Oina
Overview
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n traditional sport, similar in many ways to baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
and lapta
Lapta
Lapta could be:* Lapta Türk Birliği S.K., a Turkish Cypriot sports club playing in Birinci Lig* Lapta - a Russian game.* LAPTA .* Lapithos, a village in Cyprus.* A Soviet TV program from 1988....
.
Oină was first mentioned during the rule of Vlaicu Vodă
Vladislav I of Wallachia
Vladislav I of the Basarab dynasty, also known as Vlaicu-Vodă, was a ruler of the principality of Wallachia . He was a vassal of the Bulgarian Emperor Ivan Alexander. In 1369 Vladislav I subdued Vidin and recognised Louis I of Hungary as his overlord in return for Severin, Amlaş, and Făgăraş...
in 1364, when it spread all across Wallachia
Wallachia
Wallachia or Walachia is a historical and geographical region of Romania. It is situated north of the Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians...
. Its origins are disputed, theories ranging from a shepherd game to a war game.
In 1899, Spiru Haret
Spiru Haret
Spiru C. Haret was a Romanian mathematician, astronomer and politician. He made a fundamental contribution to the n-body problem in celestial mechanics by proving that using a third degree approximation for the disturbing forces implies instability of the major axes of the orbits, and by...
, the minister of education decided that oină was to be played in schools in Physical education
Physical education
Physical education or gymnastics is a course taken during primary and secondary education that encourages psychomotor learning in a play or movement exploration setting....
classes. He organized the first annual oină competitions.
The Romanian Oină Federation ("Federaţia Română de Oină") was founded in 1932, and was reactivated at the beginning of the 1950s, after a brief period when it was dissolved.
Today, there are two oină federations: one in Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
and another one in Chişinău
Chisinau
Chișinău is the capital and largest municipality of Moldova. It is also its main industrial and commercial centre and is located in the middle of the country, on the river Bîc...
, Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
.
The pitch is a rectangle, 70m long by 32m wide divided into:
- the in game ("în joc") area, which is 60x32m
- the batting zone ("zona de bătaie") - 5m long - delimited from the in game area by the batting line
- the back zone ("zona de fund") - a 5m long safe zone during a run - delimited from the in game area by the back line
The attacking side player that has commenced a run will have to cross the following four lines in order:
- the start line (the left side of the batting line)
- the arrival line (the left side of the back line)
- the return line (the right side of the back line)
- the escape line (the right side of the batting line)
The in game area is further split into the advance and return triangles and squares.
Unanswered Questions
