Soccer Tennis

If you are having a soccer themed meeting or a sports themed meeting, you can let the scouts do a simple soccer drill during the gathering time. When my den meetings were immediately after school, I often did a physical activity during the gathering time. The Scouts needed to run around and burn off a little energy before they were ready to concentrate on the den activities.

Soccer tennis is an easy game to set up and play for a few minutes. Here is my modified version of the rules:

Equipment

• soccer ball
• rope
• poles or chairs or something to support both ends of the rope – existing poles for volleyball or badminton could be used

Instructions

1. Specify a playing area which is about the size of a tennis court
2. Bisect the area with a rope about 1 meter high across the center. (You can tie it to a couple of poles or even the tops of a couple of chairs. Whatever works for you. It just has to be a little off the ground.)
3. Each team can kick or head the ball three times among its own players and then must play it over the rope into the other team’s half.
4. The ball can bounce only once between passes or headers.
5. When one team makes a mistake, the other team gets a point.