What do you do all day?

I’ve recently been asked a few times in the same day… What do you do all day? Here is my attempt to explain my off-season work as a coach.  

First a little background information. I am a teacher and coach at Brandon University. I teach in the Faculty of Education in the Department of Physical Education Studies. I have to teach 6 credits a year (basically one class a semester).

When I was teaching and coaching in Grande Prairie I was a full-time teacher plus an off-campus coach at the local college. I was basically doing two full-time jobs. When I was hired to teach one class per semester and spend the rest of my time coaching I thought I was dreaming. Now that I have been coaching this way for a decade, I wish I could just coach. I really enjoy my teaching assignment and it keeps me sane. The downside is when playoffs are rolling around and I have a two-hour education class to teach that day, it becomes a real struggle.

I complete a lot of my prep for the university courses in the spring. To stay current on trends in education, and especially with the integration of technology in the class, takes some research. 

I spend some time every day in April and May on recruiting. In Canada, we don’t have very big recruiting budgets or assistant coaches that devote a large part of their portfolio to recruiting.  At Brandon it largely falls on me.  I have a great group of friends in the volleyball community; they keep me informed on different players in their area.  I will often call or text these coaches in the evening to see if they have found a diamond in the rough or changed their mind on a player they previously thought was great.

Every spring I choose one skill to research and see if it has progressed. This year I am looking at serve reception. I like to watch some of the top passers to see what they do. I also try to track passing stats for some different plositions of the server along the end line . Does a serve from one area or another have more of an impact?

Another important task is figuring out our schedule for the upcoming season. This includes exhibition travel, weight-training days, sport psych meetings, team building days, and finally league travel. We have a travel agent that books our flights for both league and exhibition travel, which takes off some of the load. With exhibition matches comes the travel advances for meal money and booking of hotel rooms. I try to get the schedule out to the players in April for the following season. The athletes then have every day that we practice, lift weights, etc. That way it is easier for them to figure out schedules for school. The out of town athletes can look at potentially booking flights home, plus it gives the incoming freshman an idea of how much is involved in being a university athlete. We often find our freshman get homesick around the end of October. They just need a quick fix of being at home.

We also run a club. Lisa Whyte is the main coordinator of the club, but I oversee the technical part of the club. I try to watch each of the 12 teams practice a little, and be involved on their bench during a match. I tend to find myself gravitating a little more to the U16 and U18 teams as we start recruiting at this age. We are hoping to have a few of them on our university roster someday. I have sat on the bench for our U13 and U14’s and each time I do I am reminded of what fun volleyball is to everyone. This means most weekends are spent in a gym, either recruiting or helping with our club teams. We have 8 of our university athletes coaching club, and some great teachers from the area also coaching. They are all in it for the right reason, to help athletes fall in love with volleyball and create strong social skills.