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!