Since I will be in Bathurst this weekend at a frisbee tournament, I decided to go with my Australian friend to her Netball game on Thursday, May 5th. She drove me there, so I am not exactly sure where it was but it was pretty far away. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, so I could not take pictures.
When we arrived, I noticed all of the girls were wearing skirts to play netball. I found this to be very interesting since they were running around and jumping up and down the entire game. In America, the only sport that girls wear skirts in a contact game is field hockey. Her team started to warm up for a bit, and then the game started! I sat on a grass hill the entire game watching these Australian girls play the game of netball. It was very frustrating watching because although it reminded me a lot like basketball, it was very different. The reason why I was frustrated was because none of these girls were allowed to swat the ball out of the other girl's hands when she was shooting. Everything seemed to be very slow paced, and I did not understand why there were set positions. It seemed very difficult to shoot the ball though without a backboard, which is why the score to the game was so low. I was expecting the scores to be around 60 or 70 points, but it ended up being around 25 points!
Since there are only seven players that play at a time, I feel like if you have a team that is very tall, it adds a huge advantage. My friend's team was very small, so when the ball was up in the air, the other team had a better advantage to snag it before her team got to it. We have learned all semester that Australian's love their sports and are super competitive, which is what I saw in this netball game. The girls were screaming at one another if one of them missed a basket or did not get to the ball fast enough. I thought it was quite funny because it was only a league that was meant to be played for fun!
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