by Mrs. Ruffing
In reading blog posts from students around the world, I have come to realize that there is a sport that is extremely popular among many of our student bloggers that I was totally unaware of here in the USA. That sport is “netball”. I decided I should not assume that it was just another name for basketball. It is definitely not! I found this information on Wikipedia (and yes, in this circumstance it is fine to draw upon a Wikipedia entry):
- Netball is a ball sport played by two teams of seven players. Its development, derived from early versions of basketball, began in England in the 1890s.
- Netball is most popular in Commonwealth nations, specifically in schools, and is predominantly played by women.
- According to the INF, netball is played by more than 20 million people in more than 80 countries.
- There are four major international netball competitions; the Netball World Cup, Netball at the Commonwealth Games, Netball Quad Series and Fast5 Netball World Series.
Below is a video (about 7 minutes long but having more than 1 million views!) that will give you an idea of what netball is like. It would be great if we could hear more first hand experience from our participating student bloggers about netball!
April 2, 2019 at 9:49 pm
Hi Mrs. Ruffing and class,
What a coincidence. Just the other day I was having a conversation with a STUBC participant in the US about popular sports. I mentioned netball and she didn’t know what it was!
I live in Australia and netball is a very popular sport. It’s especially popular with girls, although boys can play too of course!
I have never played netball myself but my 5yo daughter is keen to start playing.
I look forward to seeing some comments from netballers. I just put a tweet out to invite comments too so fingers crossed.
Best wishes from Australia,
Mrs Kathleen Morris
April 3, 2019 at 10:49 am
Hi Mrs. Norris,
Thank you so much for the tweet! As you can see we have received a reply from someone who really knows the game. We are learning so much about students around the world with the blogging challenge. Our students are working on their Week 5 post and looking forward to learning about what school days are like in other countries!
April 3, 2019 at 9:03 pm
Hi StarPilot,
Thank you for your lovely reply.
Isn’t that wonderful that you received such a great comment from a netball fan!
I wonder if your classmates know about another sport that’s popular in some parts of the commonwealth — rugby. I noticed a student called Jack in New Zealand has just published a great post about it.
Here is the link http://lifejustlifebyjack.edublogs.org/2019/04/03/rugby/
Keep up your great blogging!
Mrs Morris
April 3, 2019 at 5:16 am
Hi Mrs Ruffing and class,
I’m an Australian mum, teacher, former netballer and current netball manager for my daughter’s under 10 team in Brisbane.
I played netball from 7-14 years of age and mostly played Goal Attack (GA) which meant I could use 3/4 do the court, the goal ‘circle’, and shoot for goals (not ‘hoops’ like in basketball). My Daughter, Kiki, also likes playing GA, but to be honest, she’s good at most of the positions. She just doesn’t like playing Centre (‘C’, and no I didn’t spell it wrong – we spell it, and other words differently in Australia) because she has to run too much and even in winter, when we play netball, it is still quite hot in Brisbane.
I try and take my daughter to live games each year and we love watching games on TV.
Just tonight, Kiki brought home a form for me to sign to allow her to play for her school in a Brisbane schools competition. If given the chance, she would train for/play netball every day.
Netball rocks,
April 4, 2019 at 9:07 am
Hi Jo!
We are so grateful that you shared your experience with netball! Your enthusiasm for the sport is being continued by Kiki and we wish her the best in her competitions. Netball still seems a little more complicated to me than basketball, but I think that is because I have only known basketball rules for all my life. It would be fun to have our students try out the game and see how quickly they catch on. I think maybe the hardest part would be having players have very specific areas of the court they can move in.
Thank you also for pointing out the spelling differences. It is so interesting to find out about life in other countries. Brisbane looks like an awesome city with some wonderful attractions and lots of bridges. It is really amazing to use Google Earth street view to visit a city. I see that Brisbane has a sub-tropical climate so that is warmer than ours in Pennsylvania. You are probably more like our state of Florida.
Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to respond. We are learning so much in the student blogging challenge!
Sincerely,
Mrs. Ruffing
April 15, 2019 at 9:06 pm
That was very educational. Even though I lived in Australia, I never watched it being played. Seems like a sport for students in school. The video was very informative. Thank you.