In his post Calling For The Ball – What If?, Mark Lebedew makes a counterpoint argument to a post of mine. I wanted to continue that discussion.
Calling the ball challenge
The post in question is Getting young players to communicate and move. In it I talk a bit about some ways to encourage players – especially new players – to talk to each other. In his article, Mark makes the very valid point that another level of training needs to come in as soon as multiple players are on the court. Namely, there must be a shift from the technical aspect to the organizational one.
In other words, we have to coach the players on their areas of responsibility. Mark’s argument is basically if players already know which ball is theirs, they don’t really need to talk to each other about it. Are we doing a good enough job of coaching that from the early stages of player and team development?
Serve receive is where this is probably most often considered, though it applies to the transition phases as well. It’s a question of seam management. Who gets the short ball? Who gets the deep ball? Which player takes second ball if the setter digs the first?
Pushing back
I’m going to push back at Mark in a couple of areas.
First, he’s got a quote from a colleague about a group of 14-year-old girls trying to come to a unified decision and how long it takes. I get the idea that’s trying to be put forth, but it’s a poorly constructed argument. Complexity, and thus time, increases exponentially as the number involved increases. It is not reasonable to compare a group decision, which likely is under relatively little time pressure, to a 2-person decision made when time is very much a factor.
The other thing I will push back against is Mark’s end note comment, “A team should be structured in such a way that all areas and phases of the game are covered and that players have specific roles in each situation that provide the BEST outcome for the team.”
I don’t know if technically volleyball has an infinite number of potential scenarios, but it’s for sure a very large number. We cannot possibly have a plan for every one of them. Yes, for standard situations we certainly can, and should. It’s when things veer away from standard that the need for what I will call “responsibility communication” (calling “Mine””) comes in to play. This mainly comes into play when players are not fully aware of the position or situation of their teammate(s).
Here’s my full philosophy on players calling the ball.
It’s not just about responsibility
I’ve written about this before, so I won’t go into it too deeply here. I’ll just say that communication between players isn’t just about defining responsibility. In fact, I’d venture to say it’s not even mostly about that at certain times – largely speaking to Mark’s point about players knowing which balls are theirs and which aren’t.
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