On Tuesday I had one of those types of coaching duties that all of us have to deal with along the way. I had to attend an Elitserien league season kick-off meeting in Falköping. That’s where the Swedish federation has their national training center and the national volleyball academy (RIG). It’s in the middle part of the country. I left home a bit after 6:00 AM and returned around 11:30PM, with most of what happened in between being travel.
All the men’s and women’s Elitserien clubs sent their managers, coaches, and captains (well, at least most of them) for what was a kind of combination administrative and press event. The clubs all did presentations on their squads and their expectations for the season to come – mostly in Swedish, though a couple of the men’s teams presented in English. Pictures were taken. Some folks were interviewed (not us from Svedala).
At the end the managers had a meeting together while the players and coaches sat in on a presentation by Volleyball Coaching Wizards interviewee Ismo Peltoarvo on physical performance measurement. Ismo has taken over overseeing the national training center and part of what he wants to do it to develop a database of player performance metrics across all ages and levels for both genders for use in benchmarking and comparison. The main thrust of the presentation was to encourage the clubs to both measure and report, which will be facilitated by some free tools the federation will be making available.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the whole experience was finding out that the Women’s Elitserie clubs had voted Hylte/Halmstad as the favorites to win the league this year. They got 4 votes and no other club got more than 1. You may recall that was the team we beat in the finals of the pre-season tournament we played in. A little bit of motivational material there! 🙂
I also met a couple of coaches at the meeting who know of me through my online efforts, including this blog. One coaches at the RIG and with the Swedish U19 women’s team. We talked a bit about my two players who are in that team for the upcoming NEVZA championships. The other is the men’s coach at Falkenberg. He’s an American who came over as a player, then shifted into coaching and has now been here for 12 years.
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