Oil and Water...

The world is told to us in a binary message.

Politics, sports, science, entertainment; the flat ends of the bell curve are what fuels the vitriol, funds the coffers and gives pontificators the milk crate by which to stand a little higher than the rest of the lost flock.

In coaching, it is something that reroutes our thoughts routinely. Currently, the contradition of the Ecological Dynamics framework of coaching and the arch nemesis, the Information Processing approach can not coexist for like oil and water, they cannot be mixed. 

You will read questions on volleyball blogs asking if boxes for coaches and players to stand on are evil and should be banned or is there a use? Should we force our setters into using a setting net target for fear they will be reclassified as an IP setter? Is a serving machine a diabolical appliance that steals from our athletes? 

These hyperbolic statements are wonderful for those who want to build up their bank accounts to sell you merchandise or the idea that you don't need them and should enlist yourself into the movement of the "enlightened" coaches.

Here's a couple of facts to chew on. First, the country is deeply divided by Republican and Democrat. It's palpable in any conversation seen on a political show or read on a blog. But the fact is, last year 28% of the country was Republican, 28% was Democrat and 43% was Independent.

You read that right. According to Gallup.com, the news and political discourse is being driven by MINORITY voting blocks. And if you think this was an abberition, think again. In 2023, it was 27% Rep., 27% Dem. and 43% Ind. In 2022, it was 28% for the two parties and 41% for Independents.

Things are not what they seem.

Are boxes evil in a volleyball practice? Of course not. If your training calls for down balls into a defense or a block, this is a vehicle to accomplish those angles. Is a setting target a tragic fall back? Not at all. It's a way for setters to get work in with some immediate feedback on every set. Is a serving machine a demonic device used to steal reps from players? Maybe: or maybe, as former Pepperdine legend Marv Dunphy told us once, when his men's team is practicing after a long weekend, it's perferable to rest arms and let a machine work the serve recieve.

Are the above perfect solutions? No, probably not. They are fixes for problems that arise. They aren't 100% gamelike but at the same time, they aren't catching volleyballs in buckets to shore up serve recieve. They are viable options for specific situations. Will a setter get better launching into a target? Yes, some. Not in a game like fashion, but work on hands, fingers, wrists is happening.

For those coaches out there fueling "either or" scenarios, let's take a nap. As in any profession in the world, there are good ones and not so good ones. In coaching, there are those that run efficient, fun, engaging practices using setting targets and serving machines. And there are just as many coaches running boring, tired, fractured practices using none of them.

Identify the way you want to coach, we hope using science as the foundation you choose your drills and trainings around. Like athletes, coaches need to learn constantly. it's never ending which makes it a special profession. 

Let's let the middle ground, the gray area, be a safe place for coaches instead of the extreme ends of the coaching bell curve. There is much to gain in that area and much to learn with and from. There are mistakes that will be made and grown from and things that are engaging to your athletes that you will want to pin and come back to often. This is the journey of a coach. 

That journey isn't two toll booths on the other side of a high bridge. The spectacle is under the bridge. 

And finally, it turns out that oil and water CAN mix when oil is dispersed as small droplets in water.The answer lies in the electrical charge distribution at the interface.

...from our eyes to the end of our nose...

"To look through" or "to see clearly."

The Latin word perspicere is translated above and has become the English word perspective.

Nowadays, it's perceived more as how one sees things through their own eyes, but clarity isn't always a factor.

While you are making your bologna and banana sandwich today, you accidentally cut your finger while slicing the banana. Your perspective is it's a small cut, no big deal, life goes on.

But if you are scaling the wall of a mountain, your fingers gripping into crevices and crags in the rock, a cut finger can mean disaster. The grip needed to hoist your 200 pound frame up the rock is compromised. 

The same small cut from the perspective of two different scenarios.

If we aren't scaling mountains, chances are we would never think about this perspective but that doesn't make it any less a hazard to those that do.

