Rollerball

Bouncy balls cheap at the dollar stores this time of year
photo from coolsciencedad.blogspot.com

Rollerball is a fun warm-up lifted as-is from the CoachYouthTennis site. You will need a large-ish ball such as a rubber, dodge, soccer, or basketball. If you want to see a video of this activity, take the coaching course at CYT and it will appear in lesson 5.

Two players, or two coaches, stand at net posts. They roll the large ball on the ground between them. Meanwhile, all other players are at the baseline, rolling regular tennis balls on the ground toward the net. Object is to hit the larger ball.

When I did this recently, I had six red ball players on court. Two were rolling the large ball; the other four were at the baseline. I gave them 30 second timed periods and had them keep track of how many times they were able to hit the larger ball. We rotated pairs in to roll the large ball. Player at the end of the three rounds with the most hits was our winner.

Make sure your players:

• stay behind the baseline to roll the tennis balls toward the net
• keep the tennis balls on the ground
• roll with a good quality underhand motion, stepping with opposite foot, hand releasing toward target, very similar to bowling which many of them have done thanks to Wii.