WARmups

Recently, the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA), one of the preeminent volleyball coaching education resources in the country, sent out a link to members to download 20 practice plans for the upcoming season. The practice plans were free for an e mail (of course) and a PDF link was sent.

This was the first 45 minutes of the first two hour practice:

The first 45 minutes of a two hour practice were dedicated to NOT having a ball cross the net. In fact, half of that 45 minutes was spent with NO ball at all. By the end of the first two hour practice, the athletes had not played one minute.

As you forage to the next practice and the next, you notice the same: Practice #2 with 20 minutes of non ball warm ups and 15 minutes more of the ball not crossing the net. Although there was 30 minutes of play out of the two hours in #2, the subsequent practices showed more of the same: stodgy, non challenging drills preceded by footwork patterns that put on display the idea of action with NO perception, and small nuggets of play imbedded within the banal.

Butterfly drills, shuttle drills, zone serving with no reception, blocking footwork and shuffle drills for 15 minutes.

If you want to get kids to quit the sport, these are the 20 practices to do it!

Shame on the AVCA. Perhaps they received these plans from a coach and without editing just posted them. This coach, with respect, may not be up to date on the science of the sport that has been available for the last 25 years. No matter, the AVCA is one of the few educational resources for volleyball coaches in our country and with these free practice plans, new coaches will drag their athletes into a boring and monotonous set of practices that will see them exit the sport soon after. They thought volleyball was supposed to be fun!

Warmups are the biggest pushback when talking to coaches about how to make their practices more athlete centered. The tradition of run and stretch and footwork patterns and shuffles is dull and lifeless, it sucks the life out of a practice session and takes young athletes who crave the speed and excitement of the game and reduce it to pre programmed movements and actions. 

The war on warmups has three fronts to the battle. First is the science.

There are over 330 studies at the Center for Disease Control that state that static stretching before a workout is without value and can, in some cases, be harmful. A recent New York Times article on fitness myths listed this as #1! (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/well/move/fitness-myths.html)

It's also ridiculous to think that every athlete needs to stretch the same muscles. Setters, liberos and outside hitters use different muscles during practice but the idea of everyone doing the same stretches is as outdated as thinking everyone is comfortable in the same shoes.

Yes, a dynamic warmup is more effective than static stretching but if the same warmup is done at every practice the same way, human nature will take over and it will become rote and ineffective as athletes will just go through the motions to get to what they want to do....PLAY!

This leads to the second front of the war, engagement.

Go to a concert of a band you are a huge fan of. Chances are you will know the first song, probably the second and maybe even the third song. Why do music acts start concerts with songs that their fans know? To get them excited, jumping and dancing, singing along...engaging their audience.

Why can't this be the case at a volleyball practice? Why can't we engage athletes while they are warming up? Why can't we play short court monarch of the court with no jumping and passing only: competitive, fun, play! Why can't we rotate teams and then add setting to the game? Then add jumping or attacking and go full court? 

The same 10-15 minutes of running in circles, doing ineffective stretches and footwork patterns without any perception of the game just became 10-15 minutes of engaged athletes getting contacts, opportunities to read the ball, read players and the game, and oh yeah...have fun!

This is a simple fix for Coaches. It will take imagination and forcing yourself off your path of dependency, (coaching how you were coached), but the results from your athletes will prove to you quickly how much more effective this warm up is.

The third front in the war on warmups is financial.

The cost of gyms has, and continues, to skyrocket. Let's just take a small gym at a local middle school that charges $75 per hour. The cost of practice is $150 per team. If you take the first 15 minutes of practice running, stretching and avoiding a volleyball, you have charged your athletes $18.75 of practice time that was useless. That's $150 a month and over a 7 month season, comes to $1050. 

That's for just one team. Multiply that by how many teams are in your club and you can see the amount of money being flushed at the expense of outdated traditions.

One other thought. If you ARE the team getting 15 minutes more touches and opportunities to read every practice over a team that is running and stretching and boring their athletes every practice, who is going to show more improvement? As USAV Grassroots Guru John Kessel says often, "this is a learning competition." How better for our athletes to learn than to play?

