Team Building Exercises
From the terrific book: Catch Them Being Good

by Tony Dicicco, Colleen Hacker, Charles Salzberg

Bean Bag Shuffle

Objective: To hone problem-solving techniques and foster cooperation among team members in order to achieve success through competition between groups to establish the best team. Perhaps, more important, it provides an opportunity to reveal an athlete’s standard for competitive excellence as a member of her own team, as an opponent striving for victory, and as an individual competing against previous personal best performance.

Equipment: 1 stopwatch for each team, one small bean bag/team

Space: open field or gym

Numbers: 2-3 teams of 6-8 players

The Game:

          Provide each team with one small beanbag and have the teams stand in a circle; it can be any size they choose. Set the challenge: the goal is to see how fast you can pass the bean bag from person to person so that everyone in the group has completely handled it and individually passed it on to another team member. Simply touching the bean bag does not count; it must be completely “handled and individually passed.”

          Assign a stopwatch coach to each group. On the signal “ready, set, go,” teams begin to pass the beanbag around the circle as fast as they can while still following the rules. If the beanbag hits the ground, players must start again from the beginning.

          Establish a winner based on time. Record that time and then ask, “Can you do it faster?” Let them try. Continue to record the times for each team. Then ask, “Can you do it faster still?”

Lesson:

Eventually teams will learn to move very close together to make an even smaller circle that looks like just a mob of people. They will learn that they can hand and pass the beanbag much faster, more efficiently and in a single motion if they change their distance from on another and alter their team’s configuration.

          At first, players may think they’re doing well, but as the game progresses you’ll be raising the bar and putting more responsibility on the players, telling them is essence: You did well, but now can you do it better?

Debriefing:

• What did you learn from this?

• What helped you be more successful?

• Did you feel excited and motivated to lower your time, or did you already feel you were fast enough?

• Was there any difference is your experience when the goal was to beat the other team instead of beating your previous best time?

• What would you do differently next time?

• How does this relate to a game situation?

  Web Administrator    Ken Gamble