Archive for Volleyball Coaching Education

Don’t just cite the research, actually read and understand it!

June 15, 2018 Volleyball Coaching Education One comment

I came across a post on social media regarding an academic study of serve-reception. Here’s the full quote.

A study published in the Journal of Sports Sciences by Paulo et al. (Paulo A, Zaal FTJM, Seifert L, Fonseca S, Araújo D. Predicting volleyball serve-reception at group level, 2018) showed that, about serve-receive success “decreasing alignment of the receiver with the ball and the target increased the chances of using the underhand-lateral pass, and that the use of the underhand-lateral pass was associated with lower quality receptions”. So, if you play volleyball do not be lazy, move your feet fast (you will only move fast if you lower your hips and stay on your toes), place your body and platform BEHIND the ball, if you want to increase your chances to succeed in serve receive. Do not trust side passes. Science is saying that!

The last couple of sentences jumped out at me. They are clearly interpretations of the paper findings, ones seen to support the idea of center-line passing. Focusing a lot on that is something I’m not a fan of beyond introductory teaching, as you will see if you follow the link.

But that’s not the point of this post. Instead, I want to focus on the analysis side of things.

Being the curious sort, and having lots of experience reviewing this kind of research from my own PhD work, I read the paper in question. Not surprisingly, reading the paper produced two significant issues with regards to the social media post.

First, the results don’t make a strong case. Yes, the authors of the study did find that receiving the ball in the center line – what they refer to as “underhand-frontal pass” – did produced better passing results than passing outside the center line (underhand-lateral pass). They described the difference, however, as being weak from a statistical perspective.

Second – and this is the bigger problem – the causality is unclear. By that I mean we don’t know if the passers opted to pass outside their center line, or whether they were forced to do so by the serve. Given that the sample is from international level men’s players and includes topspin jump serves, I’m inclined to believe it’s not really a question of choice.

I think we can agree that a ball hit hard outside your body line is harder to pass than one hit straight at you. You simply don’t have as much time to get a well-positioned platform in place. Forget about moving your feet! Naturally, we expect these more difficult serves to produce worse passes on average. Despite this, the authors of the paper don’t see a big difference, statistically, between lateral and center-line passing performance.

Could it be that in fact lateral passing would prove superior if considering equally difficult serves? Well, we know in terms of hard serves going outside the body that center-line passing is basically impossible. What about slower or closer serves where you could get the ball center line, though? Could it be that lateral passing would show better results? This paper provides no insights in that regard.

So the poster of the item above has attempted to use as support for their own views research which at best only offers weak evidence. Really, it provides no evidence at all because the analysis of technique does not control for serve characteristics (i.e. difficulty).

There’s more issues

There’s also a major issue with this paper in that the sample the authors use is extremely narrow. It includes only four passers. They all come from the Portuguese Men’s National Team. So we’re making judgements based on the performance of just a few male players of a certain caliber in one team receiving serves from servers they’d probably passed against many, many times before in training.

Can you see how this might be a problem in terms of being representative?

That automatically says you should draw no real conclusions from the findings. I’m not saying there isn’t some quite interesting stuff. There certain is, both in this paper and this one the same authors did focused on single receiver passing. What I am saying is the best you can do with this kind of research is to say something like, “That’s interesting. We should explore it more deeply.”

Don’t be that poster

Please, please, please take the time to actually read any research presented to you. Don’t accept what people say about the research at face value – especially if that person might have an agenda, like supporting their own position. That was what tipped me off in this particular case. Also, don’t cherry pick from your own perspective. Don’t just present research that you think supports your case and ignore or downplay the stuff that contradicts you. Confirmation bias is a real issue for us all.

There’s a phrase I heard a while back that I think is a good one to live by in this sort of context. It is “strong views, loosely held”. That means you are strong in your belief, but able to change your mind on things when presented with good evidence. It’s not about being right. It’s about getting it right.

An Englishman at the AVCA Spring Conference

June 13, 2018 N-R, Volleyball Coaching Education No comments

My friend Alex Porter, who heads up the volleyball program at the University of Essex (I visited him there in 2017) in England attended the 2018 AVCA Spring Conference that took place in conjunction with the NCAA men’s championship at UCLA. I thought a non-American’s perspective on the experience would be interesting, so I asked him if he’d be willing to write about it. He did, and here it is!

