How to move an object without impacting it's natural gravitational behavior

Hi — I'm working on a concept where player controls the ball's forward motion. However, when the ball climbs a certain height, it doesn't drop naturally due to the forward velocity—it literally flies until gravity slowly brings it to the ground.

So instead I've considered something like this (below) where instead of controlling the ball velocity, the player controls a hollow block that traps the ball inside it and pushes it forward:

The behavior is exactly what I want, but unfortunately, this doesn't work well the because the ball keeps escaping the collider. I've tried dynamic continuous collision with/without rigid body for the block— no luck.

I'd love to hear if there is a more clever way of doing this. Perhaps something less expensive that it doesn't rely on collisions with a "pusher" object. Any idea/feedback is appreciated.