Whether you’ve known your friends for as long as you’ve been alive or you’ve just met up with a few people you click with, teambuilding can always be helpful. Preparing for upcoming street-style matches, be it two-on-two tennis, basketball, or street football, is essential for victory.
Even if you don’t particularly care about winning a friendly match in your local park or a street football tournament, teambuilding is still a worthwhile activity to pursue. Here are the ways for you and your friends to bond over something you all like – street football – and for you to improve your team cohesion while doing so.
1. No Contact Dribbling
Gather your team and head to your preferred street-style court. Set up a crash course made off of pins, bricks, or any ankle-high items and start dribbling. Once you grow accustomed to dribbling in between static objects, dribble in between one another without touching the players.
This is a great exercise for everyone to test each other’s sensibilities with the ball so that you’re more prepared for actual matches against other teams. Moreover, you’ll have a much easier time dazzling the other team and any onlookers once you show up with your new dribbling skills, courtesy of teambuilding.
2. Lava Field
This is a teambuilding exercise for more proficient street football players but you’ll still have plenty of fun with it even if you’re not a pro. As the name might suggest, you can bounce the ball around on your legs and knees, as well as pass it amongst each other without letting it touch the floor.
Alternatively, you can kick the ball from one end of the field to another without letting it touch the middle 1/3 of the field. Treat this space as “lava” and practice passing the ball over larger distances without letting it touch the ground. This will greatly contribute to your team’s stamina and improve everyone’s overall ability to handle the ball under pressure, especially when playing on larger courts.
3. Football Video and Board Games
While these teambuilding exercises won’t build up your physical stamina, they’ll undoubtedly help your team grow closer to one another. Playing games such as FIFA Street or visiting your local coffee shop to play table football is a great way to pass the time and build up some team spirit.
While you play, you can discuss tactics, strategies, and plans of attack and defense for upcoming matches. If you’re going through a cold or rainy period outside, video and board games are just as good of a teambuilding exercise as anything else.
4. Team Speed Dating
Divide your team into two smaller teams made up of an equal number of people. Start playing street football under the condition that every time a team scores a goal, the other has to share a secret or a personal tidbit about themselves. You can modify this rule so that it works for everyone (such as setting up some no-no topics which are off the table for sharing).
This is a great mechanism for people to get to know one another, build up their team play on the field, as well as break the proverbial ice of opening up to others. By learning about how human and identifiable your teammates are, you’ll grow fond of them and be happy about playing street football alongside them.
5. Buddy Teamplay
Write down each player’s name on a piece of paper and randomly assign them to everyone. Each person is in charge of encouraging, supporting, and cheering on the person they were assigned to. This will bring some much-needed positive energy to your street football playfield and promote healthy engagement among players.
While this teambuilding exercise may seem childish at first, it will encourage people to open up and collaborate on a closer level. Likewise, it may spark long-term friendships and relationships among your team who may not have known about one another previously.
6. Teambuilding is a Long-Term Process
As you engage in team building, you’ll notice that you’re slowly growing to understand your friends more and can anticipate what they’ll do on the field. Whether you engage in rigorous street football training exercises or build up your teamwork through board games, don’t stray away from doing either.
Teambuilding is a long-term process and it’ll require group dedication, cultivation, and understanding among the team members to bear tangible fruit. Only then will you flourish as a street football team and become a role model group for those around you, inspiring them to do the same.
Have you ever played street volleyball or tennis and had the opposing team’s player repeatedly harm the game, or you, in some subtle but glaring manner? Traditional sports all have literal guidebooks and manuals on how they should be played, not to mention professional referees present to oversee fair play conduct.
But, what happens when you play street-style sports and there’s no one there to keep everything in check? Before you abandon your game and do something else, go over these unwritten rules with your group of friends. Make sure that everyone is aware of them before the match begins so that everyone can have a great time playing, rather than be frustrated with how other people behave or misbehave toward others.
1. Don’t Get Overly Aggressive
We all get frustrated when we start losing or when we’ve been outmatched by the opposing team. That’s not an excuse to vent our frustrations on others by resorting to violence and physical confrontation. Street-style sports are often played on hard surfaces such as concrete or wooden panels which can cause serious injury to players.
Try not to tackle, kick, punch, or push anyone without rhyme or reason when playing street sports. Once the game ends, you’ll go back to being friends or acquaintances just as you were before – don’t start grudges or beef on the field.
2. Don’t Distract the Players
When you play team sports like football or volleyball, you’ll end up with more players available than are necessary on the field at any given moment. If you’re a substitute player and are waiting for your turn to play, refrain from distracting other players.
Follow the game, check your phone, stretch, or talk to other substitutes next to you. Do not however distract playing players with shouting, loud music, jump scares, questions, and other unnecessary interactions. You won’t want others to do that to you, so use common sense and be a fair player even when not playing.
3. Team Comps are Very Flexible
Contrary to traditional sports, it’s okay to substitute your friend who is tired, unfocused, or just bored while playing street sports. You don’t need to ask for special permission or wait for a specific time to swap players during a street match.
All you need to do is establish that yes, it’s okay to switch whenever someone is tired or has something else to do without having to stop the game entirely. It’s also okay to swap players between teams if you and your friends realize that one team is overpowering the other and no one is having fun.
4. Don’t Shy Away from Creative Rules or Bets
While you can always play a game of tennis or basketball for bragging rights, you can also go crazy with your ultimate reward. Are you getting hungry and would love to have a pizza after your football match?
What about going to a coffee shop later on and grabbing a round of drinks, losers paying for everyone? Setting up an interesting reward for winning the game can be just the ingredient you and your friends are missing.
5. Stop the Game in Case of Injuries
Street sports matches are not a battlefield. If someone gets injured during the match, you’re all obligated to tend to them and help them out. Again, street-style sports typically play out in “street” environments, meaning that an injury can happen in the heat of the moment.
Before you realize it, someone might end up with bloody knees, scraped elbows, or more severe injuries. Don’t prioritize the game over your friends’ well-being – you’d want them to do the same for you. If you keep things civil and focus on fair play, the injury shouldn’t happen in the first place, so consider the combined unwritten rules when playing street sports.
Learning to Enjoy Street Sports
Many of these unwritten rules may seem like common sense, and that’s the point. Street sports are ultimately about having fun with a group of friends, engaging in some physical exercise, and destressing after a long day.
They’re not about proving a point or venting on the opposing team which will more often than not simply consist of your close friends. Keep these rules in mind when you play football, basketball, or any other street-style sport, regardless of how many players participate or where exactly you end up playing.
Don’t be afraid to remind others of these rules if they unconsciously, or repeatedly, break them to everyone’s detriment. Everyone is an equal referee and a moral compass in these situations, so work your misunderstandings out as you play and everyone will have a great time playing street sports with these unwritten rules at the back of their mind.