If you have players that need to stretch because it is their mental or pre practice routine or they are coming back from injury, they have before practice starts to do what they need to. But once the whistle blows to start practice, put a ball into the warmup. Your athletes will respond!

As for the AVCA, there needs to be a reevaluation of what is being offered. If they want to become another of a long list of volleyball "content providers" with no responsibility for what they put out, then they should reevaluate what is being shared. If you are going to ignore science and engagement, what are you actually doing for your coaches? 

Make your warmups athlete centered, use your imagination to get them fun and engaging and give your team a leg up on the competition by giving them an extra 2 hours a month of play instead of running and stretching. 

They deserve it!

Let Them Off The Hook...

 Our lives are mired in prediction.

Open your eyes in the morning and the shower radio will estimate your drive to work based on previous days models, the weather and the day. And speaking of the weather, perhaps rain in the afternoon, so dress accordingly. Suddenly a text from the office: the boss might be in today so please make sure you have your reports up to date. Before you have left the house, you are already draped in predications that will dictate your day.  Of course, the ONLY thing we know about predictions is sometimes they are right, sometimes they are wrong.

Turn on the news and for the past six months, everyone with a pulse will tell you who will win the 2024 presidential election and by how much. Who will win the World Series? There are thousands who want to tell you who will win and many thousands still that want you to bet your daughter's college tuition on it. Before the NBA season's first jump ball, sports betting wants you to lay down your paycheck on who you think will be the Rookie of the Year and here are the names THEY think will be in the race for that award. Wait...what?

We have gotten lost between reality and the fantasy world of prediction and it has spread to our young athletes.

On August 12th, the Florida State Seminole football team was ranked #10 in the country. Let's  be clear, there was no preseason tournament to give FSU a solid footing at #10, this was prediction. From sports writers, from media and social media posts. From perhaps players and coaches in interviews. Regardless of the stimuli, FSU was a top 10 national powerhouse on August 12th.

Then they lost their first two games. 

One month later, the folks that bet on them, based on other's predictions, now called for the coach to be fired. They were the biggest disappointment in college football, the most underwhelming team of the season. 

Tragically what is lost amongst this hyperbole is the simple fact that sometimes predictions are right, and sometimes they're wrong. It doesn't seem like FSU was as good a football team as people predicted, but rather than admit their faulty predictions, sports writers, pundits, bettors and bookmakers turned their wrath onto a coach and a group of eighty 18-23 year olds. 

In 2012, a prognosticator named Nate Silver predicted the presidential election state by state: 50 for 50! He was  a genius. Four years later, he posted on his new prediction website fivethirtyeight, the following:

Excuses, misinformation and humility in hand, Nate Silver tumbled back to earth.

ESPN, which used to be a sports network showing different sports and games for 18-20 hours a day now broadcasts a game or two each day- maybe, using the rest of their airtime for prognosticators, prediction and advice to gamblers. Some of the content will be right, some will be wrong. But as long as the public consumes these opinions, don't look for the network to go back to broadcasting sports anytime soon on their main channel.

There are some "rules" that we, as sports fans, know. First, no matter what we think, sports are random. Half of teams win and half of teams lose  and that is the only certainty we can count on. Even sports that allow ties will have teams helped and hurt by the outcome.

At the root of a lot of this crystal ball gazing is the growth in online sports gambling, a prediction that was easy to see coming. But the speed of which it is growing is staggering. It is estimated by 2029, the total revenue of online gambling will exceed $65b from over 180 million users. It's no wonder websites, tv networks and prognosticators alike want a piece of this cash cow. And thus we see ESPN go from a sports network to one of prediction, criticism when they are wrong and gloating when they get one right!

Often, the person giving you their prediction isn't qualified. There are some excellent TV hosts who have never played the sport they are reporting on, never been in the locker room or chatted with a coach or players, and yet they are deemed the "expert" because they have the one quality the networks put above all others...they are good on TV!

Our Arizona Region, like so many others, will put together a seeding committee to place teams where they think they should be for the upcoming season. It's a small group who have no way of knowing all 13,000 members of our Arizona Region, who all the coaches are, which clubs are new, etc. They have only the self prediction of the team's coach or club director to base their information on. To no one's surprise, it is an imperfect science. And yet every season, Parents and coaches will use these anemic predictions to label their teams' seasons successful or disappointing.

