Each summer, Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens hosts one of the most distinct, continually functioning sporting events in New York City. It features hundreds of players hitting balls, delicious food on offer and spectators sipping drinks while soaking in the entertainment. And on the other side of a fence, there is also a tennis tournament.
For virtually as long as the U.S. Open has been held at its current site, families, mostly immigrants from Ecuador, have made the surrounding parkland and parking lots home to their own kind of championships.
Their game is known to many as ecuavoley, a brand of three-a-side volleyball believed to have originated in Ecuador, where many consider it a national sport alongside soccer.