Jalen Green is an up and coming player in the NBA, formerly of the Houston Rockets and now with the Phoenix Suns. He was traded a few weeks ago. During the regular season, Green averaged 21 points, almost 5 rebounds and 3 assists. These are substantial numbers from any player in the Association and Green was integral in Houston's push to the playoffs this season, their first in 5 years.

However in the playoffs, Green's numbers took a dive. He still averaged his 5 rebounds and 3 assists but his points per game was only 13 ppg. League perspective became that Green wasn't a playoff player, he couldn't win in big games and thus, he became expendable.

What that perspective probably doesn't talk about was how the defense of the team they faced, the Golden State Warriors, double teamed him to get the ball out of his hands, played him physical and being it was his first playoff experience, used that inexperience to flummox the guard. Jalen Green was traded weeks later.

This past few weeks we have seen the volleyball world's version of the encore. Final end of year tournaments are happening throughout the country. Thousands of teams and tens of thousands of players are participating under the watchful eyes, and perspectives, of coaches and parents alike.

The different perspectives of coaches, players and parents is the driving force behind most of the club hopping, coach-parent meetings and overall discontent throughout the club circles.

Perspective is often infused with the following observation: "Everybody's personal narrative is designed to protect them from pain and accountability."

The Coach who loses already takes a hit to his ego but then must defend why he lost to Parents and sometimes players and club personnel. We forego the perspective of the 19 year old on the sidelines who has all the answers, knows everything about coaching and is rarely if ever given the grace they need to make mistakes, learn from them, gain experience and move on.

Parents make excuses for their athletes, blaming coaches for misusing their talents and other players for not being good enough. The perspective of their daughter being the best player on the team, despite she doesn't start, only plays backrow and can't serve over the net yet infects Mom and Dad's mind. She is being persecuted and so Mom is searching for new clubs on the drive to the airport.

Players, under pressure from said coaches and parents, will blame injury or other players for their foibles, most often to the detriment of the team. He will tell anyone who will listen that his setter can't set him correctly, that he is always set into a block and that his passes are fragile because the other team was screening him. His perspective of being the persecuted starts a toxic domino affect throughout the team.

But in reality, and understanding that EVERY situation is different, if all parties involved just took a step back and tried to see the issue from the other person's perspective, many of the atomic riffs of our season could be muted into simple misunderstandings.

One Mom was propping her daughter up on social media for making an "all tournament" team. Justified or not, she didn't mention the rest of the team, as if they had no part in her daughter's success.

Another Coach was shown alone in a picture wearing their club shirt and proclaiming they were undefeated on the day. No mention of the team that performed, we are to assume it was ALL coaching.

Even athletes will get film from their parents and post a big kill or a monster block on social media sites, never acknowledging their fellow actors that were involved in the highlight. "Yup, Cami passed the ball to herself, set herself and then got the kill down the line! She's amazing!!!"

Volleyball is a team sport first and foremost. Recognize that as an athlete and a Parent. The coach is paid to make your daughter better AND make every other daughter on their team better. Getting better takes time and patience, it is not linear, we all develop, learn and grow at different rates. Holding your athlete to the standard of another is a lack of perspective on your part.

Coaches, we need to recognize that not all Parents are going to see the other 5 girls on the court. Their iPhones and GoPros are focused on their own son or daughter. Don't shun them or hide behind the "48 hour rule." Educate them, talk to them at practice about why and what you are doing. Talk to them honestly about their daughters strengths and weaknesses and what you plan is to utilize and address them. Give Parents the perspective they need to overlook the idea of their one and the other eleven and show them the benefits for all about thinking about the one being part of the twelve.

Perspective is constantly in flux. In our politics, our social media sites, in all aspects of culture. We have become a society of reflexive judgements and a perspective that only travels from our eyes to the end of our noses.

But our sports can be better and do better.

Your own peril...

The want and/or need for robust coaching education has been waning for years.

COVID saw many coaches retreat into their laptops and phones for drills and practice plans.

One club director told us, "Maybe everybody thinks they know everything already."

While you may have chuckled at that last remark, she may not be wrong.