To my knowledge I’m only the second English man to visit an AVCA event – the first to visit their Spring Conference.

I’ve heard many things about the AVCA Annual Convention, over 2000 coaches and 400 plus exhibitors, “the world’s largest volleyball coaching gathering”. The Conference is a very different event with a little under 100 attendees and offers a more personal touch.

I’ve attended the Volleyball England Coaches Conference a handful of times and always felt there was a lot left on the table. This is not to put down their efforts, but until you go outside your comfort zone you don’t always know what is possible. I went into the AVCA Spring Conference with an open mind, ready to learn on and off the court, to learn what data they use to improve their athletes/programs, how they market the sport and how to get more bums on seats.

Prior to the conference I contacted AVCA Executive Director Katy DeBoer and at the Friday night networking event she was keen to hear about the university and coaching structure in the England. She was very open about the development of coaching and volleyball in the USA and how the AVCA mission statement helps facilitates both.

I arrived at the Marriott on the opening day and was expecting to see a fan fair of banners, product stools and the hustle and bustle of lots of coaches. I needed to remind myself that this was the Spring Conference and not the Convention. The welcome I received from the staff was very friendly but it felt a little underwhelming due to the size of the room and the number of attendees.

The order of service for the day was a The State of the Sport keynote from Kathy followed by two 90 minutes sessions. Each session had three options Training Technique, Fan Engagement and Tracking Performance. I was interested in all three and thankfully they were being recorded and are accessible via the AVCA website. After this there was a networking event by the pool.

I found Kathy’s speech very eye opening. The AVCA has collated a lot of numbers on the growth of the sport, on how and where this growth has occurred and more importantly how traditional marketing companies/departments target sport and why it’s different in volleyball, especially women’s volleyball. She went on to explain how in recent years incoming university recruits are now arriving with chronic injuries and this is something the sport needs to look at seriously. This was followed by some of the opportunities and successes that the sport is receiving. Over the last 7 year men’s volleyball has added 88 men’s college varsity programmes mainly based in tuition focused institutions and beach volleyball is flourishing.

Focus
Training Technique Fan Engagement Tracking Performance
Session 1 “Making a Good Setter Better” – Mick Haley “You are the Media!” – Katie Gwinn Hewitt, University of Michigan “No Numbers? No Clue!” – Guiseppe Vinci
No skill has more theories and methods, and no player gets more attention from coaches. What works, how do we train it, and what cues resonate with skilled setters? Social media has allowed programs the ability to reach the community directly without solely relying on traditional media to cover them. What are we training to? What numbers? What standards? What pacing? Without these metrics, we are guessing at the training regiment to prepare for elite performance. See what we know.
Session 2 “Serving: The Only Solo Skill” – Brian Gimmillaro “Not Your Parents’ Recaps” – Aaron Sagraves, Cornerstone University “Integrating Volleyball Injury Data into Performance Training Decisions” – Kyle Norris, MS, ATC, LAT, avcaVPI™ Biomechanics Consultant
Elite serving is a combination of physical and mental execution. Getting both right scores points. Reworking the standard press release to encourage more interaction Individual player mechanics impact injury risk. Strategies to protect the most vulnerable areas.

I stayed for the “You are the Media!” with Katie Gwinn Hewitt. In England we need some serious help with marketing our sport. Katie’s message was very simple- stories. People like stories, sponsors like stories and fan’s like stories they can relate to. Look at who is on your team, the ethos of the team and tell a story to create some traction. If you have an athlete studying social media let them have a Snap Chat take over. Do you have a budding journalist on your roster, let them create a number of pieces on their team mates that you can drip feed over the season. Every programme has a different approach to social media and fan engagement. I’ll be scanning the NCAA teams to see if there is something that will work for us. Once our reach increases, the traditional media should start to take notice.

The University of Essex is a research based institution and our HPU (Human Performance Unit) conducts numerous research projects each year, our staff share research papers with each other hence my reason for attending the Integrating Volleyball Injury Data into Performance Training Decisions with Kyle Norris.

