Under 9's WD picked up for repeated contact

Under 9's WD picked up for repeated contact

Looking for a simple drill to teach Under 9's defensive play without contact

Dan ThreadgoldCoach, Australia
ANSWERS
Netball CoachCoach

Hi Dan,

I quite like the drill below as it is a really simple way to get your players practicing intercepting the ball without making contact with the player.

Green 1 (your WD) is defending A4 whilst the ball is played between 1,2 and 3. This works well if you instruct your WD to stand behind the player waiting to receive the ball and then for them to dodge in front of them to intercept the pass.

Hope this works!

Front Marking with Ball Transfer

DESCRIPTION
3 Feeders attempt to pass the ball to a static player A (varying the type of passes). The defender adjusts positiong to intercept the feed

Front Marking with Ball Transfer

DESCRIPTION
3 Feeders attempt to pass the ball to a static player A (varying the type of passes). The defender adjusts positiong to intercept the feed
Lee-annes NetballCoach, Australia

basically i would suggest that her foot work needs to be looked at. most young players have not yet learnt to move their feet around their player to get an intercept, they just push through their player.

There are 2 drills that come to mind that might help.

the first is called "running the gauntlet". if you had say 9 players in the team you would have 18 cones. basically you put 2 lines of 8 cones down the court directly in line with each other about 5m apart sideways and 3m apart down the line. the last 2 remaining cones are the start and stop which are located outside the area you create with the 2 lines but centred between them. 8 players are located between the 2 cones and are only allowed to move from side to side between them in the 5m you have given them. the 9th player is located at the start cone and must get from one end to the other without contacting the other players but staying between the 2 rows of cones. This drill has many uses. teaching zone defence, getting out of zone defence, helping with footwork to get around players, getting use to close defence.

as a coach you need to make sure that she isn`t pushing past her player but using preliminary moves such as dodge or double dodge, change of pace, to get past. also ensure that the defenders are in the correct defence stance so they aren`t trying to trip or push the player coming around.

the second drill you will need 3 players and a ball. I call it the figure of 8 drill.

2 players face each other about 5m apart and pass the ball in a very rhythmic and systematic manner. this is very important as the pass needs to be predictable. the 3rd player stands behind a player and needs to break at the right moment to get the intercept the pass by running out from behind the player by going around closely but without touching, running in-between and across the path of the ball to catch and then pass it back to the person who they just caught it from (who continues back to the rhythmic passing) and continues in that diagonal until they are now behind the other player where they wait only for a moment before timing the break from behind to intercept again and pass back to the person they received and continue on the diagonal til they are where they started (i hope you can now see why its called a figure of eight drill as the person who is doing all the running is running in a figure of 8 around 2 players who are passing between themselves).

Coaching points, make sure that if this is a team with basic skills that the passes are slow and rhythmical. (i.e. PASS two three, PASS two three PASS two three) and that the person doing the running uses footwork to get around the players, they stay close to the players throwing the ball, and that they wait behind the player ready to time their break for the intercept.

once they have gotten better at this drill, increase the speed of the passes but ALWAYS keep them rhythmical.

again this drill has a number of good uses. good for teaching intercepting, reading of play, footwork, getting around players. you can progress this to teaching using OUTSIDE arm to tap the ball and chase, without contacting.

hope some of this can help.

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