Confidence wins

Confidence is a funny thing. Confidence comes from having success. It comes from a person’s social environment and what they experience.  It is a hard thing to gain easy and to lose.  As coaches we often spend a lot of time dwelling on the mistakes that a person makes.  Often it is pointing out the same errors over and over.  Tony DiCicco in his book “Catch them Being Good”, suggests we do the opposite, we look for when they do the action or tactic we expect and then show them this on video.  If you cannot show them accomplishing it, then show them someone else who does it correctly. In practice he believes we should never refer to the error, but only the action we need. The idea of a blooper film to show the mistakes really reinforces the errors.

This past weekend we had two big matches to play. Our team is on a 4 match league win streak .  UBCO  is only 2-8. Even though their record wasn’t great they are a strong team and had a real tough first semester. With such a tough schedule it was incredible for UBCO to come out of the first semester with 2 wins, keeping them in the hunt for a playoff spot.

Unfortunately for them their setter was injured and had to come to Brandon with their back up setter only.  Watching on Friday, people could see that the UBCO Heat wasn’t as confident in their team concept.  WE didn’t find out until the hitting warm-up that they were going with a different setter.  The new setter set a high ball and it allowed their attackers to change a bunch of their hitting angles.  More time to see things, plus our block timing would be different.

Steve Manuel, UBCO Coach, is famous for having teams that compete hard and have strong ball control.  So we knew this was not going to be 2 easy matches.  The first day you could feel the difference in confidence levels in the two teams.  WE had our libero, Lindsay McLaughlin diagnosed with a small fracture in her wrist so she is out for awhile.  WE decided to put a first year leftside Shanlee Mclennan in that position.  Shanlee had basically never played this position, but she has the right disposition for making a difficult change.

The libero position is one of the more mentally challenging positions in sport.  It is very hard for them to directly lead to points.  They can make a great pass and the other team could still end up with a point.  They shank a ball and everyone knows where the point is scored.  To play this position and be good at it the athlete needs to have high self-esteem.  We discussed with our team to really keep it positive.  Social influence within the team will help with Shanlee’s confidence.

Friday we won three straight and played fairly well.  Jaryn Ruether, our fifth year player, is in nursing and she came straight to warm-up from her clinical practicum.  She looked fatigued before the match started, but played her usual steady self

The best part about our schedule is we play the same team on consecutive nights.  The coaching in Canada West is very strong and Saturday’s matches are always close.  Steve looked at his situation and needed to make a change.  He needed to play to his teams strengths.  UBCO came out with their setter playing out of the middle.  She is a good athlete and this really enhanced her strengths.  Plus it was the first time we had ever looked at this.  In this type of set up the setter needs to dump some so the opposition middle blocker has to be aware of her.  We asked our middle to wait and chase the set.  Have high hands and try to deflect the ball up on the dump.  Plus we moved position 1 into the pot more.  We won the first set easy 25-18, but you could see UBCO figuring out this line-up.  Second set we won 25-23.  Our confidence was starting to shake.  Jaryn Ruether was a steady force for us out there.  She was finding different ways to score, she ended up with 20 kills and 17 digs through the match.

UBCO wins sets 3 and 4.  So now we have to head to the fifth set.  In between we talked about who we are as a team, and tried to bring focus backed to worked for us up to that point.  WE jumped out to a 7-1 lead. Then 8-2 at the change of sides.  12-7 I took our first timeout with the hope of maintaining our aggressive nature.  They were climbing back you could see confidence building in them.  12-10 I took our final time out.  WE couldn’t get out of this rotation.  They were serving us tough and we were relying on our outside attacker to score in tough situations. WE ended up down 14-12 before we finally sided out.  This is when I saw something in our team that hadn’t been there before.  Up to this point all match the team was trying hard to stay positive, help each other out of the rut.  Again confidence is something that is gained from a group of people or previous experience.  A big dig transition and block score.  Then a hitting error on their part ties the game.

