Thursday, October 2, 2014

Educational Theory and Coaching

Okay--this is actually from my book on coaching.  I think that the stuff here is applicable beyond volleyball--across all sports.  (But if you really like it...consider buying the book.  It's not a collection of magic drills--it's about the more important, less considered points of coaching)
 
* * *
There are a lot of misconceptions about coaching, from observers and
fans, as well as by coaches themselves. There’s the presumption that a
high-level athlete will automatically become a high-level coach. This is
not a volleyball-specific observation. With the NFL, I’ve never seen a
highlight with John Harbaugh or Bill Belichick playing, but they sure
seem to know how to coach the heck out of their sport. How many World
Series did Yogi Berra or Ted Williams win as managers? The answer:
a lot fewer than guys with limited ability to play like Tony LaRussa or
Tommy Lasorda. There is also the stereotype that coaches are just ‘dumb
jocks’ hoping to relive their glory days, but can you think of a successful
coach who fits this stereotype in sports now? It’s difficult whether you
are talking collegiate or professional coaches.

If you are going to come up with synonyms for ‘coaching’, what do you
think of? The ones that pop into my mind: teach, instruct, educate. Unfortunately,
many people don’t equate coaching with those other words.

They think of coaching … differently, as you can find out if you attend
your average boys high school basketball game on any given Friday
night. That’s too bad because coaching IS teaching. What goes on in a
gymnasium, when you are truly coaching, is no different than a classroom,
other than the fact that there aren’t desks in a gymnasium, track,
or soccer field. John Kessel, director of youth development for the US
National Program, asks coaches, “Where’s your white board?” driving
home the point that the gym is a classroom.

The catch is that most coaches are conditioned to think otherwise.
We buy into the belittling comments that ‘it’s just sports’ or ‘you’re just
a coach’ and lose sight of the bigger picture (don’t worry, it’s not like I
haven’t done the same thing; it happens all the time). Except I can see a
protest forming as you read this: “But, Jim, I’m not a teacher.”
That doesn’t matter. We teach and learn all the time, and we don’t
have to be a professional educator to do that (or a student on the other
end of things), but if we think about some basic elements of education,
we can improve our coaching. We should take what works in the classroom
and use it in the gym.

I’m not well-versed in educational theory, and a valid argument can
be made that a lot of educational theory is best left as theory because
it isn’t practical and doesn’t work with most groups of students. That
hasn’t stopped me from learning a few things and becoming dangerous
though. To start with, as a coach, I think there are three different methods
of teaching that work in a practice:
Direct Instruction
Inquiry-based Instruction
Cooperative Learning

DIRECT INSTRUCTION:
Anyone who’s been in school is familiar with ‘direct instruction.’ A
professor stands at the front of a lecture hall, puts formulas and facts on
a board via a PowerPoint, and students sit and take notes on what he
says. When the hour is done, students close their notebooks and leave.
There’s little effective interaction taking place with direct instruction,
perhaps a question taken at the end of class. Otherwise, it’s up to the
student to reach the proper conclusions or fit the pieces together on her
own.

In the gym, how many times have you seen coaches stand and explain
a skill with players circled around, the players doing nothing but staring
at the coach? Or the other variation of this — the players stand,
hands on hips, as they watch the coach demonstrate the skill. In both
scenarios, the players are passive, and though there’s a time and place
for that, direct instruction doesn’t work as efficiently as other available
strategies though it does allow you to reach more people (the whole lecture
hall of 500 or a gym full of campers).

Think about your team and you as a coach. How many times have you
grumbled to yourself that your kids don’t have patience? Exactly! Don’t
worry — as coaches, we’ve all done it, but this is the big issue with direct
instruction. It is the least effective means of instruction for younger
students; they are still learning patience and have trouble focusing on
instructions for more than a few minutes at a time (if you are a parent,
you understand this as well!). Take it a different direction. Think back
to time in college. How many students were asleep during lectures? I’d
wager a lot more than were sleeping through their chemistry labs.

There’s another big problem with direct instruction, especially when
you are coaching younger players. Imagine you are in a math class and
the teacher is going over the Pythagorean Theorem. What if two students
have already completed Calculus II and three others just started
introductory multiplication and division? Direct instruction can’t deal
efficiently with widely varied levels of ability. In terms of volleyball,
how effective would it be to explain how to hit a quick set to a group of
players where two are collegiate all-Americans, others are high schoolers,
while several are starting their first day of volleyball ever? The collegiate
athletes have mastered the skill (relatively speaking), the high
schoolers understand and now need the requisite practice with it, while
the younger athletes will simply stare and go, “Bwah???”

