This is an entry in my volleyball coaching log for 2014-15.
Back to the big gym. This being the 2 week mark from the time a player told us she’d come out for the team in two weeks, there was the possibility of having a 16th in the mix. With no contact since, however, I wasn’t betting on it. As it turns out, she did show up, though I also had one player out sick.
Of more immediate concern was the upcoming matches. All indications point to us playing our first BUCS match on Wednesday, with a tune-up South West league match before that on Sunday. Unfortunately, a couple of the probable starters for Wednesday (M2 and L/O2) can’t make Sunday’s match. Also, one of my three starting setter candidates is unavailable for Wednesday for academic reasons. That means I need to focus on the other two setters in the short term, leaving me to use the to-be-missing one as a libero for Sunday’s match.
Topping my training to-do list was Run & Serve, which I wanted to do last week – just good serves, nothing more at this stage. As per usual, serve and serve receive to take advantage of the larger space were to be main features. I made this the first drill after warming-up. It took maybe 10 times through for everyone to get their serves in. Not horrible, but could have been better.
From there I moved them to player winners and eventually to winner’s 4s with fixed setters (setter for the winning team goes to/stays on the winner’s side) in the form of my two prospective starters for next week. That then progressed to 6 v 6 in the form of the 2-in-2 game to work on serve receive offense, with regular play for the last 10 minutes (after I did a quick serve receive rotation walk-through to show them the different options for mixing things up).
Observations: A) should have done the serve receive walk-through at the outset. B) I hope low intensity isn’t going to be the Thursday training pattern. C) I need to find some ways to motivate/encourage talking among the B side players as they were virtually silent at times.
Here’s hoping Sunday’s SW match serves to start bringing things together and providing more focus through the lens of external competition.
By the way, the trial player was decent, but not someone likely to challenge the starting group. As a result, I told her we just didn’t have room for another player (15 is already pushing it). She was not well pleased by that.
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