We have comeback from down before and you could feel our confidence grow when we tied it up.  UBCO hasn’t had the success we had the first semester, I could sense a panic on their part.  We ended up winning 17-15 and kept our playoff hopes alive.  I wonder if they would have had a reverse schedule would they have been more confident in these situations.

So success adds more to our team self-concept and hopefully it can carry us through this next weekend.  We are at 8, magic number is 9.  Let’s get it done fast.

Determination time

Teaching determination.

After our home tournament we had to re-evaluate where we are heading.  In the tournament we played more people in different situations and were able to evaluate personnel and also where our system weaknesses are.  It also allowed us to compare our present athletes to each other and try to project where their skill level will be down the road.

As a whole the coaching staff is really impressed with the direction our team is heading.  After the disappointing result in the tournament the team’s commitment has jumped up 2 levels.  They realise that everyone around us is improving as well.  For us to achieve our goals, we need to improve at a faster rate than our opposition.

WE decided that since the week directly after the tournament was a bye week  that we could spend a little bit more time pushing players to make change.  WE would stop a drill and ask them to create the appropriate skill over and over before we would start competing again.  We made every drill a competitive drill.  Everything had a winner and a loser.  It was one of the rare times that I had to be bad cop.  I once read in a book by Jimmy Johnson when he coached the Dallas Cowboys “turning the thing around”  in there he talks about positive coaching. He explained he would be positive, positive positive positive, then bang negative.  The negative moment was so rare that it had a huge impact on the player.  Then he went on to say you have to celebrate with the player when then do the action right.  This week we put that theory to the test and it helped make huge improvements.  Before the week started we talked with the team about staying together and being positive.  That as a coaching staff we would be a little bit more negative and it was their job to keep the air positive.  By letting them know ahead of time helped create a positive air of change.

We also designed drills that would have players competing individually. An example of a drill would be server vs passer drills.  In these drills the only way to score was to pass a good pass (three pass), but to get into the passing part of the drill you had to force someone to pass bad by serving them tough or strategically.  If the passer scored a point, then the server  had to run to the other side of the court and serve from that side. A consequence for not winning directly on that point.  If the passer passed a zero or 1 pass then the server would become target and the target would become server.   Lots of running and movement. An unintentional by product of this was the athletes holding each other accountable.  If someone would pass a 1 then everyone would let the target know.

We also designed  drills that were very hard to score in.  Since volleyball went to rally point in the late 80’s every ball scores a point.  We have found that players accept the scoring of the opposition too easily.  We wanted to mimic every ball worth a point but still make it incredibly difficult to win the drill.  We decided to use a plus minus system.  Team A is trying to get to +7 and Team B is trying to get to -7.  The drill itself has one score.  Team A wins the rally goes up + 1, the next two balls team B wins suddenly the score is -1.  WE would have a serve and four down balls, then other team would serve.  Trying to mimic long rallies in a match but still scoring on each ball.  +7 seems to be a good numbe,r + or -5 was achieved a couple of times but the last two points were extremely hard to get.  WE eventually had a winner and the attackers were exhausted by the end of the drill.

Another drill we competed hard at was win 3 down balls in a row and your team  win the right to serve.  Two coaches on either side of the net will put a free ball or down ball into the winning team’s side.  Whichever team wins three of these free balls in a row has a chance to serve.  If they can win their serve point then they score a point. 

All these drills are meant to teach the group determination.  When they have an opportunity to score be excited and put the ball away. If we have to give a free ball then we head to the net with incredible determination instead of being back on our heels hoping for the other team not to score.  We need to change our mind set from oh no.  To bring it on!.  If they have done something that forces us to give a free ball then we want to win with a block or dig transition, so we can look across the net with the attitude is that all you got!

This is a big weekend for us coming up.  We play UBCO. They are a new team in Canada West.  Their record is 2-8 at the Christmas break, but their two wins came from beating U of Winnipeg and U of Manitoba, the fourth and fifth ranked teams in Canada.  When you take a look at UBCO second semester they have 6 or 7 matches that are winnable for them.  That would put them at 8 or nine wins.  We need to hold them down this weekend and climb up the win category.  This is basically a playoff match already.