So I think the question becomes — how much do I, the coach, rely on
direct instruction? Truthfully, I relied on it a ton when I started because
I was insecure and wanted to prove to my players that I knew what I
was talking about. Over the years, I’ve changed and I save the use of direct
instruction in practice for certain things like reviewing handouts on
team rules or our schedule, etc., but generally things that don’t require
critical thinking and where the players all are on a level playing field.
I’ll use it when we hold camps, too, but only for a few minutes until we
break campers into significantly smaller groups of kids. So when you’re
evaluating yourself, can you identify where you are using direct instruction?
Are you matching the good points of this style to what you need, or
are you using it out of habit?

INQUIRY-BASED INSTRUCTION:
This is one of the newer trends in education, and it’s one I liked using
when I was a high school teacher though I didn’t know it had a hoity-toity
name. With inquiry-based instruction, the emphasis is on problem solving
and critical thinking. It’s tougher than you realize; young people
are conditioned at a young age to shut up, pay attention, and memorize,
memorize, memorize, and that only stupid people ask questions. Emphasizing
standardized tests has not helped. It’s not a new issue — an
early ’80s Doonesbury cartoon addressing this very issue. When I taught
U.S. History, I preferred giving essay questions that required critical
thinking, something like:

There are many reasons for the start of the Civil War. In your opinion,
which were the more important factors, the economic, political, or social
issues? Choose one and explain why it was more important.
Provide concrete examples for your assertion.”


This gave students a choice, and it forced them to think about their
answers, though I’m not naïve; I’m sure many students chose based on
what they knew the most about regardless of their belief, but that was
fine because that required thinking, too, a realization of their limits and
what would/wouldn’t work for them. In a science classroom, I suspect
this style of education is much more hands-on than in social studies
classrooms, just not always. In college, I took a class called “Simulations
in the Classroom” for Political Science that set up simulations based
on this style of instruction (though again, I’m not sure Dr. Rasmussen
knew the label for what he was doing), but went one step further. After
working through problems, the class returned to the beginning and
went through each step of the process, exploring how different individuals
and different groups reached their decisions. Those class discussions
provided fascinating insight into thoughts, not to mention how the
simulations were designed to manipulate particpants’ actions.

But can this work in a sports practice? Again, I was skeptical. After
all, when coaching, young people need focus, they need specific tasks
and goals assigned. How many drills have you pre-determined are lasting
for 100 tosses or 50 good passes or 20 kills? Look at basketball practices;
for the past 20 or 30 years, basketball coaches start the clock in
the gym and run drills for a predetermined amount of time and woe be
to God if they deviate from the schedule! Essentially, coaches have been
conditioned to believe practices must be regimented and organized down
to the last miniscule detail. We’ve been led to believe that the coach is
the center of practice and that without the coach in direct charge of
everything, practice falls apart. To steal from an old poem, “The center
cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

Except it isn’t true. Oh, trust me, I spent years following the trend of
micro-managing practices and details,until a couple of years ago. That
was the point I realized — I’m an idiot. It started with a presentation I
attended at the American Volleyball Coaches Association’s annual convention.
The presentation was by John Kessel, USA Volleyball’s Director
of Sport Development. Kessel’s responsibility is improving coaching
at all levels of the game, 'grow the game', and finding ways to incorporate research from
other avenues into the sport for the betterment of the game. I went in
to his talk with the mindset that turning practice over to the players
and an inquiry-based strategy was silliness, especially since my job as
a college coach is to win (while developing better adults … the reality is
that few college coaches remain in their jobs if they lose more often than
win over the years), and I was equally certain that it was foolhardy with
younger players since they lacked the skills and knowledge to play the
game at a high level.

One hour later — and that’s all it took, one hour —I realized I
was missing out. Worse still, I should’ve known better from past experience
in a gym (more on that in a bit). Kessel’s presentation took place on
a demo court and for his demo players, he was coaching a dozen 12- and
13-year-old girls of various experience levels. Over the next hour, he
showed how inquiry-based theory works in a gym. He set up the basics
of a drill and told the players to begin, ‘ignoring’ the players as he talked
with the attending coaches. Behind him, some of the girls caught on
right away while others struggled. A-ha! It wasn’t working. But then
the kids started trying different ways to work things out, started talking
with one another, and within 5 or 10 minutes, they had the knack of
things and the drill proceeded smoothly. Once the drill was going well,
Kessel stopped it and explained a more complicated drill before backing
out again and allowing the players to figure it out themselves. If they
had a question, he answered it, but otherwise he let them work unimpeded.
The kids got it. Just as important — they liked it, you could see
it on their faces. Only one hour of court time and there was an obvious,
tangible look of accomplishment on many of the girls’ faces. I was gobsmacked.
Not only were those girls better on the court, he’d helped (if
only in a small amount) increase those athletes’ self-confidence and self-esteem,
which is exactly what we are supposed to be doing as coaches of
young people.

