheila remembers she first suggested to Mark that he needed to develop his game and perhaps to market it, when she observed how much his school friends visiting or staying over for a weekend away from the boarding house enjoyed it. They seemed able to play it for hours and it almost always won as the back yard game of choice above more conventional games like lawn cricket. She even has some interesting photos in her home album of her boys on the lawn playing the very first versions. These make interesting comparison with pictures she now has of her lads playing the refined, adult version. The door mat has given way to a cleverly designed concave central disc, properly manufactured balls and bats, and the garden hose has given way to better ways of defining the outer perimeter of the game, but the essentials remain the same.
Great future
Having watched the fun numerous players have had with the game, Sheila is convinced it has a great future. She says she is now looking forward to watching its marketing phase and is confident that it will one day become an Olympic sport. When this happens, she jokes, she will be able to watch it on TV from at least her wheelchair and not a cremation urn.
Top and bottom: These images indicate the development of 360Ball through the years.
ARTICLE: DAVE JONES