Love the playoffs!!!!

My coaching brain and 5%

I often find my friends who aren’t involved in coaching world have a trouble grasping the amount of time we put in thinking about our program or the sport directly.  We will go out to a movie and they will come out talking about the music and different action scenes.  I often say, I could use this clip for when I am talking to the team about self-talk, or how to build confidence.  This would be a good moment to bring up team and commitment to each other.  My friends laugh at me and would often say give it a rest.

Over Christmas or first part of summer I will try to read books as a type of escape from myself.  The Lord of the Rings are my favorite books, but there are so many examples of leadership in them.  I bought the movies to show sacrifice, and fulfilling a role with the help from friends. I also enjoy a good spy novel. The Bourne series is very fun read,  but again I  read this type of novel because I enjoy the strategy that the spies employ to get out of some situations.  But mostly I tend to read coaching books and business books on leadership.  I find the leadership strategies in business and sport over lap a lot. Phil Jackson's Hard Court Warrior, Leading with the Heart by Coach K is one of the best team leadership books, Education of a Coach about  Bill Bilechik rise to an NFL dominant coach, and one of my favourites golf is not a game of perfect.

The hardest part to understand from a coaches point of view is winning and losing and how it affects our psyche.  I find that after a loss, I have a much harder time getting my thoughts away from volleyball.  Losing drives me to an obsession, and sometimes makes it feel  lonely.  If we win on Saturday night then Sunday is a fun day, able to watch football and be talkative to people who are around.  After a loss, I tend to not sleep very much, I will go and watch last nights game again to see if there were anything that I didn’t notice, early warning signs that I should be aware of.  I can be in  a large group of people and not here a single conversation going on around me.  My close friends have learned to just leave me alone during this time. My friends in the coaching world will check up on each other especially after a tough loss.  We don't try to give advice in these situation just a quick reminder that we have a job in sport, and they are hard to come by.  

Once practice starts up again on Monday and the team starts working hard, we start to prepare for the next weekend then, I am happy.  I feel real lucky to have the committed group that we do here at Brandon.  This past weekend was not our best performance to date.  Arguably could be the worst we have played at home this season.  we have a pretty good home record going in league, and Brandon is a tough gym to come into and play.  We are proud of how tough it is to play here.  For that reason losing this weekend at home in our tourney made it even more difficult.

The concensus from my discussion with different members of the team, was now everyone understands how important quality practice is to our result.  This weekend we just showed up and played after having 14 days off.  We just talked briefly about the opposition and  worked on our systems.  We played everyone quite a bit more than we did during the first semester. On new years day I had a couple of the players text me with their new years resolution. WIN.  Knowing that the athletes spent their new years eve talking about what needs to happen in the second semester is very exciting.  I find that on a team if a coach cares way more about what happens then the team, it can be a very frustrating situation.  When the athletes demonstrate that they are commited and involved the more successful a team will become.

The fact that we came back into this weeks practice with a strong commitment is hopeful.  I am still stinging from the weekend.  We tried hard this past weekend but didn’t work as a collective whole.  I am re-watching the matches and making sure we know what we need to do.  Realistically we are close to beating most teams in Canada, all we really need is everyone to work hard to improve 5%.  For each player and coach that 5% is something different.  Some players need to find time for extra passing reps, some need to make changes on some technical issues, others need to take better care of their nutrition and physical fitness.  Each of us have that 5% we can do better.  We know deep down what it is.  If we decide as a whole that we can reach for that 5% we will have a successful season. Players have heard the coaching staff say things over and over to them.  Players are aware of what their role is on the team now and how can they improve it.  We asked our team to do two things in the next couple of weeks.  One is to keep the game in mind when they are training. It can be a simple as our libs is in a defensive drill, she is to set the ball to an attacker at leftside.  She uses her forearms to deliver the ball the entire time she is in the setting position.  When asked why she explained, I am the libero, I cannot overhead pass a ball legally to a hitter in front of the attack line.  This is her way to keep each drill game like in her head.

