While I am currently waiting for our playoff opponent's video to
download I am getting pressured to write another post.
This past weekend I was in Calgary for our last league matches. I
had the opportunity to go and watch an Alberta Volleyball Association Premier
Event. It was an U-17 and U-18 combined event. During this time I
was able to talk with a few coaches and discuss scheduling and planning.
For me the year plan is a crucial part of the planning process. It
helps guide you through your season, it helps us as coaches develop a well
rounded volleyball player. If you take the NCCP coaching classes they teach you
in detail how to year plan very well. In this blog I am not going to do
this I will be very generic and talk more about planning for tournaments within
the year.
I like to look at the end of the season and work my way back to the
beginning. When are the National Championships? When do we have to be performing
at our best and have our roles in place to be successful? What style of systems
are we going to need to be successful at this level? What level of skill is
necessary for us? What is the team culture will we need to be successful?
Once I have answered those questions with myself and our coaching staff
we will look at the overall schedule. We will plot in our tournaments and
practices. Then we will decide at what level we want to see our team play
at each tournament. Not necessarily wins and losses but more consistency in
systems and skills and showing some understanding of the game. (Side note:
Kevin Neufeld a successful high school and club coach here in Brandon will
often run mock tournaments with his team.
Rather than enter a tournament he will practice and play intrasquad
matches matching a tournament schedule. An example of the day would be; play/practice
for an hour, 15 minute break, play for another hour, two hour break, play for
an hour, hour off, play for an hour. He will invite the parents to come
for the final match to cheer the team on. This is so all 12 of his players are
getting contacts rather than six at a time. He can focus everyone on the
same task at hand).
I was talking with a parent on Saturday
and it was the team’s first tournament and her daughter had yet to get into a
match. Even though this was the team’s third match. The parent was not
upset her daughter was U-17 playing on a U-18 team, she expected it. I
was shocked; the first tournament of the year in my mind is used to play
everyone. To make sure all the players understand the basic systems.
I recommend to our club coaches that they choose a different system each a
day and really focus on this. The feedback the athletes receive then is
relevant to the game but specifically to a system. An example would be block
and defense responsibilities, the feedback we give during the match and during
the timeouts are all related to positioning on a certain set, spacing between
athletes and cues they should be looking for.
Often in the first couple of tournaments there are so many things
coaches can comment on that they will try to fix everything and the players get
overloaded with information. I also recommend to our club coaches to hand
out who’s going to start which matches ahead of time the first tournament.
That forces our coaches to play the different players. I know when
we are in pre-season I get competitive and want to win, but because I have laid
out who plays a head of time I am forced to stick with the plan. I
believe in the long run this helps.
I had a chance to talk with a group of coaches later to discuss what I
saw. There are a lot of pressures on the coaches to succeed. Many
provinces have gone to points systems and use the points to then power pool the
remaining tournaments. If teams don't get into tier 1 after the first
tournament they might not make it back into that tier for 2 more tournaments.
Also with club volleyball and recruiting of athletes being so competitive
that they are scared they will lose their top athletes to other clubs the
following year if they end up in division 2 even for 1 tournament.
These are all valid reasons I understand. I believe/hope if the
philosophy is laid out in the parent meeting and explained properly to the team
everyone will buy in to this. I also still think it doesn't have to be a
totally different line up each set, maybe one or two players can come on the
floor. You still can sub and put players into different situations. That
will make them successful. No athlete wants to be directly responsible
for a loss. A discussion about why coaches substitute is also important with
athletes and parents. Not always is a sub because someone is playing bad.
As the season progresses coaches then start to develop roles within the
team. It is important for athletes to know that they will have an opportunity
to contribute, whether it as a serving sub, a blocking sub, or even an energy
player. The way our National Championships are set up it is really hard
to have one group of athletes play every match and still be able to perform at
the end. A team is going to need to use everyone at some point. If this
is planned for from the start it is easier to make it happen.