Can we all agree that this is just wreckless and without merit?

Walk into a National Qualifier this season and listen to Parents talk about their son's team and the other teams in his pool. They talk as if they have been hired by the Youth Volleyball Network. "We shouldn't have any trouble with this team, they are small and their setter can't block." And when the final whistle blows and they do lose,  instinctively the coach doesn't know what he's doing, the players didn't try or work hard enough, the officials wanted the other team to win, etc. All of this vitriol because we can't reconcile that our predictions are just that: a guess!

The tidal wave that is sports gambling and prediction is too seismic to thwart. It will be with us forever. Too many names are made with the outlandish prediction that comes true, (never mind the sweeping under the field of the dozens they missed). This isn't a call to disarm those with the microphones to start doing their jobs and actually dig, find and report true news stories: the advent of social media has left that in the rearview in the early 2000's. 

But let's let kids off the hook. Let games be played, appreciate the effort and growth and the fun they re having. There is plenty of time to make them the bullseye of misinformed rhetoric by those with oversized vocal chords or a large microphone at their disposal.

Your athletes don't deserve to be favorites or underdogs. They don't deserve the added pressure of odds in or out of their favor. 

They just deserve to be young athletes learning a sport. Please...

Opportunities Lost...

She stood there listening intently. Granted, it was spoken in English and she was not, but a team of translators got the point across. Game like training! Don't waste valuable practice time on things that will have NO transfer to the game of volleyball. 

She was a former professional club coach who had years of experience. And she nodded enthusiastically as the conversation encompassed practice: drill design, warm ups, transfer, engagement and retention. She looked like she understood!

When the clinic ended and her U18 girls team took the court, she instructed them on their warm up. And 15 girls grabbed a volleyball and began to dribble it as they ran around the court several times. The athletes, just following orders, seemed unengaged and for sure had done this warm up before.

Opportunity lost.

How about the pickleball instructor at the indoor facility in the west valley. What a gig! With your pink shoes displaying your brand, you have 8 kids, ages 7-12 maybe and teach them a sport that they can play with their parents for years to come. 

And how did pink shoes start practice?

First, of course, they ran around the facility. Jogging a few times around 12 or so courts when the actual pickleball court is the size of a large dining room table seemed to be overkill but it took 10 minutes of his one hour of lesson time. 

Next, he put cones down the middle of one side of the court, and with the kids standing on the sidelines, shuffled to the cones, touching the top and shuffling back. Over and over. Then they stood the other direction to make sure they were shuffling from both sides of their bodies.

The time at the end of this "warm up" was 19 after the hour. As we left, there was still not a single racquet or pickleball taken out or on the court.

Opportunity lost.

There is no telling how many kids will go through these worthless practice session and realize that pickleball is  not the game for them. ALL because a coach doesn't understand simple skill acquisition! 

Dear Parents. How are you okay with this? How are you good with a coach who uses 1/3 of the hour YOU are paying handsomely for to reinforce movements that quite simple could be better transferred and retained if done within a game like scenario? How is this okay?

Parents will complain of having to drive 45 minutes to a tournament to watch their daughter play, but they are okay getting ripped off by coaches pretending to be good trainers yet NOT training the game they are being paid for?

Parents, hold your coaches accountable! Learn more about how athletes acquire skill. Look into the ideas of motor learning and ask lots of questions. You may find those club dues you have worked so hard for have gone to waste with a coach who is pulling his drills off of Instagram and has no concept of how to actually train a sport.

Coaches, when will you stop following the path of dependency, doing what YOUR coach did to you training, practice and discipline wise because it is the easiest road to travel? What has to click in you that if you are asking your athletes to come out of their comfort zones, to try new things, to fail and learn, why are you taking the hypocrite's way and doing just the opposite?

For parents and coaches that fall under these categories, your young athletes will be the ones that pay the price. Maybe quitting the sport, maybe never reaching their potential, maybe both.

Opportunity Lost.

Stewie, Rafi and three in between....

