Tag Archives: Motivation

Oct 24

7 tips to nail your club volleyball tryout

Posted on by

School volleyball is coming to an end. Sooner rather than later for some. :( But don’t breathe a sigh of relief yet. Club volleyball tryouts are coming up in the next weeks. Here are a couple tips to help you nail your tryout.

7. Be awesome.
I know. That’s a gimme. But this is the time you need show everyone what your made of. You’re fighting for a position on a team. Pull out all the stops.

6. Confidence is key.
Don’t let nerves bring down your game. Be confident in yourself. Which will help with the next point.

5. Demo leadership.
All coaches are looking for good leadership. Even the best of teams aren’t as good with no leadership. Show them you can organize a group of girls and lead by example.

4. Stand out.
Obviously you need to stand out in play. But (and this sounds silly) wear something funky. I chose girls for teams in a big club and we referred to one girl as the “one with pink socks.” She stood out in that way. The socks caught our eye, but the skills kept us watching.

3. High energy.
We want to know that you’ll be able to last through 10 hours at a club volleyball tournament.

2. Focus on you, not your competition.
Don’t let the other girls intimidate you. Work on your game.

1. Be coachable.
Listen and execute everything from every coach at the tryout. Even if the coach looks like a volunteer, their word will get back to the decision-makers, so play it safe and be coachable.

Good luck!

Sep 22

Todd Rogers’ road rage

Posted on by

Have a hard time moving on from that last play? You’re not the only one.

I’m watching US Team Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser lose to the Brazilians 4-10. The ref made a bogus 4 hits call and a usually cool-headed Todd Rogers overheated.

Todd can’t get his head back in the game. The announcer attributed the last 6 unforced errors to Todd’s “road rage.” And this is an Olympian. A highly skilled player deemed the “Best Defensive Player” in the FIVB. One little play has completely changed the game for the Americans.

Why am I telling you this? Because as a coach, I’ve spent at least 60% of a season coaching mental toughness. Mental toughness helps players get passed errors and poor ref calls, and win games. As the announcers keep repeating, “Todd needs to clear his head and focus on his game.” If a key player cannot get passed one error, it will snowball, just like it did with Todd Rogers.

The game just ended 10-21.

I know what you’re thinking, “If Todd Rogers can’t do it, how am I supposed to do it?” And to that I say, for one, this situation is an anomaly. Todd Rogers is a rock of a volleyball player – emotionless, strong. And, second, it’s not about how physically tough or skilled you are, it’s about your confidence, your mental toughness. Can you make an error and not dwell on it? Can the ref make a poor call and effect your entire game?

Check out this article on mental toughness. Show it to your team.

Here’s what I do: Practice drills that require your team to come back from a deficit. Put them in unfamiliar situations frequently. Help them focus on the game as a whole and not individual plays. Have teammates help build player confidence.

Oh, and in case you were wondering. Todd and Phil just came back and won the match. Making this their 9th FIVB gold medal this season (never done before). Todd’s comments, “I lost in that second match but really came back in the third. I let it go and that’s what true champions do.”

Aug 21

My week in Milwaukee: learnin, lovin and livin volleyball

Posted on by

So, I just got back from Milwaukee where I spent a week watching Bond Shymansky coach the Marquette University volleyball team through their first week of practice.

Before I go much further, let me give you some background on Bond. He is the man! Seriously… I have more respect for this volleyball coach than any coach I’ve ever been around and I’ve been coaching for 9 years. He’s funny, witty, a great motivator and most of all… he knows his stuff. He doesn’t teach conventional volleyball. He teaches a unique, efficient style of play which he describes as “no wasted movement.” When I first watched his players, I thought, “What in the world are they doing (passing, hitting, etc.)?” and then when he breaks down strategy behind the movements, it makes sense. Now, sometimes I wonder how people succeed not using his techniques. I love it (don’t worry, you can see plenty of Bond’s drills demonstrated on our site).

Anyway. I had a great week in Milwaukee. What a cool town. So much character and history, not to mention a sweet beach where I played sand volleyball any chance I had! It’s hard to believe Lake Michigan is a… lake. Looks very ocean-y to me.

Well, I could almost write a book on my experience watching Bond coach.

The first thing that grabbed my attention was the level of expectation the coaches had for the players. You rarely saw a volleyball hit the floor without a girl chasing it.

Plus, passing is definitely a focus for them. They spent countless hours passing this week. I’ll confess, I get bored as a coach during passing drills for extended periods of time. But now I really have an appreciation for the time it takes to develop good passing habits.

Finally, the biggest lesson for me was that a team needs to learn how to win and it that learning happens in practice. Bond always put his team into drills where they had to reach a certain score. They were always competing against each other or competing with a disadvantage. He challenged them to win in all circumstances. This is a good way to build a mentally tough team, who learn to win even when things may not be going right.

Look for Marquette to be a force this year! They are legit and have the tools to make some noise. Good luck Coach!

Ahhh, I’m back home. And I brought Bond’s expectations and Division I coaching techniques back to my team. It’s going to be a challenging year as defending state champs. My volleyball team knows that hard work pays off and I know that this trip will pay off in the end when my team has the edge to win a tight match down the road.

Feb 01

The process, not the result

Posted on by

So, I’ve been coaching my club team for about two and a half months now. We just had a tournament this past Saturday and I’ve been doing some reflecting on some things my players are going through. They all seem to be focused on the outcome, not on the process.

During my high school season, I had a team that was extremely talented and usually played at a higher level than our competition. It was hard as a coach to keep my players motivated. At one point in the season we had won 30 matches in a row. It would be easy to fall into the “We’re beating everyone, we must be playing really well.” The trick for me was to find a way to make my girls believe that just because we beat a team 25-15, we may not have played to our potential. We began to set goals with stats to ‘grade’ our matches. For example, one of our goals was to have a 2.50 passing percentage. We had a variety of goals like this that would take tangible data of our performance and not just look at the final score to decide if we played well. There were a few 25-15 wins this year we were pretty ‘disappointed’ about.

Well…. I have quite the opposite problem with my current club team. We are having a hard time competing and are getting down from losing. I am coaching a group of 11 and 12 year old girls that have never played volleyball before, ever. I guess that’s not 100% true. Most played on a 4th/5th grade intramural team that served underhand and encouraged the girls to pass the ball over the net at any cost, didn’t play positions and would not allow the girls to swing overhand because “they weren’t ready.” I cringe thinking about it…

The struggle now has become not just with bad habits and technique, but from a team, once again, not focusing on the process but on the result. We are usually playing teams that have been playing for at least a year and have girls that are bigger and more athletic. It is very hard for these girls to accept losing almost every match because they see a pretty lopsided score most matches. But this past Saturday… I challenged them. I told them to stop basing their success on the outcomes of the matches, but rather on our team’s performance. Are we doing the little things we have been learning in practice? I told them, I’m done looking at the score… when I don’t have to remind each player to shuffle their feet to pass on the left, being in proper defensive positions, doing an approach each time we attack, and know where to be in serve/receive, then I’ll start worrying about the score. Until we can do all of these basic fundamental things, we can’t worry about the outcome.

We’ll see how it pans out. The team has come really far, I’m proud of them and am excited to see how far they can go this season.

Do you have any similar experiences like this? Do you have any words of wisdom for me we continue on this club season?