I heard a story of a boxer who refused to do situps in the ring.  His reasoning was I never want my back against the canvas. That only happens in a loss. So he would get out of the ring do his situps then get back in the ring to continue training.

The second is to compete in drills.  To find ways to turn some easy drills into competitions.  When in a serving and passing drill, serve strategically to beat the passers.  Keep a running conversation with them, put pressure on each other.  Challenge each other.  

WE will see what the second semester brings.  But right now this coaches brain is in a good spot.

Coaches Christmas

Coaches Christmas

Success isn’t a once in awhile thing, it is an all the time thing. A person doesn’t just suddenly become successful it is because they have worked hard to reach that point.  Then they must work hard to maintain that level.  Therefore success is a habit.

I try really hard to get away from volleyball for two days.  I found out a couple years ago that even a short amount of time helps with the excitement of second semester.  Coaching in the Canadian University and College is a unique experience coming from high school.  It is quite an adjustment for a coach as it is for a player.  The idea that you can take two weeks off for a break right in the middle of your season is definitely interesting. 

Taking two days off to forget about volleyball is awesome.  I was able to get to Winnipeg and visit with some friends.  Even though the conversation was about volleyball it was more about the state of the game in Canada and how we think we can improve it. 

The next couple of days were dedicated to recruiting.  At this point of the season we have a decent grasp on what we need to do to improve the team. There are some holes that we need to fill, players that are graduating, or areas that we need depth in.  Some recruits we have been talking with for a couple of years hoping to guide them to Brandon.  Others we will begin talking with.  I usually use the week before Christmas to call the Junior college coaches in Alberta and BC to get their opinion on who is playing well in their league.  I find that every coach including myself is a bit biased to their own player.  When I phone another coach to get an opinion on the different players from other teams it tends to balance it out. 

To me the cold call is the hardest, the first contact with a parent and a player.  I will google the athlete and read as many newspaper articles or information about the players as I can before the first call.  If a player is successful at golf in the summer it helps to start a casual conversation.  I don’t want the first call to be to formal, just a checking the interest type of call.  The follow up ones are easier to develop a bit of a rapport. During this time I also like to guage where are top recruits are at.  Some times at this point we need to scramble to fill.  This year we are fairly young in most positions so we are not so desperate to fill, we can take a bit of a risk on some raw athletes, or maybe try to change an athlete from middle to the outside.

After I finish a couple of days of trying to figure out where we stand, I like to go back and watch our matches, well parts of our matches.  I like to watch each set from 18-finish.  To see what we do during the crunch times of the match.  What should be our focus in the new year.  I am really happy with the result so far.  I really feel as if the team is committed to the program and our identity.  I worry about this time of year, just two weeks is a long time off.  We ask the team to continue with a jumping program and weight training.  We have found that this prevents shin splint issues when we return from break.  The body isn’t prepared for the load of the Christmas tournament.

The last thing I like to do is begin to watch our opposition that we play the second semester.  I sound like a broken record  but we have some big matches coming up.  I really believe that we have enough experience and the right make up that we can make a run deep into the playoffs.  I don’t think we should cancel out a chance at the final four or an appearance at Nationals, but we have to get there first.  So getting a big jump on our oppositions tendancies help.  Just so everyone understands, 2 hours of watching UBCO play on Christmas to wrap up their semester of competition.  We play them Jan 13 and 14^th.  They are a much better team than their record shows.  But I feel we match up well.

So for Christmas I asked for some great recruits and some important wins.  Oh and I bought myself some new shirts and ties.... Merry Christmas everyone.

December meetings testing and competing

We are officially on our Christmas Break.  With the strike this was a different December.  Traditionally we would practice till the Desks would go in the gym around Dec 8^thfor final exams.  Then we would focus on weights and some plyometrics.  This year since the strike went 45 days the school has decided to push exams until Jan 23-30^th.  Which gives us a bit more time with the gym, but it is a crazy time for students.

