Year 9 PASS incursion – GOALBALL

What is Goalball?

Goalball is a team sport designed for the blind and vision impaired, however, sighted athletes can also play. The object of the game is to roll the ball into the opponent’s goal while the opposing players try to block the ball with their bodies. The unique challenge is that all athletes are completely blindfolded! Bells inside the ball help orientate the players by indicating the direction of the oncoming ball.

It ‘the great equaliser’ because it can be enjoyed equally by sighted and vision athletes alike. 

This term, Year 9 PASS has participated in goalball incursions with ‘Bring It On Sports’. Throughout the sessions, the instructors taught us some basic skills. We went over aiming and rolling the ball to our classmates, the basic rules of goalball and practiced our goal shooting. Next, the instructors made the game more difficult by adding in the blindfolds. We played a 3 vs 3 game, which was a lot harder, as we couldn’t see the ball and had to rely on hearing alone to defend our goal. It was really funny seeing everyone scramble and dive the wrong way and try out game tactics whilst blindfolded, which proved to be more difficult than we expected. We really enjoyed learning this game and adapting it in different ways so that it was an inclusive game that can be taught and played by many different abilities and diverse people. By having the opportunity to learn this game in class, I hope in future to be able to include others when participating in sport, and to learn a variety of other inclusive games. 

Mikayla Zec and Jade Dominis
Year 9