Freeball

Overview
A popular sport with rules similar to soccer or handball, only played in micro gravity. Teams of 5 compete to throw a simple ball into the opposing teams goal. The field is a cylindrical anti-gravity chamber, with each goal positioned at the center of the cylinders "top" and "bottom." Players are equipped with a compressed gas Mobile Suit and must use teamwork and agility to overcome their rival teams positioning.

Team Composition
Traditionally Freeball has 5 positions, Forward, Center, Left Wing, Right Wing, and Goalie. A basic team composition will assign one player to each of these positions, with the teams most skilled player taking up center position. More advanced compositions have arisen, as the meta of the game has developed. Some compositions seek to identify the opposing teams weakest wing player, and then assign multiple attackers to overwhelm and score from that wing. Other compositions favor a balanced, but aggressive "Quadrant" composition, where the play field is divided not into sides, but into quadrants, with all players, but the goalie, being assigned to a quadrant and playing far forward. This maximizes the number of attack angles a team can leverage, but also increases the likelihood that the enemy team will break through their formation and have an unimpeded shot at the goal. This means that the goalie for a Quadrant team must be highly confident in their abilities or the team must maintain consistent possession of the ball.

Controversy
Freeball has come under scrutiny by some due to it's rough nature and some controversial rulings. For a long time larger players like Umeroth excelled in Freeball since they were better able to disrupt enemy players and block scoring attempts. However, a more recent ruling required that all players use the same equipment, meaning that Umeroths and other large aliens would have to make due with Mobile Suits designed to propel human sized races. As a result of this ruling, large races are now almost unheard of in Freeball, since the ruling all but removed their ability to maneuver around the field.

History
Freeball began as a pastime of workers in low gravity environments on space stations. Since maintaining artificial gravity over the entirety of a large space station can be expensive, many stations have opted to keep non-commercial or residential areas in Zero-G, thereby reducing costs. These Zero-G maintenance areas became the birthplace of what is now a wildly popular interstellar sport.