Kyle covered a number of subject areas including sleep deprivation, postural and scapular control, glut med activation and “normal” biomechanics. Most of this I have read before in research papers but it’s great to revisit it and to be able to ask questions around these areas. I plan to contact Kyle to discuss our programme and the avcaVPI™ database which I never knew existed. To quote Guiseppe Vinci of Volley Metrics “No Numbers? No Clue!”

Most of the attendees and staff attended the networking event for some hor d’oeuvres and beverages by the Marriot poolside. Having an English accent meant I stuck out and people were very inquisitive.  I spoke with Kathy, club coaches and owners, teachers and the AVCA Hall of Famer, Mick Haley. I knew of Mick from watching the Sydney Olympics but I hadn’t put two and two together, Mick and his wife were great fun, his stories were as relevant today as they were when they happened the first time.

I spent the evening in the hotel bar with other university and college coaches. It was nice to hear they faced similar challenges to a greater or lesser extent.

DAY 2

Session 1 “General Session: Promoting Volleyball Player Well Being” – Aaron Brock,  USAVolleyball Sports Medicine and Performance Director
Training Technique Fan Engagement Tracking Performance
Session 2 “No One can Pass!” – Brian Gimmillaro “Media is Friend, Not Foe” – Tom Feuer, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism “How We Track Performance in the USA Volleyball Gym” – Jimmy Stitz, USA Volleyball Women’s Sports Physiologist
From basics to subtleties of higher level technique – why are so few players great at passing? What exactly should you be doing to ensure the media has everything it needs to best cover your program? Learn how to be more proactive than reactive. Managing repetitions in an efficient way is critical to preparation, rehab, and injury prevention.
Session 3 “The Mechanics of Attacking” – Mick Haley “Story-telling: Going Beyond the Box Score” – Katie Morgan, The University of San Francisco “Training Jumpers” – Tim Pelot, United States Olympic Committee Senior Sports Physiologist
Footwork, load, swing – we all think we know it -yet even elite players have flaws Your team is more than stats, so you’ll learn the best methods to tell the story of your student-athletes and coaches Techniques for training jumpers can be counter intuitive. See how the senior teams physically prepare their jumpers
Session 4 “It’s not the Drill, It’s the Feedback” – Mick Haley and Brian Gimmillaro  “Putting Butts in the Seats” – Aaron Villalobos, Grand Canyon University “Injury Prevention – Keeping Them in the Gym” – Tim Pelot, United States Olympic Committee Senior Sports Physiologist
Engaging players in game-like training is the fastest way for them to become proficient in matches, yet simply running drills just reinforces bad habits. Where is the balance, when do we switch, how do we provide feedback? How do we engage our community to increase attendance? What kind of in-game promotions are run to ensure the audience stays “into” the match? These questions and more will be answered. We will not turn back the clock on specialization or earlier training; our task is to counteract the negatives of overuse. Teaching athletes to take control of their health and showing them ways to strengthen their weak sides is critical to keeping them in the gym.

The next morning we all met for breakfast. If I had to pick the worst part of the conference it was the breakfast, this coming from an Englishman, I know. Let’s get this right. It wasn’t bad, but after spending a week in the US and staying at a Marriott let’s just say you would expect more.

We headed over to UCLA’s campus for the rest of the day.

The first session of the day was with Aaron Brock, USA Volleyball Sports Medicine and Performance Director on “Promoting Volleyball Player Well Being”. This was the slickest of all the presentation and to be honest this should be at the forefront of any programme. Athlete and coaches well-being are super important, not just for the few years they are involved in a programme but also the rest of their lives. I enjoyed this session, it was thought provoking and I will adjust my programme after considering how best to use what I learnt.

I then headed over to the “How We Track Performance in the USA Volleyball Gym” with Jimmy Stitz who is the USA Volleyball Women’s Sports Physiologist. I love my data and this was an insight into what, how and why the USA Volleyball do what they do. There are lots of gadgets out there, Jimmy went through different tools they have used including different ways they’ve used them and the results that have and haven’t worked. For example basic assumptions on power and power/weight rations related to jump height and how/why you use video feedback and the flaws with it. Jimmy knows what his talking about and his insights are again thought provoking.

I keep saying it’s thought provoking and that’s because they were. These aren’t session where you’re going to find the exact solution for your situation. They make you think about how your programme is structured, why it’s like that and how things can be modified for the better etc.

