There was a post on the AVCA blog a while back with the title of “Practice Preparation”. An NCAA Division I assistant coach wrote it. The title was a bit misleading as there wasn’t much on actual planning. The article mostly discussed a few drills/games. Unfortunately, it looks like they removed it when they revamped the AVCA website.
In any case, I found the first two particularly interesting.
The first was a timed game where the teams only score points in certain ways. The basic idea is that you have a predefined length of time for the game while also being able to focus on key areas of developmental interest. Think of it along the same lines as a bonus point game. You focus the players on certain things you want prioritized.
I might favor the bonus point approach better. That’s only because I’ve found that sometimes only allowing certain ways a team can score points leads to forcing the ball and things like that you don’t want to encourage. If you have multiple different ways to score, though, the “forcing” is mitigated. Alternatively, you can find a way the team that wins the rally gets an advantage. For example, if scoring is only based on offense, the team that won the last rally can receive the next one. That gives them first opportunity to score.
The second game is one called 20-20 because that’s where the scoring starts. Normal play then follows up to set point. At that point, if the team going for set point fails, they go back to 20. The other team keeps their points. So for example, it the score was 24-22 and the leading team failed to score the next rally, the new score would be 20-23.
I used that one at Svedala. We used a variation at Midwestern State.
By the way, it’s worth tossing in a reminder that starting the score at 20-20 doesn’t replicated end-of-set conditions.
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