This is an entry in my volleyball coaching log for the 2017-18 season.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks!
Player stuff
Most of the team is in town at this point. Some are taking Summer classes and some are working. They are all working out with our Strength Coach to a greater or lesser degree depending on their schedule. We’re trying to get their Fall schedules set up so we can nail down reasonable practice times, but it isn’t easy.
Actually, it’s not just about practices. It’s also about keeping them away from situations where they will miss a lot of classes. For example, we play six Tuesday evening matches. That means anyone taking a Tuesday evening class will miss about half the sessions. In some cases, that may be fine. In others, though, it presents a major problem.
Oh, and we’ve already had a couple of the freshmen get into trouble. They were late for a workout session with our Strength Coach. That got them locked out of the weight room and given punishment exercises. I suppose it’s better to get that kind of thing out of the way now rather than later!
Scheduling
This week we finally nailed down our Fall schedule. We thought we finished that months ago, but a tournament we’d committed to attending fell apart. After weeks of trying to figure something out, an opening developed that we filled. There may still be a couple of match time changes. At least we know all our dates and opponents, though.
The first tournament we will play in features two teams ranked in the Top 25 last year. The other two teams we play were not that strong, but overall it should make for a very competitive event. The one drawback is that while one of the strong teams we play is in our NCAA region, the rest are not. We try to schedule Regional teams because they impact our region ranking. That factors into NCAA tournament selection. In Division II the first three rounds of the championship tournament are regional brackets. The winners of the 8 regions then advance to the national quarterfinals.
Our second tournament will not be nearly so strong. The host is a team from our region we played last year – and lost two disappointingly in our home tournament. One of the other teams finished low in the standings of one of the other conferences in our tournament. The remaining team, though, is one that was not very strong in a conference outside our region.
The third week of the season we start our conference schedule, but we added in a non-conference match on the first day. It’s against the team that was #5 in the rankings at the end of 2016. They aren’t a region team, but we’re happy to play someone that strong. Two of the teams from our conference were Top 25 last year as well, so all together that makes 5 teams on the 2017 schedule against top-ranked programs from last season.
We have three other non-conference matches scattered through the rest of the season. They are all regional competition.
Speaker event
As I write this, one week from tomorrow we will have 5-time Olympian Danielle Scott speaking on campus at a fundraising event. That’s mean we’ve been working hard on selling tables and finding people to fill the ones we’ve gotten sponsored. It also means organizing the facilities requirements, the catering, and lots of other details.
Buenos Aires planning
The clock is counting down fast!
We start pre-season – technically pre-trip – training on July 31st. We are allowed 10 days of practice before we go. Our departure date is August 12th, so we’ll have two days off. One of them will be the day we host a big event for the local high school teams to kick-off their new season. We’ll mix in one more along the way.
Because players will still be taking Summer classes, and there are still basketball camps going on, we have to schedule practices around things. It’s not too onerous, though.
For the trip itself I think we have all the back-end stuff worked out. One contract awaits signature. Aside from that, the big thing left is finalizing the schedule in terms of who and when we play, and what we do when we’re not doing volleyball stuff.
6 Steps to Better Practices - Free Guide
Subscribe to my weekly newsletter today and get this free guide to making your practices the best, along with loads more coaching tips and information.