I then attended two court based sessions with Mick Haley about “The Mechanics of Attacking” and with Mick and Brian Gimmilaro for “It’s not the Drill, It’s the Feedback”.  These confirmed a lot of my thoughts…every athlete will execute a skill differently but you must do the basics well. The last session of the day with Brain and Mick went a bit off topic but that’s what the group wanted so we got more out of it. It became more of a Q&A and attendees were about to pick their brains. Afterwards some of the attendees, including myself, continued the conversation with Mick and Brain.

When the Conference finished everyone went to the D1 Championship match. I watched the game for enjoyment sake, trying not to analysis it too much. I was a commentator for the BBC at the London 2012 final and this year’s D1 finals were up there with it. The game was fast paced and exciting. The 7,000+ fans supporting two local team were active, vocal and supported their teams in the right way.

But there was something special about this game (sorry Ryan it wasn’t the fact we had our first English athlete in a D1 final). It was the entertainment factor. The crowd hadn’t gone to watch a volleyball game, they had gone to support their teams AND be entertained. The compere got the crowd involved, the YELL squads livened up not only the student section, but got the rest of the crowd going. UCLA were giving out free tickets to their students 30 minutes before the game started and they were climbing over each other to get them. This was an event that had a lot of hype around it and the buzz and wow factor made it special.

After the final everyone went their separate ways which was a shame as there would have been value in reviewing the final as a group. I also think the Conference could have been over the weekend instead of Fri/Sat so there could have been additional sessions.

Would I recommend it? Yes! Was it worth the investment of time, money, etc for a international coach? That’s a bit trickier. A $1,000 airfare, plus $300 fee and $250 hotel, and suddenly it gets pricey for a two day event. I was already in America and only staying at the hotel for two nights, so it became more manageable. If I was in the same scenario I would, without doubt, attend again – even if it was just to spend more time with Mick Haley.

I’d like to say a special thank you to Kathy DeBeor and Mick Haley. They both took time out to speak with me. They were genuinely interested in my opinions and my reasons for attending. Actually, everyone I met was very welcoming and that’s another reason to attend, as the groups were small there were opportunities to speak with the same people if you wanted to carry on those conversations.

Improving coaching education

May 8, 2018 Volleyball Coaching Education No comments

This article has some really thought-provoking things to say about coaching education. It’s main thrust is that coaching education must focus much less on sports science, exercise physiology, bio-mechanics, skill acquisition, sports psychology, sports nutrition etc. The author makes the point that this was all necessary years ago, but that’s no long the case. Why? Because so much information is readily available online these days. That just wasn’t true before.

The author actually takes things a step further. He questions the value of spending a lot of time sports science and these other topics from the “what matters” perspective. By that I mean he says if you ask what makes for a great coach, knowledge of these technical elements are way down the list. I read somewhere else that motor learning only accounts for like 5% of what coaches do with their teams. It’s something I talk about here. I don’t take that figure as strictly accurate. It is at least indicative, though.

For me, there are a couple of takeaways from this article.

First, if the more science-oriented stuff represents a small minority of what we actually do, then it should similarly be a small amount of our study and development. Obviously, there’s a basic level of understanding required.That means an initial investment of time. Beyond that, though, it’s just about keeping up with the research.

Second, it makes pretty clear that coaching education needs to spend a lot more time on so-called “soft” skills. Think of this as at least partly related to the idea that, “They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” I’ve long felt that courses tend to fall well short when it actual comes to teaching how to manage players and teams.

The third thing that comes to mind is how we think about coaching education. A big problem for newer coaches is they don’t know what they don’t know. This idea has come up in many of the Volleyball Coaching Wizards interviews. The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know. I think it would be good for us to help developing coaches understand better what they don’t know – and from there, how they can learn about it.

So how do we develop better coaching education with these things in mind?

If you think coaching is easy, you’re probably doing it wrong

April 11, 2018 Volleyball Coaching Education No comments

Mark Lebedew wrote a post titled How To Become A Coach. In it he shares a story about a former player relatively new to coaching talking about how hard it is to coach. I’ve heard something similar in my own coaching travels at different times. Players often don’t realize the amount of work that goes into good coaching. As a result, when they attempt to make a shift into coaching after they finish playing they get a major shock.

