Why they Make National Team

My national team experience has come to an end for the summer.  I really enjoyed the summer with the A and B teams combined.  It was nice to be the good cop for a change. But the experience was even more exciting to see the improvement and commitment of these athletes.

It is interesting to discuss how they all got to the level of the national team. They took many different routes to make the team.  Some were child prodegies others just kept building towards it.  It isn’t really a secret, they put the time in the gym and on the court.  Athletes I talked to about their experience in youth volleyball did more than the average.  Many had coaches that would put in extra time with them in the gym. 

They had the opportunity to play on the provincial teams.  They loved the sport of volleyball and found ways to play.  Many of them put up nets in their backyards.  They would play balloon volleyball or sock volleyball with a family member over couches. 

Most of them have a point in their career where they weren’t very good and had to grow into their bodies.  They had supportive coaches that saw they had athletic potential and encouraged them to keep playing.  They had friends who also loved the sport so it seemed normal to be playing all the time. They are never satisified with good enough.  There is always something for them to work on or improve.

When I was coaching the Killam Spartan’s we had many players who were talented to go on to play at the next level. But it wasn’t commonplace yet.  When they would leave to go play provincial team most of the friends couldn’t understand that commitment.  Why would you give up your summer playing volleyball.  If they left to go play Juvenile  (U-18)volleyball 2 hours away they would also be told of the parties they missed.  They had pressure from boyfriends to not be gone as much.  Many would give up the dream.  People at the national team level found ways to overcome this.

We hear in the news the 10000 hr rule of purposeful practice will make an expert, but quite often in Canada we believe in breaks or else they will burnout.  Most research tends to agree the main reason for burnout is because athletes have too much success early.  They achieve tons of accolades and awards.  As they move up levels it becomes harder and harder to achieve the same level of success.  It then gets to a point where they just give up. 

The athletes on the national team faced these situations as well.  Many of them haven’t had a summer off since they were 15.  They keep training and get better.  The training load for the five weeks was high.  They trained twice for 3 hours  6 days a week plus did weights 3 times a week.  I was convinced when we retested them after 5 weeks their testing would be down.  All but 3 improved with this schedule.  Yes the trainer had some monitoring injuries and soreness, most of which was there long before this summer.  When I look at some of the younger athletes they would get 40 swings in a 3 set match in their grade 12 year .  They would play 4 or 5 matches a day.  This also was done with no strength and pre hab,

As coaches we often look for a quick fix of the team or intervene quickly when the drill isn’t working.  It is ok to have them struggle through the situation.  It is ok to fail.  My friend David Johnson was inducted into the Alberta Volleyball Hall of Fame this weekend.  In his speech he mentioned his mother feeling so bad for him after a tough loss.  He said to her you have to be willing to risk the loss in order to find the success in winning.  We need to teach it is ok to lose to put ourselves on the line.  But come back with a vengeance and work harder to put yourself in a situation to succeed.

Leave No doubt

Team Canada update.

Well we have finished our 4^th week of training with the combined A and B national teams.  It has been a fun summer.  I enjoy the time with the national team and getting to know the different players involved.  It always seems different when we line up against each other during the season.  We are into the intra squad games and have played 3 round robin games.  Team 2 which I am part of ended round 1 in first place.  When your team is not playing the athletes are responsible for being the officials.  Here are Kelsey and Jamie after their ref duties.  They do everything 100 percent.  Even dressed in their official clothing.

I am reading a book right now called “Leave No doubt” written by Mike Babcock.  Mike was the head coach of the Olympic gold medal Canadian hockey team.  It chronicles his thoughts during the build up for and the two weeks of the Olympics.  The book has many great underlining themes.  I will mention two of then that stuck with me so far.

The first comment Mike made was about pressure and loving it.  By placing yourself in a situation to have success automatically brings pressure.  There are two ways to look at it.  1 is the fear of failure and the second is accepting and enjoying the moment.  Too often as the season gets down to crunch and the pressure starts to mount we look for ways out. Or look for reason or excuses for possible failure.  Instead of looking at the pressure as a reward for all the hard work and dedication we have put into the sport.  The Canadian Hockey teams had pressure.  Playing in Canada where anything less than a Gold medal is considered a failure.  Mike found ways to relish the experience.

Early in the book Mike said he has had a series of “dream Jobs”.  He never really set out to become the Olympic coach.  But he kept challenging himself.  His first job at Red Deer College was a dream Job.  Then as he moved up in the ranks they were all considered dream jobs to him. I too feel this way.  I remember all I was hoping to be is a high school coach.  I wanted to run my own high school program build it up to be a recognized program and to move athletes on to post secondary.  I remember the huge disappointment when I was turned down twice in the County of Flagstaff for two different high school positions. But in looking back I think that not getting those positions kept me motivated and made me search out different ways to improve myself so I could get the next high school position.  Then Rod Durrant called me. Something came up and he needed me to cover a weekend for him with Mount Royal Men’s college team.  Watching the warm-up and thinking how cool that was to be a head coach at a CCAA college for 1 weekend.  (We won both games over SAIT).  That was my dream job…then two years later talking with Ron Thomson at GPRC.  When I received the job offer to fill a 1 year sabbatical for David Kay I was so scared and excited at the same time.  I remember my first practice scared to give much feedback to the 3^rd year players…soon getting comfortable and making a mark on them.  That whole year was a dream for me.  Then when David retired from coaching I was offered the head coach position.  Three years in I was getting bogged down by some of the politics that come from institutions and I had to remind myself of my dream job.

