This is an entry in my volleyball coaching log for 2016-17.
Spring Break is upon us! We just finished the first half of the semester and our period of 8 hours a week. When the players return from Break on the 20th we will begin our “non-traditional season”. That means like in the Fall we will be allowed 20 hours per week. In other words, more like the regular season. The one major difference is that we are required to give the players two days off per week. That will last five weeks.
Team Training
This week the players did their second round of testing, following the one from early in the term. They repeated the broad jump, standing jump, approach jump, and timed mile tests. There were good improvements on the run, but most of the jump measures were pretty similar to the prior results. That bothered the players some, but our strength coach told them it wasn’t a big deal. We did talk, though, about doing more work on jump technique. Some players are not as explosive as they can be.
As noted before, we had a weekly schedule that mixed small group and full team sessions. In the last two weeks, though, we tweaked that a bit. Last week we did a 90 minute team session and only 30 minute small group sessions. This week we only had a 2 hour team session, partly as a function of recruiting plans (see below).
Yes, cutting down on small group work limited the more individualized training. We felt, though, that big picture we need to work some team stuff out. The biggest part of that is playing mentality – in particular in defense.
I am happy to report that we have seen some really good defense in recent team sessions. We make plays now that we did not make in the Fall. Part of that is a personnel thing. The transfer DS added this semester is extremely active and aggressive. That mentality seems to have helped raise everyone’s defensive intensity. This is a good thing. 🙂
Recruiting
I only made one recruiting trip since my last update. That was to Dallas for one of the regional qualifier tournaments. I had 28 prospects on my list, about half of whom we did not see previously. As before, these are mainly 2018 players. There were a couple of 2019s mixed in, though, playing up an age group. Our other assistant looked at some 2019s that day as well to build that list.
We brought a handful of prospective recruits to campus over the last few weeks. Some of them are 2018s, but we still need to fill out the 2017 team. With that in mind we also brought in a potential transfer OH and a MB in the 2017 class. All the visits went pretty well. The transfer OH committed to come. We’re waiting for a final decision from the MB, but the prospects are good.
We’ll do more 2018 visits after the Break and still want to get another transfer pin hitter for the Fall. I think my next recruiting event is the 3-day Lone Star tournament in April.
Argentina Trip
The fund raising efforts for the trip are underway. The team – including in the incoming freshman – reached out to friends and family. There wasn’t a ton of success, but at least the process is underway. On Wednesday afternoon we had a meeting to allow the players to talk through plans for events they can run to raise money. We also talked strategy for more direct donation seeking as that is very likely to be the major source of funds.
I connected with our contact in Argentina to get the planning ball rolling on that end. Someone also suggested the other day that we reach out to the university in Buenos Aires. Why we didn’t think of that before, I don’t know. In any case, I got the email address for the coach there and sent him a note. Our levels of play are likely quite different. That will make it hard to play or train together. Still, there is probably some way we can connect. Certainly that sort of thing looks good to the folks here on our campus.
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