I’ve long been a proponent of players doing some coaching along the way. Many of the college players I’ve coached over the years have coached juniors. The three Americans on the Svedala team I coached professionally in Sweden were coaches for the club’s youth teams. One the one hand, I thinking coaching makes players better. They learn to look at things differently, and that can have a real positive impact on their play. On the other hand, the experience of being a coach helps them appreciate better the sorts of things their own coaches deal with on a regular basis.

Of course, some of the players are better coaches than others. That’s a function – at least in part – of having the types of skills coaching requires. They aren’t the same as those necessary to play volleyball at a high level.

None of them are really good coaches, though, for a couple of simple reasons. One is lack of experience, and the other is lack of education. The latter is Mark’s primary point in his piece. Paraphrasing, he says go to every course, clinic, practice, and match you can; talk to everyone you can and ask lots of questions; and do all the work you have to do, even if you don’t like. And you have to keep doing it. This is something I wholeheartedly endorse, having done just that sort of thing myself, with examples here, here, and here.

It should be noted that education is not enough, though. One of my early Volleyball Coaching Wizards interviews was with Paulo Cunha. For many years he directed coaching education in his native Portugal. Paulo made the comment during our conversation that just getting a certification doesn’t make you a coach. People may think it does, but in some ways it’s just the beginning of the process.

Coaching is a challenge on many levels. If it isn’t, you’re probably not doing it right. To my mind, that’s a big part of what makes it interesting and compelling.

 

Report: 2017 USA Volleyball High Performance Coaches Clinic

February 15, 2017 N-R, Volleyball Coaching Education No comments

Back in 2015 I attended my first USA Volleyball High Performance Coaches Clinic. I wrote a report about the experience. I just attended the 2017 edition, along with the Level III Coaches Accreditation Program (CAP). Here’s the report on that one.

Day 1

As per usual, the program began in the evening with a social and USAV presentation. The presentations focused on 2016 developments in the various national programs. We heard about what was happening in the High Performance program from its director. Karch Kiraly took us through things for the Women’s National Team, and Nate Ngo from the Men’s staff did the same for them. We also got to hear from Bill Hamiter on the performance of the sitting teams. The last part featured Kathy DeBoer (AVCA), Jerritt Elliot (Texas), and Alexis Shifflett (women’s sitting team player) sharing short personal stories. After that it was just mingling and socializing.

Day 2

The first full day began in the gym. Jerritt Elliot went first. He focused on middle blocker transition. In particular, he concentrated on the transition from the net to attack readiness being as quick and efficient as possible. Keegan Cook (Washington) followed up with a session on transition offense. He shared some interesting heat maps and stats related to passing targets and other things. The third court session was from Beth Launiere (Utah) on serve receive offense.

Following the normal pattern, the court sessions were followed by breakout groups. Attendees are divided into a number of groups (6-8 people) in advance for these. They are then assigned members of the clinic cadre on a rotating basis. This is to allow for follow-on discussion guided by those cadre. Unlike in 2015, I did not get any of the higher profile small group leaders.

The last two morning sessions were in the presentation theatre. Nikki Holmes (North Carolina State/Girls’ Youth National Team) and Jesse Tupac (Denver) talked about data collection and statistics use. The other session was by Jimmy Stitz, the sports psychologist and strength & conditioning coach for the Women’s National Team.

After lunch, Dr. Andrew Gregory (Assistant professor of Orthopedics and Pediatrics, Vanderbilt University) did a good session on injury prevention and supplement use. Bill Hamiter came next with a more detailed exploration of the Women’s Sitting Team’s build up to the Paralympics and performance in them. Wrapping up the trio, Karch did a talk about transitions. Small group breakout sessions followed.

There was a “mic’d up match” that evening featuring Keegan and Beth leading teams that evening. I did not attend, though.

Day 3

It was back in the gym for two sessions to start the day. Beth did her session on blocking. In particular, she talked about differentiating in-system vs. out-of-system schemes. She also talked about how blockers could prepare for transition. Keegan did the second session. It was titled “Practice to Performance”. It looked at ways of doing some basic stats in practice and how those could be applied. Small group break-outs followed.

Back in the lecture theatre, Aaron Brock (USA Men’s Athletic Trainer) did a talk focused largely on recovery. After that, Shelton Collier (Wingate) and Jonah Carson (Mountain View VB Club) did a joint session on coaching mentorship. In particular, they focused on efforts in the High Performance program to develop the coaches there.