As new books, new research and more podcasts pop up, there are even more great quotes from people way smarter than us. Take a look at what grabbed our attention the last couple of weeks.

Dr. Michael Gervais is a successful author, podcaster, speaker and of course high performance sports psychologist. Here, Dr. Mike talks about the five psychological skills he works with his athletes and clients on.

"So there's a whole process to better understand who you are. What is the vision of a compelling future? What are your first principles? Can you articulate your purpose? And so there's a self discovery process that's the first thing, The second is there are very clear mental skills that you can train, just like you train your physical body. You can train your these mental skills. It's kind of sets and reps, if you will. So, deep focus, being calm, confident. Those are a handful of the big ones that we would train. Then there's the third component, the third factor, if you will, which is psychological frameworks. So developing your psychological framework, are you optimistic or pessimistic? Do you approach success or avoid failure? Do you see things as an opportunity or a threat? Have you mastered or are you mastering the ability to control what's in your control? Have you a deep framework to understand how to live with passion in any environment, not just the ones that are easy? I love playing the guitar, but I also need to have passion in other parts of my life as well. So understanding how to do that with a sense of resilience or grit. And and then there's a whole set of recovery practices. Those are also skills that you can build, and it's the basic ones everyone knows, but it's just making sure that they hold a seat at the table of high performance. And then the last is the concept of mindfulness. So mindfulness is the golden thread that runs through everything. It is a skill, it is a state of being, and over time, it is an enduring trait. And mindfulness is the practice of being a bit more aware so that you can live in the present moment more often. And the present moment is where all the psychological skills are trained and expressed and that's where everything amazing takes place."

New York Liberty All Star Breanna Stewart had her chances in game one of the WNBA finals v. the Minnesota Lynx. But in the closing minutes, Stewie missed a couple of open shots and a free throw which would have put the Liberty up late in the game. 

Stewart said after the game, “I want to be taking these shots. I feel like knowing my teammates and that everyone has confidence in me is important. It’s kind of like on to the next and still making sure I’m aggressive any time on the court. Obviously as a player, it’s very frustrating. But bounce back for Game 2.”

It's a standard athlete trope, bounce back for game two. But the reality is, what good is it to dwell on what has happened in the past? Learn from it, be better going forward. Sports writers and pundits eviscerated Stewart but she is at the elite end of her sport for a reason. Sometimes they go in, sometimes they don't. Winning and losing is random and your job, as an athlete, is to be ready the next time you are put into that situation with your body, mind and heart. While no one here is a prognosticator, don't be surprised to see Stewart rise to the occasion in game two.

"I think that feeling is that idea to trust your discomfort. I'm in this situation right now and I'm uncomfortable, and I've just got to find a way to articulate for myself why it's making me uncomfortable and why I need to make a change, and hopefully, the act of making change is the antidote to that discomfort and anxiety. Now, do you know that that change will be successful? you have no idea. But the act of doing it teaches you in some respect, that you are not a prisoner of your circumstance, your situation, any of those things. Your fate has not been written."

Actor, comedian John Stewart explains on a podcast how he deals with the idea of handling adversity. His idea of trusting discomfort is a staple of what great coaches ask of their athletes.

Dr. Keith Davids is a pioneer in Motor Learning and Skill Acquisition circles and he was asked about how weight lifters learn technique using Ecological Dynamics.

One of the things I'm really interested in now is that understanding has important implications for the way that we practice. Practice is not blind repetition, automatization of a movement or a technique that's been handed down. I saw somebody perform that way and it was great, and I want to replicate that. That's not how athletes should function. It's really about getting them to understand, how do they achieve their intended task goal which is to lift the bar with a certain weight above their head and the elbow joints have to reveal a certain angle, but they've just sort of slipped a bit of the conscious move so the way they address the environment is different when you're just repeating, rehearsing and complying with a movement pattern that you've got in your mind, compared to you actively engaging with the environment and interacting with these weights."

And finally, this week one of tennis' legends announced his retirement at the end of the 2024 season. Rafael Nadal has been at the top of his sport for 20 years and in this quote from USOC Sport Psychologist Peter Haberl, you might understand why Nadal was so consistently good for so long.

