“What’s the catch” The often forgotten skill of catching

Want to know what the most used skill is in basketball? It’s catching!!! Before you can shoot, pass or dribble, you must be able to catch the basketball consistently…and that’s not easy. There are so many moving parts in a basketball game that catching a ball on the move with defenders and your teammates whizzing around is tough.

Whilst shooting goals is a load of fun and kids will dribble the ball hundreds of times happily, if they can’t catch confidently, they won’t get many chances to attempt the other skills in basketball, regardless of how strong they are at shooting, dribbling or passing. 

Luckily, catching, just like any skill, can be built and improved through correct practise. So what can you do to help build your child’s catching ability quickly?

1. Know what the common errors players make when catching. Some of the key errors include:

- Hands positioned on a player's chest.
- Hands/palms facing up to the sky.
- Players arms are straight and stiff.

- Player turns head away from ball when catching.
- Player ‘marking’ the ball like an AFL ball.

2. If you’re child is doing any/all of the above, here are some tips to help:
   
   

- Use soft items in your house before going to a basketball. Things like socks folded up and soft padded, smaller balls can help build your child’s confidence to catch without the fear of injury from a hard ball. 

- Start with soft bounce passes from close to your child. This gives them more time to judge where the ball is coming from and it will often have less momentum than a pass on the full. You can also get your child to practise dropping the ball and catching it. An extension of this is getting them to throw the ball down and catch the ball on the way up.

- Start close and aim for large amounts of repetitions and speed first, before extending distance. I like to start 1 metre or closer and will do sets of 10 catches then go shoot perhaps 2 shots then come back and do another 10 throws then 2 shots. You can repeat this as many times as you like.

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