Social media is littered (specifically chosen word) with subscribers who are experts. They will give their opinions on a bread recipe, the current political situation in Thailand and dating advice to Taylor Swift because they know everything.

Chances are if they were tested on any of these subjects they would struggle to score in single digits but there is no one/nothing pushing back. There is no accountability.

Look at this series of setting drills posted some months back.

Newer coaches, bored coaches and coaches that don't have a basis on which they coach might look at these videos and tell themselves they have found the way to train their setters.

The presentation is good and the drills look productive to the uninformed eye so why not use these to progress your young setters.

Georgia Head Coach Tom Black who has a storied coaching history explains his frustration with this kind of thinking in the video below:

"The stuff I'm seeing on social media, just empirically scientifically it's wrong."

If you aren't sure why the setting drills above don't meet a criteria for proper skill acquisition, then you have some work to do.

One of the great  things about the volleyball community is that knowledgeable coaches are willing to help.  The game, and maybe life, has taught them the value of humility and never thinking or assuming they know everything. In fact, find a coach who will admit to you they are always learning and don't know much, and buy them a cup of coffee and just listen. Those are the coaches of value.

Continue your coaching journey through the Instagram and TikTok's at your own peril. You will get lapped by better coaches. But until we embrace the idea of structured learning for coaches WITH someone to push back, debate and scrutinize you, Black is right. 

To make a difference, you have to be the difference.

Fact less and Feckless...

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVMP0LqFzTk

While not being a fan of sports talk, finding it self serving and rarely steeped in truth and fact based opinion, the above clip made it's way to my e mail from a coaching friend.

The argument that started this was that the last 7 NBA Most Valuable Players have been NON Americans. This began the vapid diatribe you can watch in its entirety at the link above.

Normally, this blog would stay away from the self exploitive bloviations that is seen above, but it's important to know a few FACTS before people begin to think the United States sports system is collapsing like these four panelists fragile credibility.

First, yes, it's the last seven years but we are only talking about four players, two of whom have won the MVP multiple times: Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo. 

Another FACT to know is that none of the four panelists have ever coached, but it's nice to see they delight in defiling those in the profession. They suggest without any thought or foresight that it's because sports have become monetized, that personal brands rule the sports landscape and that even 'cancel culture' has crept in and kept Americans from winning the NBA's top individual prize.

The number of international players in the NBA has tripled in the last 30 years. The FACTS are there are now more great International players which might suggest that they have a better chance at the MVP now that there are more of them. (Why would an NBA team bring a mediocre International player overseas to play?)

Trends in sports are always pored over by pundits who claim to have reasons for them all, usually making their arguments, like you can see above, with little to no FACTS and marinated in personal opinion and a small sample size of experiences they muster into their hustle.

Let's try this on for size. Currently the network that produces this bastion for personal narrative and, yes, branding, is complicit in the following:

Middle schoolers in the Little League World Series are made into media fodder as is their coaches. Please read the first two words again in the above sentence: MIDDLE SCHOOLERS.

This network shows high school basketball games and again makes and breaks these athletes AND coaches with each win and loss, with each good and not so good performance. Again, just to reiterate, HIGH SCHOOLERS!

Sacrificing and spit roasting coaches is a daily habit for shows like these and not so shockingly, several coaching legends in many sports have decided not to wake up to Monday morning calls for their dismissal and the abuse and doubt that surrounds their job security daily and resigned. Children are affected, families are affected, and these panelists sit in their air conditioned studio making a shade under $30m a year for the four of them passing judgement on something they know little to nothing about.

College coaches have had to redefine their entire job description in the past few years with the advent of the NIL and the infusion of mega money into collegiate AND high school sports. They are learning on the fly as the rules change faster than the hourly wardrobes by these four hypocrites.

Molly, Michael, Jay and Stephen, shame on you. For a fact less, feckless insult to coaches working to do their jobs. It would be interesting to see ESPN put a coaching show on the docket that criticized the talking shrunken heads who find self satisfaction in taking down hard working coaches and athletes. 