Just as important, afterward, John spent another 30 minutes helping
coaches work through various ways of implementing this sort of
approach into practices, applying inquiry-based instruction with the
coaches he spoke with, just in a different form. I appreciate what Kessel
did because it offered rudimentary mentoring, it created peer relationships
between coaches, and though it wasn’t part of his seminar requirement, he
remained to speak with those coaches above and beyond what was necessary. I
didn’t dwell on that at the time though. I was kicking myself because I’d
seen something similar years before when I was at Ohio State (though
again, I don’t think Jim Stone was thinking in terms of tangible
educational theory).

Jim Stone didn’t organize practice with a clock or with set times in
mind; instead, his practice plan was almost always written on the
front half of a 3x5 index card. His logic was simple — if the drill is going
well, why stop it? If the drill is going poorly, why continue? Instead,
move on to one you can succeed with. I’m simplifying it, obviously. There
are times as a coach you continue with a shaky drill to force players to
work through a specific issue; there’s value in that, but Stone understood
that it was more important to keep players’ minds in the game. This next
part should sound familiar. Many times in practice, Stone set the drill
up, asked if there were questions, and then when the players started, he
backed up and observed. In those drills, if a coach was involved, it was
only to start play with a freeball or down-ball, otherwise, it was the players
trying to beat the drill and figure out what would bring success.

Over those three seasons, Stone’s teams went 74-18 and in 1994, won the Big
Ten and made the Final Four. So why the heck did I blank that from my mind when
I became a coach? You imitate what you know and what works, yet I
blanked those memories from my mind until Kessel’s presentation.
Now I actively incorporate inquiry-based instruction into practice. I
set a drill up, put challenges into the drill for the players to get past,
then sit back and observe. Sometimes I’ll take it further, and ask the
players what they think we need to work on, what drills they think will
fix problems or improve our team. When I did that this year, I was surprised;
my team didn’t shy away from hard drills, whether physically
or mentally demanding. They enjoyed having input, and other than a
hiccup in September, the program enjoyed its best season ever. Indeed,
I’ve tried this approach with my club kids the past two seasons, and
used it to teach them different systems of offense and defense, and I’ve
been stunned at the results. We’re better physically — that comes with
practice, but their real improvement has been mental. The players have
a better understanding of what the opponents are doing, know what we
should be doing, and no longer require constant coach input to act —
they now show initiative. Better still, the athletes enjoy practice more
and I’ve relaxed because I don’t need to nag or carp constantly. I like it. I
just wish I would’ve remembered Stone’s practices sooner or seen Kessel
give that presentation a decade ago. My bad.

COOPERATIVE LEARNING:
You see this in schools regularly. Teachers break a classroom down
into small groups who then circle their desks and work together on a
project as the teacher supervises, overseeing the groups work. As a
teacher, this is more efficient as you only need to supervise a few groups
while the students do most of the work. Ideally within a group, the students
do equal work, but that’s theory; reality doesn’t work quite as
well. There will always be some who work harder than others. When
you choose small groups, you hope for one of two things. If the students
are of equal ability, they push one another to do quality work. If the
students are of mixed ability, the teacher hopes that the better students
help the weaker students, so that everyone is successful and can work
to their strengths (which will get discussed a little bit down the road).
When I taught, I used cooperative learning in two projects, one on
music and the other, “The Space Race” game. The music project involved
writing a paper, research for information, listening to the appropriate
style of music, and a group presentation with visual aids. This was done
so that students with different skill-sets could work together; some students
were whizzes with PowerPoint and technology while others enjoyed
public speaking, and still others were adept at regular research. I
never assigned people to the various sections of the project. The groups
did that on their own.

The Space Race went further. Using a simulation called “Race to the
Moon,” I modified it with my friend Dave for classroom purposes. We
then took it a step further and made the simulation a competition between
his classes (as the USA) and mine (in the role of the USSR), so that
the students were required to cooperate within their group and across
the other groups within their class (each represented a various government
agency or branch), so that at the end, success could be judged in
multiple ways and we could dissect the value of cooperation. Indeed, at
points in the simulation, the two opposing classes had to cooperate to
avoid disaster, but were limited to communicating via emails relayed by
the teachers. A decade later, many of our former students still remember
details that I’ve forgotten, so that when they mention them, I smile,
nod, and say “Oh, yeah, that was great.”

Without thinking of the theory behind it, you’ve seen this used in gyms
before and probably used it yourself. When you pair kids up to work on
a skill, you’re using cooperative learning. Three-person over-the-net
pepper — cooperative learning. It sounds silly, but even doing 6-on-6
freeball drills falls within the definition of cooperative learning. Isn’t that
the ultimate purpose of a youth team, to learn values like cooperation? The question
to consider is whether you should let the kids pick their own groups or if
you, the coach, should. There’s value in each method, just as in dividing
them by skill level.

The big issue I’ve had in the classroom or gym has been personality.
Some kids have dominating personalities and regardless of skill, that
will overwhelm a group. If the kid’s got a positive personality, it can be a good thing
that pushes her group to work harder which also means you probably
don’t need to supervise them much. Unfortunately, negative personalities
have the opposite effect and worse, left alone, they slowly wear
down other kids who have reasonable work ethics.


