5 Ways to Bring the Halloween Spirit to Practice This Year

Have more fun as a team by bringing the Halloween spirit into practice this year!  And if you're not sure how, here are 5 unique ways you can make your team's practice extra spooky this Halloween.

1. Costume Contest

Who doesn’t love dressing up for Halloween? Hold a practice costume contest and see how creative your players can get. Have candy or prizes for the best dressed, most creative, or best basketball inspired costume. Even surprise your team by dressing up yourself!

2. Pumpkin Patch Workout

Cut pumpkin shapes out of orange construction paper and make sure you have 2-3x more pumpkins than you do players on your team. On each pumpkin write an exercise and how many reps to complete like: 10 push-ups, 10 burpees, 20 squat jumps, 50 mountain climbers, 20 lunges, etc. Once all of your pumpkins are ready to go, lay them out in the middle of the gym, aka the “pumpkin patch”. 

When you’re ready for the drill to start, have your players lineup along the walls of the gym. When you blow the whistle, your players have to run into the pumpkin patch, grab a pumpkin, and go back to where they started to complete their pumpkin exercise. Once players complete their exercise have them do a wall sit or ball handling until all players have finished their exercise. Once you’re ready for the next round, blow your whistle and repeat!

3. Candy Dash 

The "Candy dash" drill is perfect if you’re looking for a little extra conditioning with a trick-or-treating twist. 

Split your team into groups of 2-4 players and line each group up, rely style, on one baseline. Each group will also need their own candy bucket, to collect candy. On the other baseline, have a pile of candy for each player in the group (ex. 4 piles of candy for 4 players in group 1), and enough piles for each of the groups. When you blow your whistle, the first player in line has to sprint down to the other baseline, pick up a pile of candy, sprint back, and put it in the group’s bucket without dropping any candy. 

Once the candy is in the bucket. Player #2 has to sprint down to the other baseline, pick up their pile of candy, sprint back, and place in the bucket. And so on. If players drop candy, their entire team has to start over (up to coaches on what candies are used). The first team to collect all the piles of candy the fastest, wins!

4. "Spooky" Tournament 

For an end of practice activity, instead of “Pig” or “Horse”, opt to do a “Spooky” shooting game tournament. This will work the best if you have multiple baskets in your gym. 

Have a few players at each basket in the gym. Start with one round of “Spooky”, and the player that wins that round at each basket advances to the next round of the game. Play as many rounds as you’d like, or until there are only 2 players left. Those 2 players will play in the “Spooky Finals”, for a tournament winner!

5. Candy Exchange

It wouldn’t be Halloween without candy! Add in an extra surprise for your team with small Halloween goodie bags for after practice. Or, for a whole team activity, have each player and coach bring in their favorite candy (enough for the whole team) and do a team candy exchange.