A game much like this is frequently used in
theater classes. My
7th grade English teacher had us do it as an intro to the
pantomime unit. The difference is that we were supposed to
imagine the ball, not actually sense it. But she was strict about cheating; she said one guy missed it, so he had to run down the hall and bring it back. We changed the size of the ball; when class ended and it was quite small, she told the guy who had it to put it in his pocket and don't forget to bring it the next day.
The thing is, an energy ball can be created directly out of the imagination this way. It is highly possible that that kid really did have a ball in his pocket. Unfortunately energy balls are not as stable as physical ones, so we probably had to make a new one the next day even though he remembered it. Since I wasn't working with energy yet at the time, I can't say for sure.
I have also played energy catch in which we changed the texture of the ball. At one point it had long hair growing out of it (on top of being pink with purple polka-dots and green glitter).
Inspired by Wuukiee's storry, I made an actual energy rabbit at the last game, then handed it to someone who was fairly new at all this. He couldn't figure out whythis blob of energy was trying to crawl up his arm. Then I set it down, and it scampered off.
When you get more experienced, you can try energy baseball.