As everyone who remembers university life the end of semester are crazy and busy.  It is a weird time for a coach.  We found that the athletes are so focussed on their school that it is hard to teach new things or to fix some technical flaws.  We decided a few years ago that we can use this time to teach competition. We have since then started to have Queen of the Gym tournaments.  This is a tournament where you play with different people every game. If your team wins then you get positive points.  If you lose then you get negative points.  That way every point is worth two.  Lose 25-23 your down two but your opponent is up 2.  That is a 4 point difference. We hope that teaches our team every point is important.  Even if your down you need to battle till the end.

We had two good tournaments, 3 on 3 full court the first day, which Chloe won.  She is our leftside that was our libero at the start of the year.  She has strong ball control and found ways to win.  We talked in between each match about trying to be more strategic.  They have been playing with and against each other for a semester.  What are their strengths and weakness? How can your group use them to your advantage?   

Second tournament we ran was 4 on 4 tournament.  We had Sara and Becky from our coaching staff put on their gear and competed to give us 4 teams of 4.  It is fun to see them play.  Both Becky and Sara played last year so still are very skilled.  Becky ended up second in the tournament.  Our first year letfside Shanlee won the tournament.  Different than the 3’s tourney, Shanlee really cut down on her unforced errors and scored when she had too. At the start of this tourney we reminded them of what we are trying to do as a group, cut down on the unforced errors especially on the red trouble ball.

In this time we also do individual meetings with the players. We created mid term report card that we work through together.  We get the athletes to grade themselves on everything from individual skills to understanding and executing game plans, understanding their role and the acceptance of it.  We find that most athletes are very self aware.   They have a good understanding of their level of skill and their role on the team.  The team has a great feel about it right now.  Everyone is fitting in a feels like they are a valuable member of the team.  As a coach, my past teams always creep into my mind, I have had some very upset players in these meetings.  Even though I try to touch base with the athletes at least once or twice a month with a casual conversation in the gym, on a bus or in the airport I sometimes get surprised in the meetings. I know we preach that we are this year’s team and the statement is one of our standards.  I still remember the bad experience and try to avoid them.  For this reason I worry about some of the athletes who don’t get a lot of playing time.  I am happy they are all working hard and understand when they get their opportunity to make the best of it.

Lastly we fitness test.  We test three times a year.  We test in September when they arrive, then again in December, and then in May before the go home.  We usually get some big growths from the May to September from our first year players.  Over the Christmas break they still lift and work on a circuit.  We have found that the fitness test helps motivate people during this time.  Usually they see improvement from Sept till now.  Or they realize they need to put more effort into this part of their game. 

We have a tournament at home from Dec 29 to 31. WE have told each of the players what their role is.  We need to get some players quality contacts.  It is a good chance to reinforce our team character and have an opportunity to play some of the younger players in some different situations. This is a fun time for us as we are able to put the younger athletes in different situations without the pressure of league. 

http://www.gobobcats.ca/2011/12/07/conferences-of-canada-challange-set-for-december/  is a link to the tourney.  We are not charging for this tournament hoping to get as many youth teams out as we can.  It is a good chance to see the different styles of teams from the different leagues. 

Video

Here are some of the Video's Matt Packwood our Sports Information Officer put together on our website. gobobcats.ca  He did a great job thought I would show all of you.  The play by play voice is Tyler Crayston from CKLQ sports here in Brandon.

Less is More

This past weekend was a very important one for us.  We needed to get two wins at home, which would place us at 6 wins and 6 losses.  Being .500 would be incredible considering the strike and having to learn on our own.  We had a tough first semester with playing 3 top ten nationally ranked teams.

This weekend was Saskatchewan Huskies, even though they were winless heading into the weekend, we have learned that there are no easy matches in Canada West.  The Huskies had taken sets off some pretty impressive teams.  Leading up to this weekend was also my first time being able to be back in the gym for a full week of practice.  This made for an interesting dynamic.