After lunch, Matt Fuerbringer (Men’s National Team) did a court session on transition work. Karch came after that doing his own session. It didn’t really seem to focus on any one thing in particular. Karch just coached a practice session with the demonstration players and everyone watched. Again, small group sessions came after.

The final two sessions were once more in the theatre. Kathy DeBoer did a DISC-oriented presentation. The main thrust of it was understanding differences in personality types and how that impacts communication and interaction. Finally, there was a panel discussion. It featured five members of the Women’s Sitting team talking about their experiences.

Thoughts and Observations

The demonstration team was a groups of 14s. Apparently, they were a last minute fill in. This created some challenges for the coaches presenting court sessions. On the one hand it made things less efficient than would have been true with older, better players. On the other hand, many of the attendees were club coaches working with players in similar age groups. That made things more directly translatable for them. Also, they couldn’t say stuff like, “That’s all good, but it doesn’t apply to my level.”

I’m to the point where on-court sessions don’t really do a lot for me anymore. There were a couple of interesting nuggets, but mainly I was waiting for them to be done so I could get out of the uncomfortable bleachers. Some of the theatre sessions were repeats of material from CAP III, but mostly it was interesting.

For me, though, the biggest benefit to the HPCC is the location and what it allows. The event is at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. That means there are dorms available and a common dining hall. I didn’t stay in the dorm this time around (did in 2015), but once more the meals were great. They are excellent opportunities to talk with other coaches – from national team staff all the way down to local area youth coaches. This makes for a different type of event than something like the AVCA Convention.

I’m not saying the HPCC is necessarily better than the AVCA. The latter is much more college oriented, while the former caters more to Juniors coaches. I do think, though, that the single track and common dining help to make it a bit more intimate.

USA Volleyball CAP III

February 14, 2017 Volleyball Coaching Education No comments

Each year USA Volleyball runs the High Performance Coaches Clinic (HPCC). In conjunction with it, they run all three of the Coaches Accreditation Program (CAP) courses. While the CAP I and II courses are run multiple times each year in different locations, CAP III is only run alongside the HP clinic (at least that was the case until 2018).

I attended the 2017 edition. Here is the schedule for the course.

As you can see, the course ran Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday. They were all very full days. The days in between were HPCC sessions, which were also quite packed.

Cadre (in order of presentations)

Bill Hamiter: Director of USA Sitting Volleyball and Head Coach of the women’s sitting team (gold medal at the 2016 Paralympics).

Rob Browning: Head Coach at Saint Mary’s College.

Marouane Jafir: Club Director at Delaware United.

Todd Dagenais: Head Coach at Central Florida.

Sue Gozansky: Volleyball Coaching Wizard.

Joan Powell: Coordinator of Officials for PAC-12 Conference.

John Kessel: USA Volleyball Director of Sport Development.

Bill Neville: Volleyball Coaching Wizard.

Dan Mickle: Former professional beach player and current sports psychology specialist.

Day 1

We began with an initial all-levels introduction encompassing CAP I, II, and III groups. After that, though, we split off into our own cohorts. Our first session was on prioritization. Bill Hamiter was the presenter. He shared his very detailed 52-week program for the national sitting team with us. We were also given a copy of Periodization Training for Sports-3rd Edition. After that Rob Browning spoke with us about mindset work. It was largely based on the Carol Dweck book. I’ve read it, so not a lot of new material there.

Our first on-court session was lead by Todd Dagenais. We were put into groups and told to develop a serve reception organization for a 3-Middle line-up based on a given situation. We presented them to the group and had to work through variations based on changing issues. For example, “What if your OH can’t hit on the right?”. Basically it was an exercise in critical thinking and creativity.

After lunch we went back into the classroom. Sue Gozansky led a discussion of gender related issues in coaching, with Bill Hamiter adding his thoughts. John Kessel then talked with us about a variety of false beliefs and failures in conceptual understanding in volleyball. Those included the myth of the wrist snap and realizing how little time players actually spend touching the ball (one study calculated it was about 27 seconds during the 2012 Olympics).

