This is an entry in my volleyball coaching log for the 2017-18 season.
The Lone Star Conference standings weren’t really all that much more clear after the weekend’s results. Notable was West Texas losing to both Western New Mexico and Eastern New Mexico. Also, Kingsville dropped a pair of 3-2 matches at home to Angelo and Tarleton. At 5-1, Tarleton topped the league going in to the new week, and is in a strong position given who they’ve beaten already. Below there, the next eight teams are within 2 losses of each other.
Monday
Strictly video for the team today – aside from morning weight training. We broke the team into three groups and they watched footage from different matches we’ve played so far. It was on them to critique themselves – positively and negatively – with an eye toward how we can get better.
Tuesday
Back to split team training. Both groups did basically the same set of exercises. A big focus was on improving our middle play. We also did some work to diversify the offense a bit. This was all done in the context of serve receive and defense transition.
A number of the teams in the conference played non-conference matches this night. They all won, which was good.
Wednesday
We started the session with split group work. While the OHs and DS worked on some serve & pass, the MBs, RS, and Setter first did some blocking, then worked on offensive connections. A 6 v 6 game followed. In this case, only the pin hitters could attack, and they had to swing cross-court. Every time a rally ended we gave the winning team a down ball, but mixed players around every so often. That kept them from wearing down in what was definitely an up-tempo game. We played to 25, then switched it up so the attacks had to be line – or line/6 – for another game.
After that we did a kind of offense vs. defense game in rotations. On side served every ball. Initially, they played first to three points based on simple rally wins. The receiving team could not rotate until they won one of these mini games. To make it a bit tougher, after a while we shifted to wash scoring. After the initial serve rally, we initiated a free ball to the serving team. One team had to win both rallies to earn a point. The games were still to 3 points.
Thursday
We did a session of maybe 1 hour and 40 minutes before hopping on the bus to start are weekend road trip. We did a lot of serve and pass interspersed with 6 v 6 play. For the first part of practice we only had one middle, so we needed to give her some breaks.
We did two versions of game play. One was a variation where one side received free balls and attacked at a defending team. The defensive side got 2 points for a stuff block and one point for a good dig-set-attack sequence. They didn’t need a kill, just a good swing beyond the block. We went for time, then flipped the attacking side. There were two total rounds, with the team accumulating the most points as defenders winning (offense got no points).
The other game was the wash drill I mentioned above from Wednesday’s session. We focused on the rotations in receive that featured our freshman MB. That was to keep working on developing her connection with the setter on different sets. Also, she continues to need to improve her spacing.
Friday
It was back on the road for a match against defending league champions Angelo this day. They came in 3-3 in conference. Despite that record, they clearly represented a significant challenge. They were #16 in the national poll and featured the best offense in the conference by the numbers. What we found out during warmups was they had three players who were either starters or regular contributors out due to injury. That shifted them from primarily a 6-2 offense to a 5-1.
We should have been able to challenge them, but we came up short. At times we hardly looked like we’d ever played together before. We served them well, and had them scrambling often, but just couldn’t take the chances we were given. Our offense was pathetic, hitting at just .053 in terms of efficiency.
Saturday
Back to Tarleton for a match-up with last year’s runners-up. They came in at #15 in the national poll. Here too we discovered the opposition had suffered a key injury. Their All-American OH sustained a foot injury the night before in their win over Cameron.
We came in with a MUCH better attitude and took the match to them. In particular, our block made a big impact. We had 5 or 6 in the first set alone, and ended up with 13 overall. Despite the fact they had more than double our kills in the first set, we pulled off the win. After that, though, it was down hill. Offensively, we were even more impotent than we’d been the night before. Both our middles hit negative. This is definitely a major concern, though we were pleased to see that our starting OPP is getting more aggressive in attack.
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