"When you hear him after the first round, and he's being asked about his opponent the next round, in the second round, his answer is very consistent. 'It's a test and will be the toughest match ever.' And in a third round, 'This should be the toughest match ever.' And to a fourth round, 'Toughest match ever.' In qualifying, 'Toughest match ever.' He's trying to find the toughest match ever. And what that tells me is, by approaching it that way, he never falls into the trap of thinking things will be easy. And then when they're hard, not being able to adjust to that. So, once he expects things to be difficult, he'll come fully prepared. And that way, he's never surprised by an opponent."

David, J.J. and Franz...

In an end of the month installment of five important thoughts and quotes from three people who are way smarter than us, we start off with one of the great authors of our generation in the subject of sports and how to coach. David Epstein has published two must haves for any coaches bookshelf: "The Sports Gene" is 2013 and his 2019 opus, "Range." Here, in the newly updated version of Range, Epstein talks to coaches about the future and how we are navigating it.

"In other words: career zig-zaggers are more likely to feel unappreciated while on the path to developing a broad skill set, but also more likely (eventually) to ascend to the highest echelon in their work. This gets at a fundamental conundrum: optimizing for the short-term feels safe, but often undermines development in the long-term." 

Epstein understands and has looked at the idea of hiring with just one task of knowledge but points out that one must overcome that safety and reach beyond for a long term career. By the way coaches, this goes for players too!

Los Angeles Lakers head coach J.J. Redick has shown himself to be a generational basketball mind: his podcasts and  articles and interviews. And in a league full of tradition and old drills and training methods, Redick sees it differently.

"Player development is about putting people in game-like environments and then drilling that versus drilling how to get to your bag. I had a coach tell me this year, I was asking, I was like: This player has gotten better in pick and roll [and they said]: 'Yeah, we have pick and roll study hall. We'll sit there and watch one specific player that does one specific thing really well in pick and roll, and then we'll go out on the court and recreate that environment so he works on those reads."

Reading, game like and practice for the game v. practicing for a salary or a highlight reel is what J.J. is envisioning. It will be a fun season to watch him at the helm of the Lakers.

Franz Stampfl coached Roger Bannister to the first sub 4 minute mile in history. What you don't know is Stampfl was a WWII veteran, prisoner of war, surviving his prison transport ship being torpedoed by a German U-boat and surviving 8 hours in cold, oil-slicked seas and helped coach and organize sports in the camps until the end of the war. He was a stalwart of 'interval style training' and in addition to Bannister helped tennis players and boxers to success and coached 11 different athletes in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. In a tragic bit of irony, he was involved in a car accident in 1980 that left him a quadriplegic until his death 15 years later. 

Coaching Bannister, Stampfl uttered one of the most obvious but hidden thoughts about coaching: "Training is principally an act of faith."

This resonates so clearly yet is rarely spoken of. Your athletes, the parents of your athletes, even your club directors and athletic directors, they entrust all in you- an ultimate act of faith.

Talking about training, he said, “The coach’s job is twenty percent technical and training, and eighty per cent inspirational. He may know all there is to know about tactics, technique and training, but if he cannot win the confidence and comradeship of his pupils he will never be a good coach.”

This is an area that coaching clinics and you tube videos have steered away from but is even more relevant now than ever. Relationships over reps, trust over technique.

Finally, Stampfl ends this blog with this gem: "Fear is the strongest driving force in competition. Not fear of one's opponent, but of the skill and high standard which he represents: fear, too, of not acquitting oneself well. In the achievement of greater performances, of beating formidable rivals, the athlete defeats fear and conquers himself."

Mic drop...

Insta World

 It started with this...

By just attending this online clinic, you could "become a better CLUB coach in one day!"

Hmmmm...

We all know we live in an insta world. Waiting in line for groceries, school clothes or a Frappuccino has become to much for our insta world. With our hand held computers a buzz, we can manage almost anything from paying our car insurance to making an appointment for an upcoming surgery. 

These modern day conveniences often go unnoticed and under appreciated because they have become a synthetic fabric of American life. 

