GOAL BALL

What is Goal Ball?

Yesterday afternoon Leanne Stubbing, a vision resource teacher with BLENNZ, taught room 11 how to play goal ball. Goal ball is a team sport that is designed for people who are visually impaired or blind.

Participants compete in teams of three, and try to throw a ball that has bells embedded in it into their opponent's goal. Blindfolds or masks are worn by players this allows partially sighted players to compete on an equal footing with players who are blind. Teams alternate throwing or rolling the ball from one end of the playing area to the other, and players remain in the area of their own goal in both defence and attack. Players must use the sound of the bell to judge the position and movement of the ball.

 

We began our session by learning and practicing all the different defending positions that a player must assume to prevent the ball from going into their goal. After that we practice our ball rolling technique.
Once we had mastered these aspects of the game we donned our blindfolds and got on with playing some games of goal ball.

Although some of us had trouble judging where our opponent's goal was and preventing the ball from going into our own goals, we had lots of fun and are looking forward to our next game! 

 

Thank you Leanne for teaching us goal ball. 

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