Ready to let the ghoul times roll at basketball practice? Celebrate Halloween and build your team’s skills with creative Halloween basketball drills. These drills are best to use with groups of 4+ kids at a beginner to intermediate level (mostly elementary and middle school students, some high school students). Have fun while you help your team improve their shooting, dribbling, decision making, and more.
Get the complete Halloween drill packet with all 7 drills from our Etsy shop: Drills include: trick or treat drill; zombie escape drill, witch spell drill, Boo! drill, Frankenstein drill, pumpkin patch relay race, graveyard adventure drill, and haunted house maze drill.
Each drill includes: how to set it up, how to complete the drill, variations on the drill, more advanced variations, and what players learn. Let’s get after it!
Set up: Place as many cones (i.e. candy) as you can scattered on the ground throughout the court. For added fun actually place candy underneath each cone.
How to play: Players must pick up the cones (collect candy) using a certain hand and hold their stack of cones, while dribbling with the other hand to finish the drill. Players compete to get the most cones before they’re all gone.
Run this through with variations including:
More advanced variations:
How this drill helps players improve: This drill helps players build their dribbling skills for high pressure and unpredictable situations. Because they don’t know which cones anyone else will go after, they have to multi-task mentally in this drill.
Set up: Choose a confined area of your court, for instance the box or within the 3 point line. Give one player a ball at the foul line. Place up to 5 players (zombies) in the box at different locations facing different directions.
How to play: The player with the ball must dribble through the box to the other side and make a layup, without a player in the box touching them. Players in the box hold their arms up and out and can only walk in one direction, until they hit a border line and then they can change direction. If a zombie touches the escaper, that zombie becomes the escaper and the drill starts over again.
Run this through with variations including:
More advanced variations:
How this drill helps players improve: This drill helps players build their dribbling skills for high pressure and unpredictable situations.
Set up: Create a line of players on the right side of the 3 point line. Assign the first player to be the witch. Give that player a broom stick (or any stick will do) to hold.
How to play: The witch player gets to put a hex on all the other players by choosing a type of layup they must take and make to become the witch. However the witch has to make the layup first, while holding the broomstick. If they miss the layup they picked, it’s another player’s turn to be the witch, and so on. The other players only need to make the type of layup the witch specifies. Play until someone gets to 5 points first.
Run this through with variations including:
More advanced variations:
How this drill helps players improve: This drill helps work on creative finishing.
Make this week’s practice memorable! Halloween-themed basketball drills for beginners can be a fun way to engage young players while improving their skills. For an easily printable packet, get the complete Halloween drill playbook with all 7 drills from our Etsy shop.
