Coaching Volleyball

A while back, Mark from At Home on the Court, wrote a post on the subject of youth and adult volleyball players competing on the same team together. He referenced a quote from Nikolai Karpol, the former Russian women’s coach. Karpol was strongly in favor of age integration as a way to help younger players develop.

In the US there tends to be very little crossover between youth and adult players. The kids play Juniors and school volleyball. The next stop tends to be college volleyball. It’s only after that that we see them competing on adult teams in adult competitions.

There’s an NCAA restriction on outside competition which keeps college players from playing in adult tournaments. There’s nothing stopping the Juniors kids from doing so, though. I actually had an 18s team once play in an adult tournament which took place before the Juniors season started. It was an eye-opening experience for them. They couldn’t believe a bunch of “old ladies” could beat them despite clearly being physically inferior. 🙂

Playing against adult teams is certainly a learning experience. It doesn’t go quite as far as what Mark and Karpol were talking about, though. They meant having youth and adult players together on the same team. I actually saw a mixture of that when I coached in England. Some teams playing in the National League and in the South West Regional league had squads totally comprised of Juniors aged players. At the same time, however, there were adult teams that included Juniors players.

Stepping up the levels of play, in Germany I saw a high school aged player in the SC Potsdam squad when I was on my 10-day visiting coach stint there. The team that won the Swedish Elitserie on the women’s side the last two seasons (Engelholm) featured a player who was only 15/16.

Certainly, we see teenagers in professional teams in other sports. Soccer is an obvious example. I am a supporter of the New England Revolution. Diego Fagundez started playing in their first team when he was 15. England’s Wayne Rooney famously got his start with Everton in the Premier League – one of the best leagues in the world – when he was only 15 or 16.

Granted, soccer is a sport where physical maturity is less an issue than in other sports. In more physical sports (think football), particularly on the men’s side when physical development is generally completed later, it’s tougher to encourage youth/adult integration. On the women’s side, though, physical maturation happens earlier – most often while a girl is still in the Juniors age group. From that perspective, there’s nothing to stop a kid from playing with adults.

Consider this. One of the best players in the history of volleyball, Karch Kiraly, is well known to have spent years playing with his father in beach doubles events in Southern California – adult events. Seemed to work out pretty well for him!

So the question is, why don’t we do more age mixing?

I asked one Volleyball Coaching Wizard with international coaching experience their thoughts. While they did definitely see the value, the concern expressed what whether from a child development perspective you want young players exposed to the more mature actions and conversations of older teammates – be they older youth or actual adults. I understand that view, but I’m not sure it’s that big an issue.

I’d like to hear what others think on the subject, though.

In places like the US where youth players rarely play with adults – and often not even with older youth – does it make sense for us to try to encourage more integration?

In places where there is a lot more age integration, should there be a move for less?

If so, why? If not, why not?

A while back I blogged on the idea of youth athletic development and the Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) model. The idea of overspecialization, which is contrary to LTAD, was the subject of an OpEd in the New York Times. The author focused a lot on overuse injuries. They also, though mentioned how kids in some sports continue to play on adult-sized surfaces with full-count teams.

I attended a Coaching Children & Young People workshop as part of my Volleyball England Level 3 certification. In it I was asked whether volleyball has implemented reduced participant and/or small-court games for young players. Needless to say, small-sided games is something I’ve talked about before. I’m a big supporter, and use them extensively even with experienced players.

For a number of years younger players in the States have played on a shorter net. They also play with a lighter ball. In England the focus is on playing 4-v-4 at the lower levels. They do so on badminton courts, usually with a lower net as well. In Sweden the play a couple different variations of 4-v-4 with the younger kids, and I’ve heard other countries do the same. It’s a good trend in the sports world to give kids more ball contacts and more opportunity to reasonably play the game within the scope of their physical abilities.

What’s a little bit ironic in our sport is that even though many of our participants don’t start until they are teens, we still have issues with overuse injury. It is a constant thing on our minds coaching college volleyball in the States. There’s been considerable debate as to whether kids even in the 15, 16, 17 age group should continue to play multiple sports.

I mentioned before the Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) concept I learned about in England. This model focuses mainly on youth in sports. It takes into account things like physical and mental growth rates and development. The basic progression looks like this.

1. FUNdamental
2. Learning to train
3. Training to train
4. Training to compete
5. Training to win

The LTAD model addresses the idea of when sport specialization should take place. It also speaks to when competition should come in to play, and to what degree, as well as what types of activities and exercises are recommended, and things like that. Here’s the British Athletics model, which offers a bit of detail.

FUNdamentals – where the emphasis is on fun, developing basic fitness and general movement skills. This is training years 1 to 3, and ideally a chronological age of 6 to 13.

Learning to Train – where the emphasis is to learn how to train and develop their general skills. Consider this as training years 3 to 5, and ideally a chronological age of 10 to 15.

Training to Train – where the emphasis is event(s) specific training – This is training years 5 to 7, ideally a chronological age of 13 to 17.

Training to Compete – where the emphasis is to correct weaknesses and develop athletic abilities. Here we’re talking about training years 7 to 9, ideally a chronological age of 15 to 19.

Training to Win – where the emphasis is on enhancing performance. This is training years 10+ and ideally a chronological age of 18

I’d be curious to see how prevalent these ideas are in the States. The US youth sports model is not academy linked (mostly) in the way it is in England and elsewhere. As a result, there tends not to be one main organization overseeing a given youth athlete consistently over time. Additionally, in volleyball we tend not to be too involved in the earliest stages of young athlete development. This is because it’s a relatively late pick-up sport for most participants.

Here’s an example from when I was the Girls’ Juniors scheduler for the Northeast region. The distribution of teams made it clear that most players got their start as high school freshmen. There were more 15/16 year old teams than in any other age group – way more than for the younger age groups (12s, 14s). Girls started in the sport as junior varsity athletes at their high school and played Juniors volleyball on the back of that (Autumn high school season, Winter/Spring club season). There was then a bit of a taper in the 17/18 age group. Simply, those who didn’t make varsity or just lost interest in the sport fell away.

Granted, the Northeast is not exactly a volleyball hotbed. I suspect there is a similar Juniors participation peak at the 15/16 age level across the board, if perhaps not quite so exaggerated in comparison to U14s.

Getting back the point, even though playing volleyball specifically isn’t something we see a lot of in young kids, that doesn’t mean the LTAD model doesn’t apply to our sport. We can introduce the key foundational aspects like movement and coordination early on, and even some of the general ideas of the sport via games like Newcomb, which I personally first played in primary school (volleyball was part of the P.E. curriculum in middle school – grades 6-8). It’s certainly food for thought, and something those involved in youth volleyball should be looking at.