Running Drills Primarily vs. Using Game-Situations/Focusing on 'Playing'

As our season winds down, I decided to take a look at our stats for the past three years.  A lot of discussion goes on about play-focused vs. drill-focused practices and that if you eliminate drills, you're going to hurt your team.  A perfectly controlled experiment isn't really possible--every game is different, every year is different.

With the info below, for various reasons, 2012 was a drill-oriented year where 50% of the practice was dedicated to drills.  In 2013, I made the switch to game-oriented practices, reducing the # of drills to at most 5-10% of practice.  Our schedule difficulty remained the same.  In 2014, I ramped up the schedule toughness, but we eliminated 'drills' completely, focusing everything on game-oriented work, so that everything was engineered to be game-like with players initiating contacts rather than coaches--the works.

So:

                           2012                    2013             2014

Hit Eff %          .228                      .239              .239
Kills/Set             12                        12.5              12.4
Blocks/Set          2.25                    1.75               1.75
Aces/Set             1.95                     1.75              1.75
Digs/Set            18.5                     18.45             17.9
S/R (3pt scale)   2.38                     2.20              2.06

2012 note: Our libero was all-American for the second time, best juco libero in the country and went on to NCAA D-1 and awards at that level, too.

The difference between 2012 and 2013 is our libero.  Weaker passing led to the need for more attempts, thus more kills.  The blocking drop was us losing a 6'1 all-American MH.

 

The other drastic stats change is the Digs and S/R rating between 2013 and 2014--that was a recruiting failure on my part....our libero was fine, but the passing around her was weaker.  Just as important, we ramped up the schedule difficulty, making it harder to stop hitters or have our hitters put the ball down.

 

But ultimately, in terms of the stats--the only real difference is 2012's blocking and S/R ratings, and those were because of the players, not running drills.

 

"But, wait, all that shows is there is no difference."

 

And that may be--but if we accept that, why wouldn't we use game-like play, ESPECIALLY with younger kids?  Does anyone prefer drills to playing?  Absolutely not!

 

No difference? --doesn't that suggest that drills are NOT more effective?  And just as important, game-like play adds in an extra skill/practice time with teammates on a court.  I don't know how to quantify volleyball IQ.

 

I suppose you could argue that this also shows game-like situations aren't 'better' than drills, either.  But there's been one other difference in our program as we made the change to a system more in line with the philosophy of the national program--we've had fewer injuries.

 

Matches lost to injury
2011: 145

2012: 37

2013: 16

2014: 8

 

2011 is no typo.  It includes malingerers though who were not invited back since they preferred to only be healthy on game days.  But if we halve that--it's still 72.

 

So let me go back and check a couple other seasons....:
2010: 57

2009: 98 (includes 41 from a player who missed the entire season)

2008:  36

2007: 97 (including 50 from a player who missed the whole season)

 

The conditioning regimen remained the same, as did the duration of practice and the number of practices.  The match totals varied between 42-50.  But even if we add the two seasons of game-like training together, the total time lost to injury is still significantly lower than any other single season's total.   Sure it's a small sample size...but it sure is tantalizing to reach a conclusion, isn't it.