Bill Neville took us back on-court after that. We presented favorite drills and games for analysis by the group and cadre. From there it was back into the classroom for a sports psychology session led by Sue Gozansky. After the dinner break there was some sitting volleyball play with the CAP II and III groups mixed together.

Day 2

The whole morning was in the classroom. A group of the cadre talked with us first about developing team culture. After that there was about an hour of open Q&A with Todd and Rob. That was supposed to be about talent identification, but the guys figured we probably knew enough about that already. Recruiting was a big focus of the questions.

Next up was a really interesting session on nutrition given by Dr. Jackie Berning. It focused mainly on the timing of athlete meals and their nutritional content. She shot down a number of common public concepts (think paleo diets and the like).

After nutrition we did a DISC small-group exercise led by Dan Mickle. As I have been through a few of these sessions before, there wasn’t a lot new in this one. Maybe there was more new material for others, however.

Once more to the classroom after lunch. This time conflict resolution was the focus, with Bill Hamiter in the lead. From there we went back out on the court for more sharing of favorite games and drills and constructive criticism of them. We were also assigned into groups of 2-3 to develop practice segment plans for presentation on Day 3.

The last session was presented by Aaron Brock. He is the lead strength coach for the USA men’s team. He talked with us about strength and conditioning, with a heavy emphasis on rest and recovery.

Day 3

This day was largely spent on-court. It began, though, with Todd presenting on stats. He shared his findings on where teams needed to be in certain areas from his own research. For example, in the women’s game you should target a sideout rate of about 63%. He also shared some methods for collecting key stats when you’re by yourself.

Most of the rest of the day we presented and critiqued a variety of games and drills for warm-up, skills work, systems training, competitive play, and cool down. After that wrapped up we went back into the classroom. John Kessel and a lacrosse coach who works with USOC talked about Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD). The last session was a presentation of everyone’s ideas for their outreach projects. More on that below.

Post-Course requirements

The single biggest thing we need to do following the in-person portion of the CAP III course is our outreach project. This is basically something with a focus on growing the game in some fashion. That could be bringing more participants into the sport, expanding coaching education, and stuff like that. We met with members of the cadre during meal breaks to talk about our ideas to help get them refined. Then, as noted above, we shared them with the entire group to get additional thoughts, ideas, etc.

The other post- course requirement we were told about was to develop a set of questions from the periodization book I mentioned above. They will be used for future CAP exams, presumably.

Thoughts

Inevitably, I compare doing CAP III with going through the Volleyball England Level 3 certification. Their main focus is very similar, namely working with teams over time. The V.E. course ran 5 days total, which is longer on the face of it, but when you add in the HPCC mixed in here (everyone attended both), they are comparable from that perspective. The V.E. post-course requirements were a bit more involved, though. Nominally, there was a CAP III requirement to video yourself coaching for review and discussion, but that never actually happened in this course. We also don’t have to do a coaching log. The outreach project is something V.E. doesn’t have, however, nor is there an ongoing education requirement in order to retain your certification.

I think I’ve written elsewhere of my dislike for the participants in these sorts of courses also being demonstrators. Some people love getting out on the court, but I’m well past those days myself. More meaningfully, however, if most of the attendees are on-court they tend to be more focused on playing than on learning the concepts being presented. Also, the level of play of the attendees can be quite variable. Further, when you don’t know what you’re going to have for demonstrators it can be hard to come up with appropriate games and drills to run the group through.

My only other bit of feedback would be to watch out for overlapping content between CAP III and HPCC. There were a couple of sessions during the latter we’d already gotten from our CAP presentations.

Conclusion

I submitted my outreach project report in late November or December 2017. That completed my requirements. There were some staffing issues at USA Volleyball along the way, so I didn’t get my final certification until early March. From what I heard, my classmates received theirs at basically the same time.

AVCA Convention 2016 – Wrap-up

December 19, 2016 N-R, Volleyball Coaching Education No comments

The AVCA Convention for 2016 is over. See my reports on Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3. I want to wrap things up in this post, and provide my final thoughts.

I only actually attended one session on the final day (Saturday) of the convention. That one focused on fundraising – something of immediate potential use for us at MSU as we plan an overseas trip for August 2017. It was probably a little more long-term in thinking, as it focused largely on developing relationships. I still came away with some good thoughts on what we can do, though.

Aside from that session, I mostly just talked with some people.

