Executing The One-Touch Shot

Expanding your hockey skills? Have you mastered the Sweep shot aka one-touch passes as yet?

One-touch shots can be an effective way to keep the opponent team on their heels. When executed perfectly, these are the fastest and most perfect manoeuvres in the game because neither has the stick to go back in a backswing nor follow-through. You can score a goal, deflect the ball in a favourable position or defend your goalpost, all at the drop of a hat (or even quicker) without allowing the opposition to build pressure over the ball carrier.

Here are a few tips from world’s best hockey team.

•    Be well aware of where your teammates are positioned and the possible direction you can shoot the ball to at all times. This way you have chalked out a trajectory even before you receive the ball.

•    A word of caution here is this shot is too similar in technique to a deflecting shot, so make up your mind firmly what you want to do with the ball before you receive it. A classic examples where one-touch shot can be helpful is for a quick-pass to a teammate open for goal (think of the surprise element) or even when the team’s defence chucks the ball in the neutral zone quickly transitioning the game from defence to attack, explains a shooter of hockey team of India.

•    Not only should you know where your teammates are positioned but whether they are left-handed or right-handed. To take maximum benefit of the surprise element you must manoeuvre the ball to your teammate’s wheelhouse- the area where he can catch and release the shot in one clean swipe.

•    In the split second when you realize you are being passed the ball and you decide to take a 1-touch, don’t forget to adjust your hand lower on the stick to give proper strength to the shot. From high up, the shot may lack the strength you intended to put in it.

•    Last, remember that the shot is all about anticipation. How you work it out in your head is more difficult than actual execution so try to keep mentally ahead by one or two plays.

Towards a 'Sporty' India

The very premise of sports education kicks off at the school-level in the garb of physical education. Despite the innumerous wonders of playing sports, it continues to be brushed aside as a matter of lesser significance. That physical education is often neglected in India is pretty unsettling, and schools need to realize the importance of physical education in the curriculum, says a player from the top hockey team.

Wrong Notions

One of the most prominent reasons why physical education is lackadaisical in structure and is often pushed to the backburner is that schools don't really understand sports in whole. It is often considered as a source of recreation, nothing less, nothing more. So in short, sports is only there for fun, and it should be taken in such a manner only. As flawed as these notions are, there arises a need to outgrow the frivolities for the sake of sportsmanship in literal sense. 

It is an undisputed fact that physical education and sports create healthy individuals and a healthy society. Sports are shell-shot method to contributing to the nation-building process. It is unnerving that despite hockey being our national sport, we haven't done as much to raise its bar, to ameliorate its deteriorating condition. 

Now arises the why. Why couldn't we lend sports the credibility, the worth it deserves? The budgetry allocation of sports, says a team player from hockey leagues in India, is woeful, and shoddy.  There is an acute sense of nepotism in the sports sector, owing to which many qualified sportsmen are left in a lurch, wallowing in denial. 

Pitching in more for modern facilities like playground, equipment, strategies, techniques and qualified coaches can help pulling sports from the dire state. Establishing universities that only look into sports can help exalting it on a national level, too, says a team player from hockey team India.