Hi there!

    As a fellow athlete who has suffered from the same problem a few times before, I would like to give my opinion on what I think you could do in this situation. Personally, I wouldn’t call out for the pass and instead prepare to make a follow up play. However, it really depends on the context, what kind of person you are, and the relationship between you and your teammate.

    For example, if you know your teammate is not good enough to compensate for hogging the ball to himself or is in a situation where he is surrounded and won’t be able to do anything good for the team in his current position, then you should ask him to pass the ball. Instead of ‘telling’ him to pass, it would probably more beneficial to ask sincerely and state why you think he should pass, as well as listening to his reasons for being a ballhog.

    Your own personality type matters in making this decision as well. This may not apply to you since we could have different personality types, but when I personally experienced these kinds of dilemmas in football (soccer), I normally didn’t say anything because I’m more of a quiet and introverted person and get shy calling out for a pass like that. I wasn’t really serious about this sport at that time though, so wanting a win wasn’t so important as to push me out of my comfort zone. I think it’s also really important to think about whether or not calling for a pass would push yourself or anyone else outside their comfort zone, and to act off of that judgement.

   Besides me, I also have other friends who have gone through similar situations. One of them had their brother on the same team, who often refused to share the ball. Overall, they had a pretty good relationship with each other but would often have fights with each other because of the ball hogging. In my friend’s case, he would yell for a pass from his brother without any concern for their relationship since they would always reconcile later on. From this, you could also consider whether it would be easy to fix your relationship with your teammate after calling out for a pass. If you have the kind of relationship where most conflicts could be resolved over a small conversation, then by all means, call out for the pass.

    The best course of action will always be different because the context of the situation will never be the same, so to summarize my opinion on this situation, you could:

1. Call out for a pass if you think it’s necessary to score a point or if you feel that you could easily repair a damaged relationship

2. Not call out for the pass and watch how it will play out

3. If you know he has a tendency of hogging the ball, talk before games and ask him to pass the ball to other teammates more, including your reasoning

   In your case where you’re not sure if calling for a pass would ruin your relationship, you could also position yourself to help your teammate by moving to a place where it would be easy to pass to you if he ever gets in trouble, or you could go to a place to prepare to follow-up just in case your teammate messes up and loses the ball.

Hope this helps!