Netball 101

I'm about to impart all my netball wisdom, yes all of it.  Jo (daughter-in-law) texted me and asked if I'd like to go watch a netball game.  She plays in a local league with some friends and since I'd never really heard of netball, let alone seen a game, I figured I might as well give it a go.  I was given some background to the game and some things I picked up while watching the game.  So, here you go.

Not my photo, I found it online

It's like basketball, except there's no backboard, you're not allowed to dribble, when you get the ball you have to stop.... nevermind.  It's not really like basketball at all.  There were 11 people on Jo's team, but you can only have 7 on the court at a time.  As I said, you're not allowed to dribble the ball and the ball looks a lot like a volleyball to me.  When someone passes you the ball you have to stop and then throw the ball to someone else.  You're only allowed to take one step after you've stopped and you can't put both feet on the ground once you take that step, so you're a bit off-balance with one foot off the ground. If you're guarding someone who doesn't have the ball and someone passes them the ball you have to back up and give them 3 feet of space.  Since there's no backboard and you have to give the person with the ball three feet of space, the shooting, as you can imagine, is very different from basketball.  When they get near the net with the ball everyone just stops and the shooter has lots of time to get it in the net.  Jo's team did win despite some biased refereeing (at least that's what I'm told).  It's an interesting game and is much more popular among girls than basketball.  There is boys netball, but it's not as popular and I'm also told that the U.S. has a netball team in the Olympics, not sure where we find our players though.  Does anyone know of somewhere in the U.S. where netball is played?