Basketball: The Blinking Dribble Game

Dick Moss, Editor, PE Update.com

The Blinking Game is a fun contest that will teach students how to dribble without looking at the ball.

Setup
Pair up your students and give each student a ball. The students in each pair face each other about a yard apart.

How to Play
Tell your students they are going to have a staring contest while they dribble. Their job is to dribble the ball while staring into their partner's eyes. The students who lose control of the ball, blink first, or lower their eyes lose that round of the contest.

To make if even more fun, allow distracting comments (not profane), faces, and actions. Play for the best of 10 rounds, then switch partners.

Options

Have the pairs work as a team against other pairs to see which pair can hold their gaze the longest. Have them all start on your signal in the last team to be dribbling is staring is the winner.
Students who have mastered basic dribbling can progress to more difficult skills such as dribbling between the legs, behind their back, using two balls at the same time, or performing crossovers.
Instead of playing a best of 10 between the players in each pair, have the players rotate to a new partner after every round. The player with the most wins after 10 minutes is the overall champion.

Reference: Keven A. Prusak, "Basketball Fun and Games," Human Kinetics, 2005. www.humankinetics.com

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