Creating Game Plans

CREATING GAME PLANS,

Still on strike and getting frustrated.  This weekend our league starts we square off against the University of Manitoba.  It will still be considered crossing the picket line if I coach the team this weekend.  So again I will do the best to stay mentally healthy and cheer on the team. I have a tough time not being around the team.  Don’t realize what a great career you have until you don’t have it.

We have had some interesting conversations with our coaching staff on the make up of the game plans for this weekend. When developing a game plan, first we need to make sure we understand what our strengths are.  All good game plans are built around the team’s strengths.  A common belief is that coaches change their systems and way they do things against teams.  But the truth is we try to find ways to exploit the other team’s weakness with our strengths.  As a coach we watch a ton of video. There are many programs available to help coaches break down video.  They speed up the breaking down of the film, but they don’t allow the coach more free time.  Most coaches just watch more game footage to find a larger sample of trends. Any statistician will tell you that the sample size needs to be large to get a good read. 

First we watch video to look for trends in the oppositions serve reception to attack.  We will get a percentage of which player gets set the most in which rotations. Then which player will get set off of what type of pass. We labeled passes based on a 4 system.  4 setter doesn’t have to move, 3 they move within a couple of meters, 2 around the attack line or pushed forward, 1 anywhere else that it can be set.  Over passes we give a one if the other team can play it, but if it is killed directly from the pass we give it a 0, also an ace serve is a zero.

Next we will watch the opposition defense formations.  Are they bunch blocking or spread blocking, does a player walk on transition after attacks, do they dip deep on blocking, are there small or large blockers, weak defenders.  All this information will help with our game plans.

Then we will look again at our strengths, so we will have different assignments based on who is in the ft row of the other team.  So for example Trinity Western is a swing blocking team, they all have the same starting position, but we realize player A really turns side ways when we show a certain attack pattern, We will implement that into our plans.  Player b in Trinity is good at covering tips off serve reception but in transition she is playing real deep then we can tip on her in mid rally. 

Then we will give the team information about different attackers, we will show our team the shot trends of the opposition’s starting group.  First we will show video off serve reception and then in transition. We understand that at the university level all players have all kinds of shots, but seeing them execute them might help athletes pick up the cues sooner of what shot is coming.

We also don’t believe in calling serves, we game plan them based on certain situations.  Then we rely on the athletes to recognize those situations.  We also allow the athletes to serve based on what they feel.  If our game plan is to serve the front row attacker, but the athlete sees player C has missed a serve and her body language is still frustrated. She then decides to serve at her hoping to catch her in thought. As long as she has a volleyball reason for going away from game plan then green light.

We want our athletes to think the game and make adjustments on the fly.  We need to teach our athletes at a younger age to watch for trends on the opposition. Often we will get athletes in their first year that has no idea of what is happening on the opposition’s side.  They just watch the ball and react.  If ball is set left side then they go to x on the floor.  We believe that the game is too random and we need to react to that. We often see young setters will take turns when they set, setting hitting warm up (One to left side, one to middle, one to right side).  This makes life of a blocker easy when they figure out that tendency.

Last we keep our video meeting to 20-25 minutes and we don’t share all the information on our game plan sheets.  Players will learn over the course of the year which area of the game plan is more important for which positions.  We then will meet positionally with the athletes to go over their specific responsibility.  Then we train it over the course of the week.  Small groups  of player first for large reps then in a game situation.  In football they have a prep team that runs the oppositions plays and the home team competes against them.  In volleyball we rely on each other to mimic the opposition.  Taking turns being that player using their tendencies.  We find that if the starting group role plays that player they get a better grasp of what the opposition does.  It is like the teacher who finally understands algebra after they teach it.

So tomorrow is our dry run of our game plan against U of M.  We don’t have a lot of recent footage on them, but neither do they on us.  So it will be an interesting match.