Only the hips may touch it, forcing players to leap through the air or dive low when it skims the ground.As Mexico prepares to co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the nation is looking back 3,400 years to one of the oldest team sports: the ancient ball game known as ulama, a ritual practice nearly erased during the Spanish conquest.The sport survived only in the remote pockets of north-western Mexico before its late 20th-century rebirth. Today, authorities and its modern players are leveraging the momentum of international soccer to shine a spotlight on the ancient sport once again.While players acknowledge that tourism fuelled the sport's revival, many worry that projecting an "exotic" image undermines a tradition central to their identity."We must rid the game of the notion that it is a living fossil," said Emilie Carreón, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM, and director of a project aimed at studying and practising the sport.That's exactly what the Osuna family is trying to do The exhibition sparked studies about the ball game and how to preserve it in the following decades.Luis Aurelio Osuna, 30, Herrera's eldest son, began playing hip ulama after school, just as his father did decades ago in Los Llanitos, a ranch next to the port city of Mazatlán