We decided to take Monday off as we have been going for 6 straight weekends and felt that the extra day rest would be more beneficial than the practice.  Sometimes less is more.  Tuesday we went for 1.5 hours and had a practice with a lot of reps and movement.  We are able to put up two courts at every practice so it gives us a chance to rep a lot of different things.  It was a fun practice as we were hitting different tempo’s of sets.  Some of the outsides had the opportunity to hit some of the middle set selections and the mids had the opportunity to hit higher sets. It was a good way to introduce myself back to the team.

Weds though we got down to business, we watch video in practice and discussed what we would dot different defensively.  We would show it on a white board, then go on court and practice it.  I had used the same type of drill for this part of practice.  In retrospect it was too long of one drill for the time of night 8:30-9:30pm and the fatigue level of the athletes.  Earlier that day the athletes had a good weight session with Sean our weight coach, which help contribute to the fatigue level.  Thursday was more games specific and what we would try to implement offensively.

I also was a little grumpy this week.  I have a big fear of playing teams we should beat.  Maybe it stems from myself as an athlete and I would get complacent in training leading up to those games.  I really try to push the athletes so they are prepared to be in an extremely close match.  A few years ago a friend of mine, Frank Enns,  talked to me about different mind sets that athletes tend to have.  Athletes most often have an idea of the how we should do against a team before we play them.  We should beat this team easy, I would be surprised they get over 20.  Or this team is really good every game will be within one or two, or worse thinking we will be lucky to get to 20 on this team. 

Against Sask. I was worried of “they would be lucky to get to 20 on us mind set”  We used a video from Versus to help set the tone before the match.  Becky has been using videos before the matches and believes it is why we are on a run.  So we are not superstitious but why risk it.

 As it turned out We played really well Friday and had strong attention to detail winning 3-0 and they never got to 20.  Kellie set the ball very well, Chloe had 8 kills and jaryn had 9 kills with a hitting efficiency of .412.  As a team we were able to control the ball well and attacked over .300 which is incredibly high.

Saturday though was a different story.  We fell into our own mind trap.  Since the match the day before went so easy we were not as focussed in the process as the night before. Terry Orlick, a reknown sport psychologist wrote a paper “Winning after Winning” it can be found online at http://www.zoneofexcellence.ca/free/winning.html   It basically says that it is difficult to win back to back  and have success because things have changed.  For us we found our selves focussing on offense only. We had scored so well the night before, that when Sask made adjustments we struggled.  They changed their defense and we had to find different ways to score.  For this reason our total focus went to offense and we let slip our overall game.  We had 16 serving errors in the 4 sets.  We lost the third set and at one point in the third set it was 6 out 7 servers missed.  Sask serves incredibly tough and with our focus on offense we seemed to be suprized with the pace.  WE had more 0 and 1 passes than ever before.  The night before we were just focussing on the present.  It is a big lesson for us to learn and hopefully we don’t have to relearn it again this year.

We won the match in four, so we achieved our goal of 500.  In our after match debrief we discussed the level of focus and where it was at.  Then I was able to address the team and thank them for their commitment this first semester.  We have an impressive group of girls here.  Each one of them has contributed to our success and found ways to make us better as a whole.  Different people have all led in different ways.  Claire Willerton has been a tremendous leader.  She is a fifth year player, who we are converting to the outside. Claire has been asked to come off the bench and help us when we are in trouble.  She has done this without one complaint.  She is still practicing incredibly hard and showing what team first really means.  We know that Claire will be ready for the challenges that we face second semester.  It would be easy for Claire to be upset, but she has chosen the high road and is an impressive example.  Claire makes us better everyday. 

WE have a week off to recover from the season, then we will begin again on Dec 13^th as classes now go until the 20^th.  It is a chance to rep some things out.  I myself love to be in the gym with this group, but in talking with Bobbie our Strength Guru, this is important for the group.  Need to stick to schedule. Less is more.