Game of the Week: Pony Express | Playworks

How to play Pony Express — even more fun than relay races!

This week’s game makes running fun, builds camaraderie and encourages good sporting behavior. Gather a group and few minor pieces of equipment, and try playing this new game. The Game of the Week is Pony Express!

Before You Start: 

Skills Practiced:  Running, endurance and pacing

• Demonstrate safe tagging:
  • Light touch, like butterfly wings on the shoulder
  • Unsafe tags: hard contact that might cause the person being tagged to fall
• Divide the group into two teams.
• Have one team line up diagonally at one cone, and the other team line up diagonally at the other cone.
• Hand a bean bag to the first person in each line.

Set Up: 

A very large square or rectangle

How To Play: 

• On the leader’s signal, the first person in each line begins to run counterclockwise around the square/rectangle, making sure to run completely around the lines (i.e. no cutting corners).
• After the first person has run an entire lap, s/he hands off the bean bag to the next person in line, and s/he begins to run a lap.
• The object for both teams is to catch up to the other team and tag that runner on the shoulder.
• If someone is tagged, a new round begins at each cone with the first person in line.

Variations: 

• Try walking, skipping, hopping, etc. (if the space is smaller, or for younger players)
• With more advanced groups, no equipment is necessary if you have natural boundaries, and they can high-five the next person in line

Find more new and exciting games in our games database!