Tryouts are typically one-sided. Players go and show off what they can do. They hope to get an offer to play for the club. If they are lucky, they get to meet their coach. However, most don't get to see their coach actually coach and show off their coaching skills or personality. If you are lucky to get a contract offer to play with the club, you don't know who is on the team and what your chances are to garner playing time. Then, if you sign the contract, you are committing to paying for the entire season, including your share of all the travel trips, regardless of whether move, get injured, dislike your team or coach. (Note, some regions allow players to opt-out of their contract up until a certain date without penalty). A fair tryout would be an interactive training session where the coach gets to see the players perform and where the players can see if they like the coach and their coaching style. Then, get a workout with all the girls the team wants to sign so kids can see how good or how weak a team may be, as well as their standing on the team. For example, one player spent a great deal of time and money getting training to be a setter, but the team she played on wanted to use her for a libero. When you get to tryouts, you need to realize that most players in that club are returning from the previous year and already have a position on the team. It is likely that you are competing for one of maybe two or three positions. [Recently, there were 51 middle blockers who tried out for a large club. What they didn't know was that there were only 2 open middle blocker positions in that club at that age group. The club didn't tell kids what was available. They just took their $50 tryout fee, let them play a little, then cut them.] Tell the club you won't sign a contract until you get to see your team and your coach perform together and see what happens. If you start your 'research' early in the late spring/early summer, you can gather the info you need to make a good decision. Don't wait for tryouts because most roster spots are filled by returning players (most are already promised positions before tryouts even begin). Tryouts are meant to be high pressure, like a car sales process, where you have a small amount of time to make a decision and a fear of having your spot given to someone else: Sign now or get left out.
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Last night a parent shared this story with me. Last fall, he searched around for a club volleyball program for his daughter. He met with a representative from a certain club and was told all the great things about the club. They had their own facility: Beautiful courts, workout equipment, specialized volleyball training equipment, and more.
The cost was $2000 for coaching, $600 for uniforms and more for each tournament they played. 3 hours of practice a week. It seemed like a solid deal. Then, on the first day of practice, this parent took his daughter to the facility. They put 10 teams on 4 courts. The girls weren't allowed to hit the ball over the net. When he approached the person he talked to about the club, she reminded him that he signed a contract. Throughout the course of the year, his daughter sat on the bench keeping stats at every tournament. She never received training from a head coach. Instead, it was some sort of an intern or associate coach. She was young and inexperienced. Coaches who use the same lineup every game will cost your team some wins. In a 25 point game, most teams (Note: this varies slightly at each age group, so you must track it for your team) will go through two and a half full rotations (rotating for serve about 15 times). In a deciding match, where the game goes to 15, your team will go through one and a half rotations (rotating for serve about 9 times).
For the sake of illustration, let's assume you have 6 players and you have one strong, dominant middle hitter (most coaches put the tall girls in the middle, which is a bad move, but that can be explained another day). In a typical lineup, most coaches will start that MB in the middle front. Now, based on the number of rotations, let's calculate where the player will finish the game: Game to 25 = Finish in the back row Game to 15 = Finish in the back row Do you really want to have your dominant player to finish the game in the back row? Maybe there is a reason you do. But, when you think about how many close sets you play, can you afford to have your best hitter in the back row at the end of the game? This year, I observed a 7th grade team that had one tall, dominant hitter (which they played in the middle) and the other middle was a great defensive player in the back row. The coach started the big MB in the right front rotation on every match. This ensured that the girl would finish in the back row in every set they played. In the deciding sets, their best hitter had one pass through the front row, while the weaker middle had two passes through the front row. I won't get into it here, but altering your lineup to get better matchups will pay off with a few extra wins. That article is for another day. Cheers! I was watching a 7th grade volleyball game last week. Both teams used a serve receive where the left back and right back players are about 20' off the net, but the middle back player is about 4' from the baseline. The girls on the other team could barely serve the ball to the baseline, so they kept getting ace after ace whenever the ball was served to the middle of the court. I thought the coach would make an adjustment, but she insisted with sticking to her old-school serve receive. The coach should have plotted where the serves were hit and the outcome. Had she done this, she would have noticed a disturbing pattern.
The fact is, most serves can be received with all three back row players standing around the 22' line...in a straight line. The overhand receive makes those deep serve-receive positions obsolete. The same is true for defense. Most kills occur in the middle of the court, not the perimeter. So, why is there so much effort defending the perimeter of the court. Plot the hits and kills in your next match and you will see where to play defense. Remember, coach smart, not coach tradition.
Parents and players ask what they can do on their own to develop skills. The challenge with skill development is learning how to perform a skill correctly and repeating that technique over and over until you build your muscle memory. It is critical to get feedback to ensure that the "homework" is done correctly. This has become a great deal easier with mobile phones and video apps.
At the beginning of every season, I ask my players to load the Hudl Technique app, or similar video apps that allow for slow motion playback, on their phone and set up an account. I will also send them a video of someone performing the particular skill and explain the keys to the technique. In the gym, I teach the player the skill and use their phone to record it. We break down the technique so they know where they need to improve. The players will then work on the skill at home and send me video of their progress. I can provide pointers over email. This has become a highly effective teaching tool. Players find it nearly impossible to visualize what they are doing, but once they see it on video, they can both see and feel what their bodies are doing. This has proven to be a means to drive changes. The best defense depends on the level of competition you are playing. Most 14's teams (and younger) don't hit with consistency. This means your team will get a lot of free balls and hits toward the back left corner of your defense.
For one tournament, where my 14's team played in a U15's division, I had my parents chart where every ball was hit when it was hit over the net. This was for all teams in the division. We divided the court by drawing a tic-tac-toe pattern on the court (9 equal spaces that are 10' by 10') and plotted every hit. 24% of all the hits were to the center square. My team played the traditional middle back, perimeter defense. The girls had trouble reading the short hits and they often fell for kills. As a result, we switched to a middle up defense. This resulted in very few tips or short hits ever falling for kills. We used the middle back defense only for big-hitting teams. Play the percentages. Learn what happens most in the games your team plays, then adjust your defense accordingly. What works for an 18's team will not necessarily work for a 14's team, nor a 12's team. |
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September 2020
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