Help your students learn to make themselves a passing option with this printable game pack for Matball, an invasion game where every completed pass adds another catcher to the mat!
In most invasion games, the student who isn't confident catching is the student nobody throws to.
It isn't cruelty. It's just how a fast game sorts itself out. The ball travels between the players most likely to hold onto it, and everyone else spends the lesson running around near the action without ever really being in it. The students who most need repetitions are the ones getting the fewest.
Matball inverts that, and it does it through the mat.
The catcher stands on a mat at the back of the opponents' half. They cannot be guarded there, because defenders aren't allowed on the mat. They are, for that moment, the single most wanted player on the floor, with a whole team looking for them and actively trying to make them succeed. The student who was peripheral in every other game is the one everybody wants.
Then the snowball starts. Complete a pass to your catcher and you join them on the mat, so now there are two of you to aim at. Then three. The game accelerates toward its own ending, and getting all your players onto the mat gets easier the closer you are to doing it.
🤾 Build One: Passing and Catching. Cooperative, with end zones instead of mats and no interference at all. Just repetitions of sending and receiving.
🛡️ Build Two: Defensive Pressure. Defenders arrive, guarding the receivers and denying at the half line, but still not permitted into the end zone.
🥅 Build Three: Matball. The full game. One mat per team, the snowball mechanic, and a race to get everyone across.
🎯 Build Four: Double Matball. Two mats each. Now the offence has to choose a target and the defence has to decide what's worth guarding.
The constraint that makes all of this work is defenders staying off the mat. It guarantees the catcher always has space, which keeps passes completable and keeps the game moving. Let defenders crowd the mat and scoring dries up, the game stalls at the half line, and the students you were trying to bring in drift back out again.
The pack includes the full game, all four builds with their diagrams, learning targets, discussion questions, assessment ideas, and teacher notes.
Happy Teaching!
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