Strike Day 28. We are coming off a very troubled weekend. We played a home and home series with the University of Winnipeg Wesmen. The U of W entered the matches ranked 8th in Canada. We struggled both days against them. We didn’t perform up to our expectations.
The strike is really playing havoc on all of our confidences. We have missed 48 contact hours of on court volleyball. This is time that we haven’t been able to have our coaching staff together fully. To look at it in terms of academics this is more than a three credit course. For a lot of athletes this is one of their most important courses. The trouble with this statistic is we can’t make up this time. For the rest of the academic world when the strike ends we will have a solution to make up the class time missed. For athletics everything proceeds as normal. This is a tough situation on all of us.
As a coach you preach the concept of team first all the time to the players but in this situation the coaches are not able to fulfill our end of the bargain and it feels terrible. The assistant coaches and athletes have been impressive as they have tried their hardest to make something positive out of this. I don’t have a large ego that makes me think that I alone can solve our problems right now. But I do believe that if we had our whole coaching staff together we could. Six sets of eyes are better than two.
When we first went on strike a month ago we were starting to really gel as a team and our basic philosophies were starting to show as a group. We played those two exhibition matches against Regina and we felt this upward momentum. Ashley, Becky and Sara did a good job preparing for Manitoba and we were close on Friday, but then Saturday the cracks started to show.
Confidence is a fickle friend. When athletes are confident they play above their head. Athletes will play with no fear in their game. As the confidence starts to deteriorate in them or worse confidence in their teammates/ When this lack of confidence start to show then problems follow. In hockey to explain this lack of confidence coaches and athletes use the term squeezing the stick too tight. This means that they don’t have the subtle feel for the puck and are trying too hard. Same thing happens in volleyball, athletes start to second guess their decision or the system. They will over swing try to make something out of nothing. A player will then try to do too much like covering for another teammate on defence, leaving themselves out of position. The ball always seems to find the player who isn’t doing their job properly.
When this starts to happen players often start to look for solutions, usually this is within the team or with one of the coaches. In our situation this is hard for the athletes, because the head coach cannot really interact with them, the assistant coaches are out student teaching and involved with their own education. They are trying to figure out their own life as well as trying to problem solve the team. Becky, Ashley and Sara have made me extremely proud to have worked with them. They have a vast knowledge of the game. Becky really understands the game especially from the point of view as a setter, Ashley has a strong grasp of all positions but excels as a middle coach and Sara is the same but has a strong background as an outside attacker. Together they cover all necessary knowledge of the game. The difference is a more experienced coached would have a few more ideas on how to get this knowledge across. Plus the assistants are in a tough situation as they have friends on the team. Other than the freshman all the coaches would have just finished playing with them. To ask Becky to get on Jaryn and Claire is not fair to her. They are some of her closest friend.
So as mentioned above the athletes start to look elsewhere to find solutions and gain confidence. If coaches are not available then the athletes talk to parents, former coaches, friends playing on other team, and other sport coaches. The athletes are then given a new set of information on how that person would fix their situation. These people are often a good resource for the individual player when it comes to dealing with mental and emotional situations. These people will have an understanding about the athlete from past dealings and will help them through those tough mental situations. But when it comes to blocking and defensive schemes this source of information often gets the athletes on two different pages. One player is moving one way when the other is expecting them to move another. It creates more harm than good. Every team has different philosophies on what is correct and a coach has to be passionate and confident about their system. Many different systems have won in volleyball. Russia won an Olympic championship playing six up defence. In Canada that is considered a Jr. High defense. It would be hard to convince outside coaches that this would work for us. But if a coach was passionate about it with the correct personnel it would work.
How to build back the confidence?
We are continuously asking the athletes to talk to each other during the match. This creates a stronger understanding in each other, and alleviates any confusion in what each other are doing. Just talking out loud saying what you’re thinking during the match will make a world of difference for each other.
We need to celebrate when we do something correct. The team needs to focus on the things we do well and find a way to use this in our situation. We passed very well last weekend. We were in system quite a bit. If we can maintain that we should be ok.
Simplify what we are asking people to do. We need to pull back on the number of options and ask athletes to do the basic first. In the movie “For The Love Of The Game” There is a scene where Kevin Costner (baseball pitcher) is struggling to throw a strike. He stops centers his body and says “one more time, like you’ve done a million times before”. He doesn’t try to throw harder, or try something tricky. He just went back to a basic pitch. Just find the basic system and keep focussing on that.
We need to find this confidence fast. If both sides of this strike can find it in their hearts to solve the issues fast it would go a long way to solving some of our confidence issues. I hope and pray that this doesn’t go much longer.
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