What are some good team bonding exercises to do at practice? Our novices are moving up to varsity and we are looking for ways to bring the two groups together. Thanks! Love your blog!
Check out the two posts linked below. They all touch on “team bonding” in one way or another so there might be some ideas in there that you can use. The “secret motivator” one was a ton of fun for everyone so I definitely recommend that one as you get farther into the season.
When I coached at Marietta in the spring I was still trying to learn everyone’s names after about a week of being there and I noticed that a lot of the freshmen didn’t know any of the varsity girls names either so one day while they were warming up I had everyone get in a circle and go around one by one and say their name and grade. The catch was that you had to also say the names and grades of the people that went before you, which got progressively more amusing the farther around the circle we got. It was a good way to introduce everyone and break the ice, in addition to being a sneaky way for me to learn the names/grades of the people I didn’t know yet.
From there the “bonding” kind of happened on its own. Carpooling, boat dinners, traveling, silly activities like the name/grade thing, etc. all facilitated some of it but I’ve always been of the opinion that you can’t really force stuff like that, you’ve just kinda gotta let it happen naturally. If people are friendly and make an active effort to get to know one another then the two groups will merge into one pretty quickly.
