Inside a preseason tourney

Preseason is upon us already.

This past weekend we travelled to Briercrest College and University of Regina to play our first set of exhibition games.  We scheduled the Thursday Briercrest match and the Friday morning Med Hat College matches so our young athletes would have a chance to play in some matches before the first Canada West tournament in Regina that weekend.

Our first two months we prioritize fitness ahead of results at the preseason tourneys.  In CIS there are no wild card berths.  The amounts of teams for Nationals from each division are based on the results from the year before. With Canada West teams meeting in the final we know we have 3 births.  The preseason record counts towards the top 10 rankings, but ultimately teams win the right in.  For this reason we rank conditioning ahead of the result.  Of course we want to win, but we don’t base theteams rest on peaking for the tourney.

WE set team goals for the weekend around our systems and the learning of them.  We want this weekend to confirm our different defense and the player’s communication within the system. As the errors build up players and coaches tend to get quiet.  I know as my frustration builds up that I always find myself sitting down and clamp up.  I have asked my assistant coaches to recognise this in me and to ask me a question.  “What’s next?  This simply jogs me back to reality and then I start coaching again.  We ask the same from our players.

We discussed in depth the 5 r’s of volleyball.  I’ve mentioned this in a past blog. http://coachingbobcats.blogspot.ca/2011/10/5-rs-of-volleyball.html

But we really emphasised the during rally communication as well.  Saying what you see is the habit we need to have happen.  I equate it to writing a test together.  If one person in the group knows the math part of the exam really well but refuses to communicate the whole groups mark will go down.  This is the same in volleyball, what we watch and say out loud has effect on our team as a whole.  We explain even if it is the wrong read at least your teammates know you made the wrong read and then can adjust accordingly.

What do we say?  Well our defense is based on whether the setter is front row or back row.  We will also adjust later in the season based on what the tendency is in each rotation.  We will bunch in one situation and against another team we will spread block.  Everyone has to know the rotation.  We have some very creative coaches in Canada West and they will have different rotations.  Alberta the defending silver medallist run a modified 6-2 system, plus their se3rve reception is more of a trapezoid shape than a line or the traditional 3 player passing.  So it is important in that situation to confirm who is responsible for the attackers across the net.

Once the ball is set we want our back row then to identify what the opposition middle is doing.  To try and pick up the read as quickly as possible, The middle is going 30!  That is because we feel that will be the middle is the quickest a ball will come over, we have less time to react to it than the outside set.  Then when head back to the ball, is it in system or is it off the net.  Then the set, what is the hitters approach like, where are our blockers, will the middle be able to close or are they committed? Then our defense moves accordingly. We want this to happen with vocab,  hitting cross or line, roll or swinging, closed, seem or triple block. 

Last week maintained our weight training and track workouts till Weds.  We then travelled 4 hrs to Briercrest.  The Briercrest and Med Hat matches were good, we were fresh and won 4-0 both matches.  We won 3 straight and agreed to play a fourth both matches to make sure everyone played.

When we entered into our matches in Regina against Manitoba we were feeling pretty good but as a coaching staff we could see fatigue creeping in as the match went longer.  We lost in 4, won the first set 25-21, then lost 22,22 14.  The last set we were tired. 

We then went and watched video as a group, we had 2.5 hours off before we played Sask.  We clipped all the attacks of Manitoba and showed the set we won.  As a coaching staff we wanted to show our team executing the systems properly.  We were able to get 5 triple blocks which showed we were focussing on the right cues.

We played a bit of a younger group against Sask and lost in 4 again.  Win or lose we start every team debrief with what went well.  We ask for specific plays that stood out.  Not just we closed our blocks well, we want Lexi came a long way to close that block in the second set.  I want them to recall the exact play.  I feel this helps build team confidence but it also helps them begins to help them replay the match in their heads.  The second part of this is to teach athletes how to take a compliment.  We have a tough time taking a compliment, quite often we feel we need to justify it with a negative situation to balance the compliment, or we feel we need to compliment the person back.  We teach our athletes the appropriate thing to do is just to say thanks. Nothing else. 

We then discuss what we need to work on; this one was tough on us as we feel that we need to be able to beat Sask if we want to play in the playoffs. We used this opportunity to show our young players that Canada West every match is up in the air.  I also took this time to thank some athletes; we have a few athletes that are working extremely hard to fix technical errors.  One in particular is trying to learn new footwork as she had left-handed footwork for her right handed approach.  She has worked very hard at this, right now she is not jumping as high as she did with the other footwork, but it will pay off in the long run.  We pointed this out to everyone.  It is important for her teammates to support the change to make it worthwhile for her.

Saturday morning we watched video of our match against Sask, this time we showed 20 mins of the set we won, but really noticed break down in our systems and defensive postioning.  We then went to play Alberta.  Again we lost in 4, we went back to watch video again before we played Regina in the consolation semi.  The video showed improvement with our defense when we were serving but we were sloppy off serve reception and in transition.  Alberta was able to take advantage of the errors often.

The amount of video we watched is beginning to pay off we really notice the improvement.  We were able to win the Regina match in 5, some of our younger players played a big role in the win.  Mary our freshman setter started the entire match and played well for us.

Sunday we loaded the bus for a rematch with Sask.  This was an important match for us we needed to send a message to ourselves and to Sask that we were better than our last match.  We played our best match winning 14,14,20.  It was a good bus ride home.