Obviously, the answer is to use all three of these methods. How you
do that is up to you and what you feel your strengths and weaknesses
are as a coach. Think of your role-models. Who are the best teachers you
remember from school (best, not necessarily the ones you liked)? Which
coach got the most effort from her players, regardless of skill level? Don’t
hesitate to talk to those coaches. Ask what their strategies were; the truly
great coaches are happy to teach whether it is a junior high athlete, an
All-American, or a fellow coach; they understand what USAV and the AVCA
are attempting to do—grow the game. We do that with players and coaches.
Fans, too.

There’s another part of education that’s important. I understood it
because of my mom and sister before I learned the psychology of it. For
me, school came easily. I never took notes. I sat, listened, and distilled
the essence of a lecture whether it was History, English, or Astronomy. I
don’t know why I have that ability — I just do. My mom didn’t have that
though. Neither did my step-father, so neither went on to school after
graduating high school.

But when I was in high school, my mom did start college. She got married
right out of high school and after a divorce, returned
to school. Because she hadn't worked hard in high school, Mom struggled with
taking notes during class and processing the information put on the blackboard.
Instead, she tape-recorded the lectures to play them back at home, listening to
them several times, stopping each time she didn’t understand something to
check her notes and the textbook. The process meant she put in 8 or 9 hours
daily to get her work done. Being young and cocky, I taunted her with how
easy classes came to me (something I regret now, but it was the callowness of
youth). I shouldn’t have. She found a strategy that worked for her. Four years
later, she graduated at the top of her nursing school class, earning her
BSN. My mom, the valedictorian.

My stepfather hated school, also, and after he died, I found two letters
from his high school principal talking about his poor behavior and attitude,
especially in English classes. Disliking school, he went straight to work
before owning his own automotive business. From the time he was five, he
loved taking apart machines. Like most kids, he was better taking them apart than
putting them together, but eventually, he got good at putting them together
again. Good enough that while I was off at college, he got tired
of his Bronco’s performance, so he took it completely apart, and I mean
completely. He cleaned each part, replaced worn-out ones, and put that
vehicle back together so that it looked and performed better than one
coming off the Ford assembly line, and never needed to consult a manual to do it.
Could you do that? I sure as heck couldn’t — that was the work of a mechanical
genius. That’s more family detail than you probably want, but it illustrates two
critical points:

There are many different ways people learn and if we can combine those, we’re
more likely to be effective coaches and teachers.
Success has many different definitions and we must always be
aware that how I define success as a coach may not be how a
player defines success (or happiness for that matter).

Again, I’m not an expert, but I have stayed at a Holiday Inn. I came
across the theory and explanation for all this while teaching Psychology
(I taught Psych because I admitted to taking two Psych classes in
college. That made me more qualified than anyone else apparently). The
textbook referred to it as VAT-K, an acronym referring to the three
primary means of learning used by people: Visual, Audio, and
Tactile/Kinesthetic.

How do you apply each of these in your practice?

VISUAL:
There are some simple things you can do with visual. Have you
watched video footage of your matches? Players are always intrigued to
watch matches from a different perspective, and with modern editing
technology, it is much easier to assemble footage relevant to players of
the same position or even for a single individual. Have you considered
filming practice? There is good software available for tablets of all types
that allows you to film 30-60 second snippets and then play it back in
slow-motion or with Madden-esque telestrator markings. Of course, you
also have the traditional use of video: watching an opponent’s match
and scouting them to figure out a strategy for an upcoming match.
The problem with these visual strategies is that they require time,
which is a precious commodity when you are teaching or have a regular
day-job, or else they require manpower. It isn’t efficient for the head
coach to focus on filming individuals during practice when you also have
to keep an eye on anywhere from 10 to 30 other players. Do you have a
team manager? Can players film one another? Do you have a parent you
trust who is willing to help all players equally?

Another less conventional alternative is visualization. Used by religion and
checked by science, there are tangible positive results that
come from visualization. Mike Hebert advocated this while at Illinois,
asking his players to picture key game situations and their actions at
those points in the match. In 2012, though I suspect my players don’t
remember us doing it, I asked them to think about the Region Championship
match and what they were going to do when we won. I emphasized
that I wanted them to have it planned out so that we celebrated
right. The catch with visualization though is whether the players take it
seriously. That’s your judgment, but at least visualization doesn’t require
significant resources and can be done in small doses, perhaps on a bus
before a match or at the end of a practice.

AUDIO:
There’s an old Greek saying, “We have one mouth and two ears, so
that we may listen twice as much as we speak.” There’s truth to that.
We learn a lot through our ears, whether it is listening to instructions
or other sounds. If two players set back and forth over a net, a coach can
tell if they are doing well or not from the sounds of the ball contacting
the players’ hands. You don’t need to see a home run hit; you can hear
the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd to know something has
happened. Listening is important, but how can you emphasize that other
than repeating its importance over and over (losing your temper and
the value of your words with each implored repetition to ‘LISTEN!!!’)?
With high school and college kids, you reach the point where you can’t
be all serious with them. They get tired, especially towards the end of
two-a-days in the fall, and when they tire, things like communication
are the first things to go. Consider changing drills to emphasize communication.
I like to do that in an absurd way when our communication
is on the fritz.

