Karen Kobussen and her family are big, big, BIG sports fans. So when COVID-19 came along and plunged us all into lockdown in March 2020, it’s fair to understate that disappointment reigned in the household. By early April 2020, the family was waiting with bated breath to see if major league baseball, their favourite game, would be cancelled. Sure enough, it was.

“We said, what are we going to do all summer?” Kobussen recalled in an interview.

“Very shortly thereafter, I got tagged in a Facebook post that showed this homemade . . . baseball game. Someone said, can you make this? My husband and I own a laser-engraving business, and yeah, we thought well sure, we can make something like that.”

And they did.

“It’s baseball. It’s not like we invented it. But certainly, the design and game play and how things flow. . . we all just sat around those first few weeks of April . . . and we came up with that.”

They named it CanBall. The gameboard itself is shaped like a baseball diamond, and “it’s kind of a cross between baseball, cribbage and Yahtzee,” she explained.“You roll dice, there’s a legend, the cribbage pegs are the players . . .there’s no strategy to it; it’s just luck of the dice. But it’s fun.“My husband (Kevin Korol) had played competitive slow-pitch for a number of years and just for fun we posted it in a group that he belongs to on Facebook for slow-pitch across Canada.“We sold about 50 games in 10 days.”

That got the ball rolling: Kobussenand Korol decided to start up a little sideline business out of it.

“We reached out to a few people in the marketing world. They helped us come up with a logo, the name, and then we did the little businessy things you need to do.

“We were doing a little bit of marketing, not much . . . we were selling what we had capacity to make. We started getting a lot of interest on our Facebook page.

”Before long, people began to ask if they could create a football, soccer, or other game based on a sport. Hockey, basketball, and soccer didn’t translate well to a board game, considering their quick back-and-forth offence-defence styles.

“Football worked. There are actually only 21 possible combinations of dice rolls. Each dice roll has a play associated to it. You roll the dice, you move your player down the field until you score, have a turnover, or have to punt.”

By the beginning of May, they started in earnest to consider the materials, colours and other things they would need for the fledgling business.

“It was COVID,” said Kobussen.“We had nothing to do. So we just went hard.”

Then COVID itself moved in. Kobussen became very sick in June, ending up in the hospital for 22 days and being “very not well for a number of months.” Everything stalled.

By November 2020, she was feeling much better, and “I thought okay, I love this game. I love the look, I love the design, I love the branding.”

She dove in again, taking a business entrepreneurship program through Praxis and developing a business plan, “putting strategy behind it instead of this hobby thing.“Our sales picked up again because we were investing a little bit in marketing.”

Subsequently, she enrolled in the Saskatoon Regional Economic Development Authority’s Go Money Entrepreneurship Competition. Out of 80 applicants, she was one of five chosen for the “finals:” The GoMoney Pitch event. Entrepreneurs pitch their businesses to a panel in the hope of winning part of the $ 30,000 on the line.

Kobussen and CanBall took secondplace, winning $10,000. The proceeds were invested into the company and its online Shopify store.“

Right now, we are investing significant amounts of money into the marketing. With that, we’re keeping up. We’re selling five to ten games a week; it’s a little higher now because it’s Christmas. I’d like to sell 500, but that’s a whole different ballgame, pun intended.”

Still, CanBall is feeling quite a lot of sports love.

“We also, interestingly enough, sell 95% of our product into Quebec and Ontario. We have the instructions translated into French and Spanish. And (it has) sold into the United States.

“We’ve had visitors on our website from over 50 countries.”

The baseball game is $ 54.99 and available in three colours, but Kobussen and Korol also offer custom colours. The football game is $ 64.99 and comes in two colours, also with custom options.

“You can get a purple football game if you’re a Minnesota Vikings fan,” she said, giving an example.

CanBall also has a fundraising arm where teams can get a not-for-profit discount.

“Ball teams from all over Canada order 10 at a time and raffle them as a fundraising opportunity. We’ve done a number of fundraising initiatives all across Canada.”

It’s hard to know how much the company will grow; it’s still very much a family affair.

But Kobussen says things are going well, and there is significant Facebook engagement. Besides, and perhaps the most important thing, is that “it’s a labour of love.”

• Joanne Paulson