Mighty
Peace.
Tomorrow
is an exciting day for me. I have been asked to come back to Grande Prairie to
present at the Might Peace Teachers Conference. When I taught here in Grande
Prairie I attended these conferences. I am actually pretty nervous to be back
presenting in front of friends and colleagues.
When I was invited they asked me to do an all
day session. I want you to know I can
talk about volleyball all the time. The organizers asked me to do sessions that
would appeal to all groups. They said explain what you think coaches need to
hear. This was a big challenge. How can
we make this useful for everyone?
I know from
my experience at the convention I loved when I could walk away from a session
with one or two new things to try. With that in mind I have uploaded all the
drills here https://www.dropbox.com/s/6qydtk5a7pll72n/MPTC%20presentation.xlsx?m
At
least this will be a beginning point.
I
feel the session will be generated by how the group asks questions. I have a basic plan in place and can work
through it, but really hope the coaches will ask questions. I am going to use twitter as an avenue to ask
questions also for the shy teacher or inexperienced coach.
When
I was beginning to plan for this I thought what makes a successful
program. I contacted a variety of
coaches and we came to conclusion it was planning. The more a person is planned the better off
they will be.
Coaches
who turn a program around usually do it through structure. Planning for high school
team and club team will be different for each setting. A team needs to take into account of where
they need to be successful. Do they need
to win the league to make provincial? Is there a Zone Tournament that decides? These
will affect their planning.
When
I was teaching and coaching in high school we had a zone tournament that the
team needed to win in order to get to Provincials. We really only needed to win
that one tournament to get to the provincial championship. Of course we tried to win each one but we ear
marked each tournament for different things.
At
the beginning of the season we would plan for the entire year. The first
tournament we usually focussed on our serve reception patterns and defensive
relationships. The second tournament was
mostly block defense relationships. The
third tournament would be about offense.
We would schedule a tournament where the younger kids would play more
than the veterans. This allowed the vets
to support and help the younger kids, plus it also allowed for comfort and
confidence in the young athletes in case of injuries.
We
want to think of things in terms of planning chunks. We can review things we have covered but our
main focus in the tournament was a very specific thing. We would focus most of our time outs on that
topic. Discuss it in our post game
meetings. When I was a young coach I wanted to fix everything right now, but we
found that the athletes were getting overloaded with information. One topic at a time usually worked the best
for learning.
This
structure helped guide the process. Plan
for success.