We play a game called “Oink, Moo, Woof.” It’s a normal 6-on-6 drill
where you keep score (you can do it however you want actually), except
there’s a catch. No one can talk or say anything, except for one of the
three animal sounds. Team A will say ‘oink’ if they are going to pass the
ball, ‘moo’ for a set, and ‘woof’ if they are hitting while Team B switches
it up, saying ‘oink’ for a hit instead. The two teams use the same words,
but for different purposes. If you don’t use your words or if you use words
other than oink/moo/woof, you lose the point. Pretty soon, you have hitters
trying to woof multiple times to signal what they want to hit and
passers will start mooing early if they know a freeball’s coming over the
net. We can’t play it past a game to 15 because we wind up laughing, but
it gets the point across concerning communication.

At a recent seminar, Jim Moore, Head Coach at the University of Oregon,
dealt with communication a different way. Because Oregon runs a fast offense,
communication is vital, so he limits his players to calling for a set with
a single word. Middles don’t yell, “One! One! One!” They say it once. You
can use that, too. Restrict what can be said and players learn to listen much
closer, communicating quickly and efficiently the relevant information.

Just as important for audio-learning, how loud are you in practice? If
you are giving instructions, can your players hear you on the other side
of the floor? What about on a second court? You can test this by setting
up a tape recorder. Listen to it after practice — can you hear yourself
clearly? If you can’t, chances are the players didn’t hear you either, creating
confusion during practice, maybe frustration, but also a definite
loss of efficiency. If volume is a problem, you can fix it easily — encourage
your players to say something if it wasn’t loud enough, and then
make a conscious effort to be louder. That’s right; you need to practice
being louder.

It also sounds boring, but ask your players to repeat instructions
back, forcing them to take what they’ve heard, process it, and
repeat it, a mini-game of Telephone. If they struggle to repeat the information,
you need to repeat it or consider a different way of teaching
the information, or consider the possibility that you must break the information
into smaller chunks.

Finally, when I coached high school, I liked taking players to college matches. Very few
top-level college teams struggle with communication (at least from the
perspective of high school coaches and athletes). If asked to watch the
communication between players (or players and coaches) beforehand,
high school athletes are shocked by the difference. I used to get feedback
such as “They all talk all the time;” “Did you hear how loud she called
for that?” or “They get together and huddle after every point, not just
celebrations.”

TACTILE-KINESTHETIC:
This is the most obvious. People learn through touching and doing,
not just watching and listening. Steve Kerr didn’t learn to hit treys by
watching the NBA on NBC and Peyton Manning didn’t become the best
quarterback of the past 20 years by playing Madden 2014. They excel
because they practiced their skills, hundreds and thousands of times.
The more kids touch the ball, the faster they get better.

This is a critical point and can help turn a team’s fortunes around
quickly. What do you do in practice? Are you scrimmaging with one ball
in play, 12 people playing and six standing on the sides? Are you hitting
balls at lines of diggers, so that one athlete is performing a skill while 17
stand waiting for their turn?

We’ll come back to the gym in a moment. For a second, think about
your experience in math classes throughout grade, junior high and high
school (sorry if this causes queasy stomachs or bad flashbacks). When
you had math homework, did you just do one problem on a page? Dear
God, no. Every day in math, Mrs. _______ sent you home with dozens of
math problems. Is there anything less thrilling for a 15-year-old than
taking home 14 geometry proofs for class the next day? But the reality
is, the more you practice a skill, the better you get. You don’t get good at
math doing one problem per day, and you don’t get proficient at reading
by ignoring your Lit book and only reading the day’s Far Side from a calendar.
You practice, you correct, you repeat, and eventually it becomes
ingrained—you get it right so that being correct becomes the norm, automatic.

Back to the gym. Sports are no different. If you can figure out how to
increase the number of times your athletes touch the ball, the better
they will get. Most volleyball coaches have used hitting lines in practice.
How can you improve that basic drill?

1. Why not use two lines—one setter pushing it to the OH and the
other setting quicks for the middle hitter or sets to the RS?
Now you have two hitters going at the same time and two working
on hitting while two are setting. This doubles the effective ball
contacts.

2. What if you had hitters toss the balls to themselves and set the ball
to the setters instead of just tossing the ball?
Now we’re getting two ball-control touches in addition to the swings
and sets. Without adding much time, we’ve added even more useful
contacts to the drill.

