A Week of Learning.

The last 2 weeks have been very interesting one if you follow our Bobcats Women's Volleyball team.  We came off a decent weekend against Manitoba and had a short week to prepare for Mount Royal. We traveled to Calgary on Weds to be able to play Thursday and Friday.

We ended up losing both night to Mount Royal and we were taught a very interesting lesson about discipline and block defense.  Mount Royal was very well prepped and kept us off balance both matches.  They then did a great job of funneling our attackers to their defenders.  We were leaning on balls and really using our wt room strength.  We found out that we couldn't over power them.  They were able to dig up and transition our shots.  Secondly we started to free lance on our own defense.  

For example we asked our blockers to take away the left side on their middle and our player in middle back would then slide to the right to help defend.  Instead our middles would front the attacker and they would score to the left.  Eventually our defenders started cheating left, but our middle would then block properly and they would score to the right side.  It was all unraveling defensively.  The same thing started happening with our blockers they would set up to block cross and would reach back to line and then proceeding to have the ball hit off them.

After Friday’s match we watched a set together in the hotel and really noticed what was happening.  Hoping that would help Saturday.  I know that blooper video never helps.  It was in essence a blooper video discussing our block defense.  It didn’t help.

Our league is such a tough competitive league that .500 winning percentage will not get you in the playoffs.  Our league is November to February, it is hard to think but in early November we are feeling playoff pressure with those two losses.  We felt we needed at least a split.  

Monday’s practice was crucial we needed to get back into our groove.  This practice was a defensive one with a lot of pursuit and tough defensive situations.  We then began to introduce our defense again a different way.  We spent all Sept and Oct hoping to solidify our defense block relationship.  Over the course of this practice we discovered that we had different terminology.  When I was saying read they were thinking different from what we were trying to accomplish.

Tuesday I called Scott Koskie.  Scott is our assistant coach on the Canadian National Team and we discussed a variety of ways to teach block and defense.  We came to the conclusion that we needed to put them in different problem solving situations.  We designed a drill that worked well.

It is a 6 versus 6 wash style game.  Team A would be on serve reception and would also receive a free ball. This would happen 5 times and then Team B would receive the serve and the free ball.  Before the first serve we would give Team B specific defensive instructions.  Of the leftside on Team A scores line they get 3 points. If team A middle scores on the left side they get 3 points.  Then Team B would huddle up and decide how they wanted to defend this problem.  We then gave Team B a point for a dig, a point for a set and a point for a kill.  If they played proper defense they could get 3 points on each ball.  We felt rewarding the defense and the block would keep the focus on that skill.  Plus with the players deciding how they would defend the situation also helped them discuss and figure out different defensive ideas.

This worked well and it led well into explaining our game plans again.  The team prepped for University of Calgary Dino’s much better.  Everyone could feel the energy and commitment within the team.  We had a good week of practice.

Our Friday’s match was sold out we had the largest crowd of the season and we started really slow and Calgary was on fire.  We were still in our funk.  We couldn’t pass or defend.  Nothing was working.  The effort was there but still slightly off.  In the 3^rd set we were down by a fairly large margin when we substituted Brooke Huculak.  Brooke is a first year outside attacker from Forrest Manitoba.  Her old high school team was at the match.  When she entered the match her team went crazy.  She served and made some big defensive plays.  This seemed to energy the team and the crowd. We battled back and won the 3^rd set 25-23.  Then all of a sudden everything we worked on made sense.  We won the 4^th 25-18.  The fifth was a really battle.  They went ahead 14-12 when Kellie Baker had 2 back to back stuff blocks for the tie.  We then went ahead on a great defensive transition.  We had three match points that Calgary held off.  We lost 19-17.

Saturday we had a chance to explain in a bit more detail our blocking ideal and show what it looked like when we did it properly.  This the opposite approach from the week before.  This worked well for us.  Saturday’s match was all Bobcats.  We won in straight sets and held the Dino’s to .107 hitting efficiency.  It is something we can be proud of.  This still has us at 5-5 record.  The upcoming weekend we play U of W and it is another big match.  WE need to apply what we learned this week and keep building.  This week is still a strong defensive focus week.