Help your students learn to read the defence with this printable game pack for Speed Ball, an invasion game with six goals where a dropped ball switches play from hands to feet!
Give students one goal to attack and there's only one question worth asking: can we get there?
Give them a basketball net worth two points and hockey nets in both corners worth one, and the question gets much better. Now it's whether the valuable goal is worth attacking given how well it's defended, or whether the cheaper one that nobody is watching is the smarter play. That's a real tactical decision, and it only exists because there is more than one place to score.
Speed Ball has six goals for exactly that reason.
The other thing this game does well is what happens when someone drops the ball. In most invasion games a fumble is a whistle: play stops, possession changes, the student who dropped it feels it. Here the ball is still live, it just becomes a soccer ball. Play carries on at their feet until someone flicks it back up into someone's hands and it's an air game again. A mistake changes the mode instead of ending the play, which keeps the game flowing and takes a lot of the sting out of fumbling in front of everyone.
🏃 Build One: Moving the Ball Forward. Both teams advancing their own ball to the far baseline, everyone touching it, nobody interfering. Passing patterns get established while there's nothing at stake.
🛡️ Build Two: Adding Defence. One team attacks, the other plays warm defence at an arm's distance, allowed to intercept but not to crowd.
🏀 Build Three: Hoops. Hands only, attacking the basketball net, with dropped balls as simple turnovers so nobody is managing two skill sets at once.
⚽ Build Four: Full Speed Ball. All six goals live, the hands to feet transition in play, and the full weighted scoring.
Warm defence in Build Two needs to be a specific instruction rather than a vague one. Name the arm's distance out loud. If you don't, defenders close the gap within about thirty seconds and the offensive tactics you're trying to teach never get room to appear. My Defence Levels Posters are useful here for making the difference between warm and hot defence something students can see rather than something you keep repeating.
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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