Like the bloviation nation whose noise invades our consciousness by the minute, Coaches want to be the best they can be. Athletes want to be the best they can be. We all make mistakes, we all (hopefully) learn from our mistakes. You calling them out on every downturn might be spirited fodder for your morning ego-thon, but it's not all us.

Look in the mirror!

A Day in the Life....

 May 21st.

The Indiana Pacers erase a 14 point deficit in the NBA's Eastern Conference Championship and tie the game at the buzzer on this Tyrese Haliburton jump shot...

Hard to imagine that at practice the day before, Haliburton worked on this shot- running into the lane and then running back out, turning on one foot and firing up a toe-on-the-line 3 pointer. 

While this event happened earlier in the year, social media snared this video and ran with it. What you see is Grand Sumo wrestler Ura fighting a much bigger Takayasu...

The move Ura performs at the end of the match, according to sources,  has been implemented just 6 times in the last 25 years AND has a .02% effectiveness rate. Is it conceivable that Ura was practicing this move, knowing the slim chance it had of success or did it maybe just "come to him in the moment?"

Four climbers from the United Kingdom made history  yesterday. Climbing Mount Everest is usually a multi week process requiring climbers to move from one elevation to a higher one, acclimating to the thin air with each higher camp until they summit and descend. This group left London on May 16th, was at base camp on May 17th and summited yesterday, May 21st.

Five total days! It is the fastest ascent of Everest in history.

Using science of xenon gas breathing treatments and hypoxic chambers, they defeated tradition and have now put the Everest expeditionary world on it's heels. 

In one day, three examples of thinking outside the box, of looking away from text book solutions and using the solutions allotted them, created successful solutions to overcoming problems.

It's what we ask of our athletes but sometimes, as coaches, we don't give them the tools.

Let them learn to adapt, to solve problems, to explore and refine.

Let them overcome obstacles.

"A Very Special Place"

 The very first think you notice is the painted logo on the side of the wall on the cement courts  outside.

In a poor section of Casablanca, the main city of 7 million in Morocco, a hand painted logo proudly calls out Association Moustakbal Deb Sultan,  (AMDS), the volleyball club for the area. 

 It is run by a gentleman named Saad Mifdal, a lawyer during the day and at 4p every day, comes to open his gym. He has always had an interest in youth sports being a soccer player in his youth. In the early 2000's, he started a soccer club, then tennis, then back to soccer before he settled on and fell in love with volleyball. He gives time, money and the energy to making AMDS, despite its humble surroundings and facilities, one of the premiere training sites in all of Morocco.

 

Much like the Outrigger club in Hawaii who has accounted for 15 Olympians,  AMDS accounts for roughly half the Moroccan National Teams, both men's and women's and several of the Junior National Teams. This despite working with athletes in the Derb Sultan area which is very poor, crime riddled and a place where cell phones are hidden even on the shortest of walks.

 

During a tour of the club, it was obvious why there was a HUGE difference between this club and the others that continue to be coached and trained by Moroccan coaches like it's still 1967.

 

First, the practices see the balls coming from over the net.

 

Second, even the players that are off to the side, not involved in practice, are playing pepper but with a setter and they are taking full controlled swings, not roll shots. 

 

Third and most important, they have a "short court," roughly 15' by 30', 450 sq. ft. v. the normal 900 sq ft of a full volleyball half court.

 

During the tour, a bunch of the boys from the practice that just ended sprinted outside, grabbed the net and set up the short court. (The club is under some renovation and while it is normally up all the time, it has to be put up and taken down for the next month or so).

 

The small court rules are as follows: 2 v. 2. If there are players waiting, games are to 6. The third contact can NOT be a set over or a push over, full swings or cut shots are encouraged. If not, you lose the point. If your team doesn't get three touches, you lose the point.