I ran into one of the leaders of Juniors in New England. That’s where I came up as a coach, but I haven’t been involved in a decade. Hearing the progress made since then was interesting. The inter-regional tournament we started in about 2003 as a 10-court January event is now a big 3-day convention center-based competition. They also now run another big tournament in Boston in early March. Plus, membership is growing at 10% a year. That’s awesome!

I also saw a former college club teammate of mine. He’s the assistant coach at our alma mater, and in line for the head job now that the head coach is retired. I think the last time we saw each other was 2013 when I visited them in pre-season.

Of course the NCAA Division I final match was that night. I did not attend, but those I spoke with afterwards said the environment was much better than for Thursday’s Semifinals.

Overall, I enjoyed the event quite a bit. Although the city of Seattle was more interesting to me, I didn’t have as good an experience at the convention there in 2013. That is a function of not knowing as many people there, though. I had lost a lot of contacts after my years away from US volleyball (see my reports here, here, here, and here), and was there by myself. I have since developed a based of contacts, and it’s always more fun when you can spend time with people you know.

AVCA Convention 2016 – Day 3

December 17, 2016 N-R, Volleyball Coaching Education No comments

My third day at the AVCA Convention was a pretty big one (see Day 1 and Day 2).

It started with attending the early morning “Super Session”. That combined five 15-minute presentations with recognition of coaches reaching victory milestones. One of the latter was 1900! The presentations included Chris McGown talking back row attacks in women’s volleyball, Christa Dietzen talking about wearable tech for health management, Terry Pettit on skill vs. talent, Roberta Kraus talking about converting threat into confidence, and Giovanni Guidetti sharing why he coaches so much. They were all good sessions.

Actually, I was shaking my head during Guidetti’s presentation. It was very entertaining, but he shared some things that were in my own presentation later on! I was glad he only talked for 15 minutes. 🙂

After that I sat in a on a session about performance statistics at different levels. The figures were interesting, but I found the overall presentation went off too often into coaching methods.

Next up was my own presentation. I had no idea how it was going to go. The slides I prepared could have been too few or too many. All in all, I think it went well. The guy running the room told me the attendance was something like 233. No bad, especially up against the All-America awards banquet. And no one left until we reached the Q&A period. Even then it was only a couple.

After that I went to Guidetti’s presentation on the Dutch Women’s National Team’s Olympic build up and experience. This was part of the pre-convention programming. It had to be done on Friday because of Guidetti’s travel requirements. He talked about taking over the program a couple years back, and the qualification process. Of course he also talked about the Rio Games. He shared quite a lot of statistics on all facets of play, which was interesting.

Guidetti also did an on-court presentation after that. It was on blocking and defense. I wanted to attend, but I got caught up talking to some people. The other MSU assistant went, though. He takes lots of notes! 🙂

The last seminar for me was one on developing your coaching philosophy. I mainly went to see Bill Neville and Sue Gozansky. They ran the session as part of CAP. You can see my own coaching philosophy, as it currently stands.

The rest of the day was mainly about networking. I connected with some folks I know and met some new ones. Among the latter was Avital Selinger. He is son of the legendary Arie Selinger and an accomplished coach in his own right.

Things wrapped up on Saturday.

AVCA Convention 2016 – Day 2

December 16, 2016 N-R, Volleyball Coaching Education No comments

Educational sessions were in full flow Thursday (see Wednesday’s program). I attended three of them.

The first session was nominally about the most important things for point scoring in mens’ and boys’ volleyball. It turned out to basically be a talk about serving and blocking. There was supposed to be a discussion of transition play too, but there wasn’t enough time. The men’s coaches for Stanford, Ohio State, and UCLA made up the panel.

The second session was on in-match setter management. Salimia Rockwell of Penn State was the presenter. It was a really entertaining talk. A lot of what Salima talked about actually had to do with pre-match work. That’s scouting and game-planning.

The last session I attended could be thought of as kind of statistical benchmarks. It was a look at key team statistical performance metrics. They went through 14s girls, 16s boys, Division I and II college men, and Division I college women. The presentation showed a couple of things. One was which metrics most correlate to winning, while the other was where teams came in at for those metrics.

More sessions were on tap for Friday. I also had a Wizards-themed presentation to make. It was to be a long day in the convention center!

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