3. How about we move the lines of hitters to the other side of the net
and start the hitter at the net. As the first in line tosses the ball, the
hitter comes off the net and sets the ball after it comes over the net,
then hits the ball?
Now suddenly, we’ve got setting, we’ve got hitting, we’ve got transition
footwork, and we’re playing a ball after it comes over the net.
Without much extra delay, more contacts.

4. Put a back-row player deep behind the hitter. The toss over the net
goes to the passer, so the hitter must be ready for a potentially
worse pass. If you worry about too many bad passes, have the coach
toss directly to the setter if the ball is shanked.
Now we’ve added a passer to make it more serve-receive like. We
can rotate from tosser to passer to hitter and we now have a multitude
of appropriate volleyball contacts. We haven’t added much
time to the practice, but now we’ve got two lines of full volleyball
contacts going, simulating serve-receive under controlled circumstances.

Essentially, we’ve increased the number of contacts 50%
and made them more game appropriate, and if you have players
with enough skill, instead of tossing the ball over the net, they can
hit down-balls. Better still, they could hit them from balls set to
them by other players, yet again increasing the number of contacts.
We can do this with any number of drills — when serving, put passers
on the court and setters for the passers — because how often do you
serve at an empty court during a game? Working on blocking? Why not
use two blockers rather than one? Why not toss to a setter who possibly
sets to multiple hitters — thus giving you hitting practice, not to mention
a more ‘real’ sense of the timing and issues blockers will face during
a game? Think of your practice and where you can add touches to
the ball, footwork repetitions, anything, so that players are not standing
and watching unnecessarily.

John Kessel writes a blog with good ideas in it, and I’ll be honest, I
steal” stuff from him on a regular basis. One of the great games he
explained at the 2012 AVCA Convention is “Speedball,” an improved
version of Queen of the Court. Queen of the Court has a winning side
and when the winners lose, you lose time standing around as players run
under the net to reach the winning-side. That’s lost time, not to mention
that running under the net during a volleyball match never happens.

Speedball puts multiple kids on both sides and requires that the losing
side serve immediately after a point is over. It saves (roughly) five seconds
between plays and players are constantly ready, aware that the ball
will come over immediately. Now you’ve got kids hustling, aware they’ll
lose if not ready, you’ve got a server who has to immediately get on the
court to play defense, and a dozen other little things — I won’t mention
them all because I think you get the point.

Once you start increasing the reps, the skill level will improve. You may
not notice it immediately; the change will be gradual, so keep it in mind
over the long haul and enjoy the comments you get from people who
watch your team because the praise from observers is as rewarding as that
huge paycheck you earn.

As a final observation regarding education, there’s an ongoing debate
regarding the importance (or lack thereof) of class size for teaching
young people. Some argue that there’s a link between academic success
and improvement with small class size while the opposition argues that
the link is far less important as issues such as teacher salary, location,
or the initial aptitude of students.

How does that hold for something like volleyball? Look at the education
methods discussed previously; how many of those are effective with
more than 12-15 athletes at a time? How many athletes can you fit onto
a court? And even then, if you can squeeze more kids onto a court, is that
conducive to their learning environment — have you tried to corral 25
excited 9-year-olds before? How many times can a player touch a ball?
This was discussed earlier in terms of high school programs, but doesn’t
this matter for club volleyball as well? How much playing time is there
if we put 12 players on a team rather than eight? With a roster of eight,
you’re increasing playing time by 50% over a roster of 12 (presuming you
are trying to do the right thing and give everyone who has joined your
team a chance to play). The excuse for a larger roster that I hear is, “The
value is in practice, and during matches those players are learning as
they watch.” Again, with eight instead of 12, you have more opportunity
to touch the ball in practice and the coach’s attention is better focused,
not to mention the argument that learning-by-doing is often a superior
method of improving physical skills. Is a club’s bottom line hurt? Sure,
because you now have four less players per team and you’ll need more
coaches, but isn’t the trade-off worth it? If the object is to provide the
best possible instruction, it is our obligation as coaches to do our best to
achieve that.

 
 

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Ray Rice: A Contrarian View

Over the past month or more, it's been hard to not run across the Ray Rice incident.  The short of it is--he hit his girlfriend (now wife) and as punishment has now been cut from his team, banned from the NFL, seen all of his apparel removed from stores (so no licensing revenue for him), and the loss of his endorsements.  Everything has been taken away from him.  Everything.

To be clear--with the endorsements, this is understandable.  Nike or adidas are in business to make money and having one of the faces of your business being someone who committed domestic violence--that's not going to make you money.  But just as important--those endorsements are 'extras'; they are not how Rice makes/made a living.

To be clear--any form of violence is unacceptable, whether it is a man hitting a woman, a woman hitting a man, or a man hitting a man.  Within a personal argument, words must suffice.  If it turns out you do not care for the individual--walk away.