 

As I was there, a men's National team player that played at AMDS strolled in and began to pepper with some of the younger players. About 20 minutes later, another libero playing on a professional team at the moment, grabbed a ball and began to work and pepper with a couple of other young players. A third Men's National team player came in a little after that. All are from around the area, all coming back "home" for a couple of hours.

 

The kids weren't being lectured, they weren't bored and they were all working with a ball, attacking, setting, digging. 

 

Outdoor cement courts, one beach court, an indoor gym with a floor that should have been refinished 10 years ago, and yet National Team level players are flowing out of AMDS. 

One such player, middle blocker Kabira Najim, begin her volleyball career at AMDS. "I joined this team at the late age of 16. It is a very wonderful experience and the head of the team is very wonderful and takes care of the children. I took training from him for two years after which I went to the Royal Army (club)." Kabira is now a professional player and is a regular on the Moroccan women's National Teams during competitions.

"What I like about the club is the team spirit and the way the President treats the children," Kabira adds. "It was not a team but it was a school that taught us how to play and the spirit of brotherhood."  

"It was a successful start for me, with this team, and the confidence that I got. The culture of the team was that I could be better." She adds.

The day after the tour, the U14 team travelled 90 minutes  to south to El Jadida for the Moroccan Girl's Club Championships. The U14 team, made up of 12 and 13 year olds, looked 16, taking big swings, big serves and playing solid defense. 

AMDS won the Country wide Club Championship in straight sets against the home team, El Jadida.

It's not a secret. The 2 v 2 games that the young athletes start with gives them more and valuable touches in the training sessions, instilling habits they will use their entire careers. The drills are game like and link perception and action. Even off the court, the pepper includes a setter and big swings and digs.

Most of all, in this neighborhood, it is an escape, a release. It's an oasis of fun, adventure, exploration and competition for young boys and girls who must learn the ideas of team, brotherhood, culture and competitiveness in a less than optimal environment.

Kabira puts it succinctly. "It is a very special place." 

Everybody Hurts...

A New York High School basketball coach was fired after this egregious violation of one of his players. His name was Jim Zullo and he was fired the day after this was filmed.

No doubt, Zullo, who has been coaching basketball for 30 years and was in the High School Hall of Fame in New York, has preached to his players about staying poised and in control during stressful times on the court.

( Beware, inappropriate language in the above video, not suitable for children) Univeristy of Connecticut head basketball coach Dan Hurley, who coached the men's Husky's to back to back NCAA National Championships in 2023 and 2024, here shouts to the oncoming team that he hopes the officials don't do to them what Hurley proposes they did to him and his team.

It's a rude, offensive and callous remark caught on video, one of several Hurley made this past 2025 season that did not live up to the expectations placed upon him and his team.

No doubt, Hurley, who comes from a well known but fiery basketball family, has worked with his players on focusing on the controllables, not using blame and taking responsibility for his players actions.

In a clip from last year, Illinois head basketball coach Brad Underwood is shown unloading on his players, one in particular. Some media called him exceptional for "holding his players accountable."

In a hilarious Saturday Night Live skit, coach "Sheila Kelly" at "Middle Delaware State" is called out on her coaching behavior and giving her reasoning for her ridiculous over the top behavior. 

Sport is a volatile atmosphere. Winning, losing, pressure, ego: it's an amalgam of potential disruptive and certainly at times, negative behavior and consequences. It's not the purview of this blog to chastise these coaches for their lack of self control caught by a cell phone lens, but it is a reminder to us all.

Like it or not, we, as coaches, ARE role models for our athletes. Hold them to a standard of behavior you cannot sustain, and you will lose their respect and the locker room. Show them you cannot withstand the heat, and they will soon follow. Complain and blame and you will create athletes in your image. Telling them to now worry about the uncontrollables and then bring them up in every post match lecture, they will zone out. 

These are examples of coaches having regretful moments of losing control. Why is subjective to the coach and the moment: ego? A costly mistake in crunch time? Lack of faith in a player? The reasons are plentiful.

But the one lesson from all of these moments, and the many YOU have seen and consciously collected in your coaching memory is stark.

They hurt.