But we have to be smart enough to know that you aren't going to become a better CLUB coach in one day, don't we? 

Let's take a morning stroll through the namesake, Instagram and see how Parents and Coaches can help their athletes improve...(Please grab a towel as that statement and all below are dripping with sarcasm...)

Here we are learning how to fix a team's problem of "bumps, sets and side bumps!" Cleverly, the coach has the kids wait in a long line for one rep at the skill which is all self produced. Yup, this should do the trick!

Here we are teaching the vaunted golden trope of "wrist snap" to an unsuspecting athlete who will learn, IF she stays with the sport, just how worthless this whole exercise is. (BTW, if you are still trumpeting the value of wrist snap to your athletes, you have not studied the science of attacking and are perpetuating the biggest myth in volleyball...)

With this one 7 second, in depth coaching video, you can fix your serve receive. Thank goodness says every coach and parent.

With this drill, your athlete can become a better hitter. She just has to transfer jumping on a box in the middle of her approach into jumping without a box into her game. 

Towels are always an excellent substitution for volleyballs being they are the same weight, make up and shape. If you can swing a towel at a high rate of speed, you will instantly become a better hitter.

As every coach knows the one key of "pinching shoulders" automatically leads to passing dimes.

Every coach and parents dream: their athlete harnessed up, on their knees and replicating a volleyball swing. This will SURELY take them to the next level of attacking. 

The idea of "pressing" will make you a better blocker!

And after this strenuous practice, let's use the greatest volleyball drill of all time to help with the transfer of all the skills we have learned today.

With tongue FIRMLY in cheek, it's important that as a coach or a parent, you see through these online offerings. Like all of social media, ANYONE can present ANYTHING with the idea of likes, hearts and followers. 

But if you are a serious coach, we hope you noticed some of these in the videos:

• How many drills were from the SAME side of the net?
• How many drills were initiated by the Coach?
• How many of the drills gave just ONE thing to get better at the skill showed?
• How many of the drills are using the science of motor learning?
• How many of these drills LOOKED like the actual game of volleyball?

The answers above should be your warning signs going forward. We have no beef with any of these Instagrammers nor do we follow or have any interaction with them. The only part they play is they were lucky enough to come up in the 15 minutes spent on Instagram looking for volleyball content.

(In fairness, there was one video left off which was a science based snippet on what to look for when blocking. While only 15 or 20 seconds, it did bring the science of the skill to the viewer but again, a blocker isn't going to get better in 15-20 seconds.)

We bring this to your attention for two reasons; first, many, many coaches use social media to find drills and learn skill training. A higher number in fact then attend coaching clinics, work with coaching mentors or read books and science journals. One-click coaching is taking over our sport to the detriment of our athletes and parents.

Second, parents look at these videos and are sucked into sending their kids to the camps and clinics associated with this nonsense. Most parents are uninformed about how learning is done, how skill is developed. Their default is often more, more, more at the expense of the quality of what is being taught and who is teaching it.

Coaching AND playing volleyball do not happen in one day. Not in one drill, not in one focus of that drill. Coaches and volleyball players get better by doing; by playing and coaching. Hits and misses, mistakes and successes, triumph and failure. But an insta society doesn't have time for that- we want it NOW. We need it NOW!

Coach, you aren't going to become a better coach in one day. Dad, your son isn't going to become a better blocker in 7seconds. Mom, your daughter isn't going to excel at serve receive because she watched a video on pinching shoulders.

Patience is the hostage of our insta world. But it's the currency of development. 

For a change, stand in line for your caramel macchiato this week...

It ALL Matters...

Observed a man the other day in the "trainers only" section of the gym he was working at. He was managing the fitness of two middle aged female clients at the same time. He would look down at his phone and then go to one and show her what he wanted her to do. In this case, she sat on a chair with her back against a wall and spread her arms out against the wall and moved them up and down. While she was doing this, he looked at his phone again and went to the other woman whom he had start doing a version of 'supermans,' putting her left foot up and leaning forward with her right hand and then alternating. At no time did he check on the form or even whether the two ladies were doing the exercises he prescribed. He gave no feedback, no help and just kept looking at his phone for his next exercise to fill his hour slot.