But the thing that is getting to me is--the same people demanding Rice's head be served on a platter, that he be crucified for his action--that are calling Rice evil--many are the same people who on their Facebook pages talk about Christian love, the need for prayer and forgiveness...except that they want forgiveness for themselves, not someone like Rice.  That's different, right?  Why?
Because:
  1. He's an NFL player and famous.
  2. He's wealthy.
  3. He's black.
Yup--I went there.  If we eliminate those three criteria, does this make the news?  Heck--it wouldn't even make the news in your own hometown paper.  Did you know that one out every six teenage girls is threatened (or has it intimated at the very least) with violence from a boyfriend?  Where's the outrage at that?  Did you know that more than FIVE MILLION work-hours were lost last year due to domestic violence (including women abusing men...which does go on, and more often than you think).  At minimum wage only--that's $35 million in lost wages. (The equivalent of 20,000 full-time jobs)

And where in the news have they talked about Rice being black?  Nowhere.  No one wants to be called racist.  But the reality is that women in relationships with black men are 35% more likely to be abused--an extension of worries about the decline of black families, the insanely high incarceration rate of black men.  But the reality is that this exists and SHOULD be talked about....but the reality is that if Rice wasn't rich, wasn't an NFL player, no one would give a crap about him beating his wife in an elevator.

* * *
But here's the thing....remember, I mentioned Christianity?  Where's the chance at redemption?  Rice has had everything taken from him--and with the internet, the video, no one will ever forget, and certainly it seems that no one intends to give him a chance at redemption (except, currently, his wife--which is a completely different issue).

Doesn't Rice deserve a second chance?  We pardon murderers and rapists, that they have done their time.  Society has given Michael Vick a second chance after his dogfighting prison time--and since then, Vick has worked to redeem himself, fix some of the wrongs he perpetrated.  Doesn't Rice deserve his chance at redemption?

To be clear--I'm not saying to just pat him on the back and say "Don't do that again".  What Rice did was horrible. 100% horrible.  But where is the hope for him--that he can come back from this mistake?  Isn't it more powerful as a message if he is given that chance and succeeds?  He can then say, "Listen to me because I screwed up bad"--and have listeners know he is speaking from experience, speaking truth.

Instead of this--the NFL punishes him more, no double-jeopardy with Roger Goodell.  His team cuts him--easier to let him go than help Rice get professional long-term help.  Baltimore's in the football business and Rice is a commodity.  When it's used up, it's thrown in the trash, forgotten.

I suspect this blog won't be popular.  And that's okay.  I just hate hypocrisy, and it's coming from all sides on this.   Instead of venting, find a way to help.  Help all women escape from abusive relationships.   It's easy to vent at Rice--more difficult to find true justice, more difficult still to reach out and help people.

Friday, September 5, 2014

Volleyball

Some observations on a season entering its third weekend as we ride our bus to God's Country (Iowa) and, in addition, to a chance to spend a weekend with volleyball, to see a couple of long-time friends.  Volleyball, friends...only thing that would make it better is if Julie, the puppies, and family were there, too!

*I was feeling a bit depressed yesterday--lack of sleep and basic exhaustion, mental and physical.  I have to watch for that--depression can take your mind and emotions in unhelpful directions.  It skews your weltanschauung.  (Yeah, that's right, I used 'weltanschauung' while discussing volleyball)  So in the middle of all this, Laura (my assistant)  comes up during a drill and says, "You know, you've been awesome this year with practices."  Not what I expected, so I responded with the eloquent "Huh?"  She then explained that she's liked some changes to drills, the warmups, etc.

A lot of the credit goes to John Kessel as well as Denise Sheldon for giving me the opportunity to do evaluations with USAV High Performance and then work with the Future Youth Selects in Vegas back in July.  You see, every coach has doubts about things--teaching ability, recruiting, whatever.  The time with HP confirmed some things to me in how I coach--and I've become more confident in those areas--and more sure that I'm right in my approach, too...something some of my players last year had me doubting unfortunately.

--You need to be specific, Jim.  (That's my inner English teacher speaking...correctly, I might add.)

Since the first time I heard Kessel talk, about four years ago at the AVCA Coaches Convention, I realized that I'd been approaching coaching wrong.  I KNEW I was wrong, knew what I was doing wasn't working optimally, but I didn't realize how to improve.  That seminar gave me my 'A-ha!' moment.  In Vegas, I got to see how those principles are applied at the highest skill levels (regardless of age).  I knew, but didn't know, that this was practiced as well as preached.

*If it's good enough for national-level programs, I'm stealing it for my team.  I did that with the dynamic warmups, the shoulder pre-hab to avoid injuries.  It's been good.  We haven't had any serious shoulder soreness, fewer injuries, and our trainer loved the dynamic warmup--thought I'd been studying up (I told her the truth though)

*The doubt I have about this current season remains--did I increase the schedule's toughness too much?  We dropped two tournaments with weaker teams, replacing them with this weekend's tourney and then another two weeks from now...in those eight matches, it is possible we'll play SEVEN NJCAA Top-8 teams, and the eighth team has a win over a D-1 Top 15 team.  When you play a schedule like that, you can lose quite a bit--and I hate losing.  A lot.

