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| No way am I putting a picture of a snake on my blog! |
Sidewinder is a simple concept to help your players work on cross court shots. Players play out points
cross court only. One point awarded after each rally UNLESS one player is forced to step into the alley, in which case the other player gets 5 points. If playing doubles, the 5 points is awarded if any player steps outside the court boundary. You can play to a specific point total or use it as a timed event.
Remember,
even if the ball is returned in, if a player had to step outside the boundaries to hit it, point is over and awarded to opponent.
Update: I love it when my students try to outwit the games. I always learn something new! Some students may figure out they prefer to let a wide ball go by without hitting it rather than risk straying into the alley or off-court and giving their opponent 5 easy points. Fine - shows initiative. But they are taking a risk that the opponent will just nibble away at them point after point, which is what happened last week when we played this. The player able to hit consistently to angled shots still won - just took longer.
ReplyDeleteAlso want to update the instructions: make sure your players know it is okay to step off-court behind the baseline. Deep is okay. Wide is not.