Emblazoned in bold white block letters on the upper back of his red logoed work shirt was the word COACH.

Often lost in the frustrating work of coach developers  was a recent post on a social media account:

These coaches are  lifelong learners, working to get better each season, each practice, each drill, each interaction with players and parents. Often times, their egos don't demand attention and it's only after a players career has concluded that the athletes realize how integral that coach was to their success. 

For a modern world of instant gratification and acknowledgment, this idea becomes so inconsequential that striving for  a lot of coaches, those interactions becomes a waste of time and energy.

Unless, of course, you are one of their athletes.

One outside hitter, an All-State selection  her sophomore year on isn't playing into college. She's a dynamic 5-10 athlete that can pass in serve recieve and is a good blocker. She would have added value to any school she chose. 

But being the go-to player on a team with bad leadership can be more of a curse than a blessing. Every loss was pinned on her effort and mistakes. Close wins were her fault because she couldn't carry the team on her back. She began to get naseaus before matches in both high school and club and would sometimes get sick. After matches, win or lose, she felt depressed and relieved. Why, she asked herself, would I want to put myself through this for four more years.

Her coaches had gutted her passion and ripped from her captaincy her self esteem. She was the excuse, the reason for failure, the one that could never reach the potential cast upon her by short sighted coaches who thought "pushing" her was healthy and the best option.

Another player, an All-State selection in the northeastern US had this to say about her coach. “I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I was constantly reassured that I was going to be a 6-rotation player who rarely sat the bench. Instead, I was a 0 rotation player who rarely saw the court. If my own coach didn’t believe in me, why should I keep playing? I eventually realized I didn’t want to play, I just wanted the truth.”

“I remember seeing my coach during highschool season. She’d say ‘Great game Ally, I can’t wait to have you as my go to outside!’ I was ecstatic. Come to find out she’d said the same thing to 3 other girls.”

This player also walked away from offers, her self effacy bullet riddled. Another player who walked away from opportunty because an egotistical coach had blindly made decisions without any idea of the repurcussions.

Coach is an often used title in a lot of organizations. Life coaches, sport coaches, mental coaches, nutrition coaches. All with a purpose but how many have the credentials to claim legitimacy? In the US, coaching is a hobby for most. There are coaches on the sidelines of your daughter's volleyball tournaments that have not studied training ideas and methods, they don't have a coaching philosophy and maybe don't even use science to help them decide practice regimen, drills and recovery. For so many parents, they just don't know because they don't do the research on clubs and coaches. They listen to the stories told them about the scholarships and grandeur ahead and jump on board, only to find out the Titanic is equipped with a net.

We will leave you with this parent letter. It is both alarming and helpful if you are a parent looking for coaching qualifications in your athlete's upcoming season. 

"I have no idea of who or even if this message will be seen by anyone. However, I still want to get my perspective out there. I am a parent of 3 girls who played volleyball even into college… I am now a grandparent of a granddaughter who wants to play volleyball. My perspective is that nothing has changed in the qualifications/vetting process of coaches in all levels of volleyball. I watched a simple game in an Anthem league today and saw the same issues that were present when my 38 year old daughter played . Coaches are not trained and are not for the kids learning the game but winning. Something needs to change, especially in the training/vetting of coaches. My daughters had some wonderful coaches, and some truly awful coaches and human beings. One was definitely a pediophile  and I was the only parent on her team that was not ok with him. This was a 14 -1 team that went to nationals. My daughters played at various levels but we experienced such awful coaches at all levels. I would love to see standardize coaching.

We have 9 grandaughters and we have offered to pay for tennis and golf and anything other than volleyball for them. How sad especially since 2 of our granddaughters have a 6’4’ inch dad and a mom who is 5’10” and played at nationals at least 4 times. 

My husband and I literally had PTSD watching this simple league today and the awful coaching.

My daughters still love the game of volleyball but they  know that it comes with some absolute awful not vetted coaches both in club and schools and they dont know if they are willing to put their daughters through what they endured."

Coach, you matter. Club Director, it DOES matter who you put on the floor to coach your athletes. Parents, be picky and do your homework. 

It ALL matters...