But there's the catch--how much better are you by playing weaker teams?  So I decided to follow the lead of teams like Illinois or Iowa State--we're going to schedule the equivalent of Long Beach or Stanford.  Those matches will prepare us for the post-season.  Could it keep us out of the national polls?  Yup.  I suspect if we make the polls, it won't be until October as the post-season nears.

*Are kids tough enough to deal with a ton of losses?  We are 3-5 right now, but we've lost to a couple ranked D-1 schools, another D-1 who WILL be ranked (since they've started the year 10-0), a top 10 D-2 team, another who'll be ranked this next week.  We beat D-2#14 in there with our wins, and one of those D-1 losses was actually and truly due to an official and not the teams involved. So we are playing well.  But can young athletes handle that?

I think the answer is yes.  Many players lose a ton of games during their club seasons--playing teams with accumulations of awesome talent.  How is this different....other than a W/L record is officially kept?  To me, it is the same thing. But I know there are examples of teams who lose out there that self-destruct, turn on each other or the coaching staff, and through that negativity/drama, destroy their chance at greatness--unable to look past the scoreboard for a match or two (in matches that are irrelevant--only region matches count for us for post-season standings and these have not been region matches)

*If the answer is no, and we DO have issues with the loss total, what then?  The answer is--steady on course.  I know we're on the right path, so I have to make sure we don't waiver and doubt.  That'll be critical.

*I received a list of academic-honored schools in the mail this week.  We aren't on it.  But I was annoyed by the list, seeing some of the schools.  Why annoyed?  Because I know kids who have transferred to those schools from LLCC--and while they struggle for "C" grades at LLCC because LLCC really does push for academic excellence (really!), they then go to those other schools and pick up 4.0 GPAs taking/retaking the same classes, then those schools get honored for being so awesome academically, when really--the kids are getting a grade, but not an education.

When did that happen?  It sounds crotchety, but it wasn't when I was in college--it's a phenomena of the past 20 years, I think (for things other than basketball/football), and it goes beyond sports.  Tuition rates have gone up so much--I'd bet grade inflation has the same curve.  Oh well.

*Do I hurt my team's chances of success by switching systems?  By teaching players multiple positions?  The educator in me says it is my responsibility to teach them the game, and that means all positions, all skills.  Middles need to know how to pass, setters to hit, etc.  Kids are forced to specialize way too early--so I have to provide the general fundamentals missed in jr high/high school.  The problem is that the competitor in me wants to win, hates losing.  How do I balance that without stressing myself out too much?

Well there you go...random bus musings from I-55.  Four hours to game time.  I don't know how the score will go--but I'm hoping we improve on last weekend--fix the errors, improve the good points.  Small, steady steps forward...











Tuesday, September 2, 2014

A strange world...politics are a funny thing

It's funny right now how a lot of world events aren't getting reported in American media--especially by the sources most partisan, places like Fox or MSNBC. 

Why?  I mean, there has to be a reason.

Maybe it's that Russia has invaded Ukraine.  But Britain relies on Russian investment and BP is a massive investor in Russia.  Britain, of course, maintains a 'special relationship' with the United States.  So we don't like Russia--again.

But in Iraq, we've been working with the Russians to get Russian warplanes to the Iraqi government to fight ISIS.  Of course, fighting ISIS, the US has also worked with Iran and the Kurds--who don't like one another, but while working with Iran, we've also assisted with Sunni militia again who dislike the Iraqi government, but have worked with Iran/Iraq against ISIS as well which means that Saudi Arabia and Iran have cooperated even though they hate one another.

Within Syria, Filipino UN peacekeepers were attacked by rebels.  They were able to hold off the attackers with the assistance of Syrian artillery (the peacekeepers were there to keep Hizbollah and Israel from fighting, I believe)--which allowed the Filipinos to reach safety inside Israel--at least the area occupied/claimed by Israel.  So the Syrians and Israelis are working together while Hizbollah (which takes its cue from Iran and despises Israel) stays out of things--since the attackers were radical jihadists...even though to the west in Gaza, Hizbollah's Palestinian faction continues to resist Israel which has been working with Egypt, but against Turkey--which was the first Muslim country to befriend Israel.

Confusing?  Of course it is.  And it is no different than politics were thirty years ago when in one African country (which one escapes me at the moment) you had American built oil rigs serving a  regime being advised by Israelis but given aid by the Soviet Union against 'communist' (perhaps socialist is a better term...) rebels being funded by the US.

I don't think most people understand this.  Some have.  It's how you got Bismarck's Realpolitik.  Reagan understood it--if we can't agree on one thing, let's work on the others we can, so something gets done regardless.

Which do you choose:
1 - If you aren't with us, you are against us.
2 - If you aren't against us, you're with us.

Random politics for a Tuesday...