Now I sit around the lunch table with the young national team athletes and listen to their excitement of being part of the National team and feed off their energy.  I am Head Coach at a great institution (Brandon University). I have tremendous support from the community and the school, I have to keep reminding myself how lucky I am.  I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be working with the National team, now this is my fifth summer.  I started to take some of the excitement for granted and reading Mike’s book put it back into perspective for me. 

National team again (fitness testing info too)

It has been awhile since my last posting.  It has been a crazy couple of weeks for me.  I put on 9800 km on my truck in the last 4 weeks which mad it a little hard to blog.. 

Now I am settled in rez in Winnipeg and back with the National women’s team for the last 3 weeks.  This summer it is a different format of training than the last two summers I experienced.  Lupo and Scott ( national team coaches) have decided to train the A and B national teams together for the first 3 weeks. We will then split into 3 teams and play a triple round robin tournament. The coaches of the 3 teams are Danny Da Costa from St. FX, Scott Koskie and myself.  Then they will cut down to the A team and will participate in the Pan Am cup in Mexico. 

Also this year Lupo is giving some of the more veteran players the some time off to recuperate some injuries and refocuss. That means this is a good opportunity for some younger players to get quality international experience. 

We started the training camp with 49 players from across the country.  The first couple of days we did ball control and physical testing.  The testing part is interesting because it is a skill too.  Some players will test better because they have completed the different requirements and understand how to recover and use it to their benefit. http://bit.ly/L0jxtD  this is a link to Volleyball Canada’s website and a draft of all the tests and protocols.  I recommend you check them out.  Testing is always a stressful time for the athletes.  At Brandon University we test 3 times a year and no matter how we try to calm the athletes down they still stress out when the time arrives.  We had four players spike touch 3.17meters or higher this year.  (10’4” for people like me who still work that way).

After the testing then there was plenty of drills and competition with everything being statted.  Lupo was especially concerned with the setters and their efficiencies’.  Basically how did the team kill the ball in relationship to each setter.  So the teams would stay the same and the setters would rotate around.  It was a close decision.

In the end Lupo decided to take 33 players included the A team athletes that returned.  Nine of the players were on the B team with us last summer, so they were more comfortable this time around.  Kristi Hunter was the most impressive for me as she improved her spike touch 4 inches from last summer and was now touching 10’2.5”  Her coach from Roblin will be extremely proud of her.

In a typical week the team trains 6 hours a day. They have Weds and Saturday afternoons off plus all day Sunday.  The volume is surprising for the first year athletes.  It feels like you eat, train, sleep all week. Thursday the team quits at 6 pm and they do an hour of yoga.  Which is really good to help with flexibility.  It will take awhile but in the end it will benefit all the athletes.

A typical training session begins with Lupo introducing the expectations and drills of the day. He then gives the team 30 secs for them to focus on their own specific goals.  What does each player need to work on.  Sometimes the drills will focus on transition but an athlete might have a personal goal of using less movement in the arms on defense.  They would use the 30 secs to then see themselves and focus on their personal goals as well.  Myself I often remind myself to stay positive and to encourage the athletes.  Working with the national team the expectatons are quite different.  It is a big jump up from university volleyball.  Some of the systems we run in CIS wouldn’t work at the international level because of the speed and size of the opposition.  When Lupo and Scott swing off boxes the first couple of times people think that is crazy hard, but soon realize that is what the matches are really like.

After the 30 seconds Scott will run them through some ball control drills.  Scott is the master of the Ball control warm-up and keeping it different every time.  Every once and a while he will throw in a fun game.  One day we played a 1 bounce volleyball tennis 3 tournament.  The ball had to bounce and then you had 2 contacts after to play the ball over.  Most of the time it is contacts with the ball over the net.  Working specifically on improving movement and the “touch on the ball”  After their will be a drill that will focus on the topic.  In this drill it will have high volume for the athletes.  For example we were working on finding the pace and rhythm in the shoot sets for both leftside and rightside.  The athletes would be in groups of three and would hit 10 shoots sets each and then another group would be in.  Of course this was all done from a pass and an easier serve.  The best drills are still serve, pass set hit drills.

After this Lupo will then go into his main drill.  He will do 1 drill for an hour and half.  During tryouts it was sometimes 2 hours of the same drill.  This is tough on some athletes. It requires a lot of mental focus to stay engaged in the drill for that long.  Now two weeks in it just seems normal.  The athletes are doing a great job with their attention.  I find that in younger club we need to have 7 or 8 drills to keep their attention.  In university often we will have 4 drills over the two hour period.  National team 3 drills for 3 hours.

At the end of the practice he will debrief and then they have 30 secs of time to evaluate what they did in the practice. To note what they should work on during the following practices.