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Club Philosophy
Overview Competitive volleyball is a special little world where players learn how to
work together to make a successful team. Coaches are the directors of this group
activity. They apply their knowledge to the group's endeavor. Our coaches are
guided by these ideas:
Thoughts About Playing Time The whole point of our club is to provide the means whereby each of our players has the opportunity to develop her or his volleyball skills. The reasons for wanting to improve vary, but we assume that every player loves to play the game. The excitement of serving-, or receiving serve, for match point, the thrill of digging a great spike or stuff-blocking an opponent, the joy of beating the block and crushing a spike just beyond the reach of a defender, or the satisfaction of working together to achieve team goals, these are all examples of the kinds of intrinsic rewards that come naturally in the course of playing great volleyball. But beyond these shared experiences and rewards, each player has individual goals and reasons for playing, and we know that these motivations cover the spectrum. Some players simply want to be good enough to make the cut and be on one of their high school's teams, while others are driven to see if they can earn a place on a collegiate team a few years hence. And a rare few push themselves for even higher accomplishments. Combine these differences in motivation with those of age, strength, and raw athleticism, as well as the variations in individual temperament such as aggressiveness, and you create quite a challenge for club volleyball coaches. And this is compounded by a factor that we won't get into in this note, and that is parental expectations. The options for distributing playing time fall between the extremes of "equal time" and "only the best". Youth teams of novice players often use what is called the "platoon" method which can result in equal time. Basically, if you have 12 players on your roster, you form two six-player teams, and one team plays set 1, and the other plays set 2. This might sound great, but if one of the platoons is very strong, and the other very weak, the playing opportunities will not be equal. Against strong opponents the strong team's set might go on for 30 minutes, and the final score might be 32-30. The weak team might lose to the same opponent in 15 minutes with a score of 4-25. There is nothing equal about this except for the stated intention. The "only the best" method is employed by a number of the "elite" clubs in the Region. With 12 to 14 players on a roster, only 7 or 8 will ever see match time against another team. The presumption here is that simply participating in the practice is an ample development opportunity for those players on the bottom of the ladders. All of the players on such an elite team might be very proficient at a number of specific positions and skills, but in order to play, a player must be judged the best of all remaining choices. For example, a good middle blocker would have to be the team's best or second-best middle blocker in order to see playing time as a middle blocker. I have played on teams like this, and they do produce winning teams. But they don't provide much in the way of development for the bench warmers. The method that I prefer is based upon granting playing time based on players satisfying certain standards of performance at practice and in matches. The idea here is that if everyone serves, for example, over some minimum criteria, say for our U17 team 90% "in" with a decent percentage of aces, then we would try to distribute serving opportunities as equally as possible. If a player wasn't close to being able to serve at the 90% rate, say they were getting just 75% of their serves in, then we would try to organize things so that there would be relatively little opportunity for that player to serve in a match. The same idea can be applied to all the volleyball skills. One of the benefits of this method is that it encourages our players to focus on steady progress at practice, and as players respond to the challenge and improve their performance, it ensures us depth on the bench for those critical matches where our substitutes are often the difference between victory and defeat. To see how this works, consider the serving performance of my Eagle volleyball team last fall. As a team and over the course of all our League matches, we served 1,004 times and scored 177 aces against 160 errors. The team average was 84.1%. Four of our players got better than 86% of their serves in, and as a group they served 649 serves, scoring 112 aces while making 74 errors. Over the course of the season, another player started off at 77%, but she dropped off to 68% in the second half of the season. We reduced the number of opportunities for her to serve from 90 in the first half to 41 in the second half. Meanwhile, yet another player showed steady improvement in her serving from 75% in the first half to 82% in the second half, and we increased her opportunities to serve so that she went from 16 serves in the first half to 71 in the second half. We made these decisions based on serving performance in both practice and in matches. But the practice performance was the real key. Players who wanted to earn time serving in matches had to focus at practice and show that they were capable of getting the job done at the required level. There are two distinct elements in this process that fall upon the coach. One is the development of criteria for performance of fundamental volleyball skills. The other is the evaluation of a player in light of these criteria, and the communication of this evaluation to the player. The expectation must be that a player who satisfies the criteria will see playing time. These expected levels of performance will not be static. They should become more challenging as the season progresses. The player's job is to understand the team's expectations and to see how best he or she might fill a team need or needs. It is also the case that the best niches to occupy are those that are really critical to the team's success, such as serving or serve receive. So if you are worried about playing time, the best thing to do is to earn it at our next practice. Every good serve, every great pass, every crisp transition to your free ball position or to your block coverage assignment gets you that much closer to a larger role in our next tournament. If we understand this and everyone works towards being competent in our jobs, then, for a typical tournament, you can expect a fairly equal division of playing opportunities in the pool play part of the tournament. This will give us a chance to see who is having a great day, and who is struggling. Once we get to the playoffs, we'll start with the players who have been more successful in the pool phase. As we work our way into the bracket, our need for fresh substitutes will increase, and normally more and more players will see playing time. When we win our first tournament this year, you will all be surprised at how much everyone contributed to the team's success. In fact, it is often the least used substitute who finds herself in the position of serving for match point, or stopping an opponent's service run with a great pass. Her success becomes the team's success, she is the one who pushes us over the finish line. We have several very talented teams on our club. They are all a little short on experience, meaning that our practices are super important. If we will commit ourselves to working hard and making progress at practice, then great things will happen. Coach Bob |
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