Net Court Game Play

Had a group of non PE students training to teach the subject and had them doing the usual game we developed to enhance understanding of net court sports. We set up the tutorial with a game of 8 aside Newcombe ball and then expanded this to Volleyball of the Badminton court. Of course we added that they had to use the dig (forearm pass), set and spike, serve correctly and use the rotation system on serve. As always they had very few could execute, most had very little idea of the rotation and most avoided the ball by choice, pulling sleeves over wrists to stop the ball hurting (a sad reflection on their school experiences in volleyball and the capacity of the method used in the time available to teach them).

We then develop understanding of fundamental principles of net court by playing a moving Newcombe ball; 4 on each team, one player on the court at a time, play by manipulating with a throw and a catch and try to get the ball to land in the opponent’s court in a position they could not return it (the Principle of play with possession for all net court sports). Once you play your ‘shot’ (throw), you exit from the side only and the next player enters from the back. There are many small changes we make to the ‘Primary Rules’ (rules that set the parameters of the game – ‘On the Line is in’) to help understand ‘Action Rules’ (rules that are not written but help students understand how to play – if the player in front plays a drop shot, you can expect your shot to be close to the net).

Play developed until we added a primary rule that said that there had to be a pass to a team mate before the ball went over the net and yet you could still have only one player on the court at a time (Can you think of the solution? – answer at the end). Of interest were the reactions of the 'best athletes' in the group, a couple of younger students. While all other groups worked diligently, especially those with little movement experience and began to experiment to solve the puzzle, the younger students after a couple of turns simply sat down. They could not solve the problem and, in response, disengaged the whole group. Those with less experience had no choice but to follow and seemed to bow to the wishes of the two who disengaged, based on the student’ athletic ability’ as if to say ’because they are good, the fact they can’t do it means we should not challenge this’. When their disengagement was pointed out, the two generally keen students became quite defensive, pointing out other students and simply stating that ‘They can’t play if they can’t catch’ and, rather than work to solve the problem, they blamed the others for their lack of skill. As a result, the learning and understanding for teams on both sides of the court stopped. However, on other courts, a range of solutions were found by ‘less able’ athletes.

This seems a common scenario when we present movement challenges to the couple students who are our talented athletes, most in specific sports. Many gain good grades in PE based on their genetic ability (from their parents and not taught to them by us) and their prior experience in the particular sports on the weekend (again, not learnt in PE lessons and yet assessed as evidence of learning all the same). What we would like to know is how often has this happened to you and have you bowed to the clamor of the few ‘good athletes’ at the expense of the learning of the others? What were your solutions? Did you give in to them? After all, a common excuse is 'We can't upset the good students or have them bored!'

Post a comment on your experiences and if you would like an email of all of the primary rule changes for this game, let me know and I’ll email them to you.

Greg and Dana

Answer; The receiver of the first throw from the opposition uses a high throw to the mid/front of the court. This gives the entering team mate time to get onto the court while the thrower gets off and gives the receiver a better position to make a range of shots, thus again developing a n action rule of netcourt sports about where to attack from.