Sports Field/Court/Rink Dimensions -- Architectural Drawings To Scale

After last week exploring the Major League Baseball Fields Dimensions, Outfield Square Footage and Homerun Distance, I received a lot of interest from the students to look at other sports fields dimensions.

We first focused on the relative scale of different sports fields. Page one of the pdf shows 19 sports fields/courts/rink/pool. The children were amazed that all of the 18 sports fields fit inside an ice hockey rink. I then showed the students 20 sports dimensions including baseball, tennis, basketball, football, ice hockey, soccer, lacrosse, rugby, cricket, horseshoe, field hockey, four square, hopscotch, pickle ball, volley ball, badminton, bocce, shuffleboard, handball, and ultimate frisbee. 

These dimensions are given in feet (‘), yards (yd.), inches (“), and meters (m):

—One foot equals 12 inches

—One yard equals 3 feet which equals 36 inches

—One meter equals 39 3/8 inches or 3 3/8 inches more than one yard

I gave the children four pages of graph paper that was 32 x 25 squares. I chose the proportion of 10 feet per square. For example, a shuffleboard court has outside dimensions of 10’ x 52’ so one square by 5.2 squares. I asked the children to give both dimensions and name the sport. During the week, I encouraged the children to use the architectural dimensions to add all of the inside details for each sport. 

The most challenging sports were those in dimensions of meter (handball, ultimate disk frisbee, cricket, and rugby). I recommended that the children use an estimated distance of 3 feet or 1 yard for 1 meter. Also, the sports with dimensions in yards (and meters if they estimated), would require them to multiply yards by three to convert to feet. For example, 40 yards = 120 feet; 110 yards = 330 feet; 120 yards = 360 feet. The problem is that 32 squares in one dimension would only allow for 320 feet so the children had to extend each side by 20 feet visually to show the entire 360 feet. Another challenge was when the dimension was not a multiple of 10 such as 52 feet in shuffleboard, requiring 5 squares and slightly more to equal the 2 feet (exactly 5.2 squares). 75 feet would be 7 and 1/2 squares. Four square which is 16’ x 16’ is one square and a little more than half a square.

Now for the ultimate challenge, hopscotch is in 16” dimensions in square. Creating an architectural diagram of hopscotch is almost impossible given how small the squares have to be. The entire diagram will not even exceed beyond one square unit of 10’ by 10’.

If one of your sports is not in the pdf, please research the dimensions for the next class.