Today we are going
to talk about stealing the ball from the opponent. As you can see in
picture 1, the offense player is offering the opportunity to steal the
ball from her because she is not protecting it.
In most cases the players decide for striking the ball; you can see the procedure in pictures 2 and 3.
It often occurs that the player strikes the ball but the referees
characterise this as a strong strike on the offense player’s hand and
award a foul, because they do not see at that moment that the defence
player has stricken the ball, as it is shown in picture 4.
To avoid unjustified fouls I recommend showing the younger players at
practice how to steal the ball from the offense player with a simple
move. As you can see in picture 5, the defence player has grabbed the
ball with both hands from above and below. This is an important body
position, especially of the feet.
We can also see that the defence player stepped into the offense player
space and by doing so she made the movement more difficult for her,
because she leans on the offense player´s centre of gravity with one
foot (picture 6).
After grabbing the ball (picture 7)
we begin the ball rotation in the direction towards the offense player
(picture 8). Because even though the player holds the ball firmly (we
were unsuccessful at striking the ball), we can easily take it away
from her by rotating. We can see in picture 9 how the defence player
protects herself with the shoulder and how the ball is slipping from
the offense players´ hands.
Further on, the picture 10 shows how we have completely turned away
from the player with the right posing, but with the ball in our hands.
All we need to do is to find an available teammate, pass the ball to
her and we can start with the offense.
As you can see in picture 11, in most cases after this kind of ball
steal a foul of the now defence player occurs because of the desire to
correct the mistake.
