Spend any time in the arena of professional volleyball and you will come to realize pretty quickly that the majority of clubs operate year-to-year. There isn’t a lot of longer-term thinking (I’d argue we see much the same at the juniors level in the US, but that’s a separate topic). I have two guests join me for a discussion of this and how it might change moving forward.
One is Oskar Kaczmarczyk, who recently took on the role of something like General Manager for one of the clubs in the PlugLiga in Poland. I met Oskar during my 2019 European trip. At that time he was in his first year coaching at Näfels in the Swiss men’s league. Twice he took part in the original series of Coaching Conversations. Once was about Analyzing the Setter. The other time it was for the Developing the Libero talk.
My other guest is Mark Lebedew, who’s been a regular of both the original series and the podcast. Mark is heading into his first season at VfB Friedrichshafen in the German Bundesliga, where he previously led Berlin Recycling Volleys to 3 league titles and a 2015 CEV Champions League bronze medal. In between he coached for a couple of Polish clubs and lead the Australian Men’s National team. You can follow Mark’s writing on his blog.
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In the conversation the term “Moneyball” comes up multiple times. This, of course, comes from Michael Lewis’ famous book, Moneyball. If you haven’t read it already, you definitely should. After we recorded this podcast, Mark actually authored a post discussing what he sees as the most important takeaway from the Moneyball concept.
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You can find a complete list of the initial series of Coaching Conversations here.
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