“It’s kind of like this generation of bros’ volleyball,” says Brandon Wenerd, a co-founder and longtime editor at BroBible. After all, it’s hardly news that bros love Spikeball. “So… it was basically just a bunch of bros playing a game in a park?” I sheepishly admit that the younger kids - who started a Spikeball club at their high school that already has more than 100 members - completely owned me over the course of many games, but that they were pretty chill about it. The players I met up with, I tell her, compete at collegiate and regional Spikeball tournaments across the country. I explain Chris Ruder is the revered entrepreneur who plucked Spikeball from obscurity and turned it into a multimillion-dollar business.

Later, I struggle to recount to my girlfriend the significance of the coincidence, and the experience generally. There we are, dudes aged teen to dad, strangers and friends, huddled intently around a game of Spikeball as the sun goes down. Chandler, sitting next to me in the grass, tells them to relax and play normal for the camera. Either way, Brendan, Trace, Simon and Chris resume their game, serving a ball the size of a grapefruit into the taut black netting of a circular, trampoline-looking platform set up on the grass between them with renewed zeal. Maybe it was Jordan, or Davis in the pink Vineyard Vines shirt. Someone exclaims, “Oh shit!” under their breath. I’ll video you guys playing and tag him,” he says, holding up his phone. “Do you guys know Chris Ruder? Spikeball Chris?” he calls out from the path. He wears a salt-and-pepper beard and a tight gray T-shirt that reads “Spikeball Honolulu” across the chest. I’m in a park in Charleston, South Carolina, sweating heavily in front of a bunch of dudes I’ve never met, when a middle-aged man stops pushing his baby stroller to watch us.

Spike ball sport