Out of Whack

With my usual schedule thrown out of whack due to a unique professional opportunity, I’ve been missing a whole bunch of volleyball commitments. thankfully some reliable ex-players are taking up the slack. Chris McHugh is kindly taking my Reserve Women for two games and in those weeks they lost one game 3-1 with only 5 players after an injury, and 2-3 (17-19) after about 4 match points.

One of the few volleyball luxuries I still have is my availability to coach my younger teams. I managed to help out with my Willunga girls at the finals of yr 10 knockout on friday. They met a formidable Brighton team that had 4 girls on my reserves team + Emma McEwen. Brighton ended up going down to Heathfield in both the boys and girls comps.

I still get to go to Junior league training and games. One f the things i’m astounded by is how malleable players can be in changing their technique when still young. One of the curious things I’ve been trying is a “different” setting technique i picked up from Michael Brookens when he was in adelaide for WAVL. Ive tried it on about 4 players with pretty immediate results (although it’s not working as i’d like it to in game situations). it’s a bit different from the traditional skill model with i still believe only really uses 3 fingertips on each hand. Michael suggested I check out Bond Shymansky’s DVDs. I bought about 6 of them and a couple of them are great (at least one of them is average) and i have been trying out a lot of the stuff in them.

I also like the spiking skill model of taking off perpendicular to the net. Especially for middles who under this approach use a limited arm swing action. taking a look at the FIVB tech videos of womens matches, it seems a lot of teams have middles that approach and swing like this as well as middles who hit like outsides.

Who knows what’s right. No doubt the kids will go back to their school programmes and get told off. So i’ve told them it’s some experimental stuff that isn’t exactly “conventional wisdom”. I think it’s always worth showing players different ways of doing things and explaining the context so they can make up their own minds. If anything, this kind of experimentation is a lot of fun.

Equitable court time, specialisation v development & “creating history”

From Ed Binnie:

Eldo,
for a state league, I’m inclined to agree with you.
But I would like to hear your thoughts on Juniors and school. Too often I see players in U15s etc being used as defensive specialists, or specialist blocking subs, or double sub to ensure constant back row setter.
My thoughts are that this is creating overt specialisation of athletes. I had one player join a uni side who had never dug a ball in his life, because he was a front court only player. Especially at young ages, where heights and athleticism are still developing, surely we’d want our juniors to be exposed to the full game, not just the one thing they can do well. This applies to AJVC, AVSC, and the U16 and U15 tourneys.

* * *

Specialisation of athletes exists whether you sub players on or off or keep them all on the court. I’m inclined to believe that if a coach won’t put a player on for 3 rotations on the FC or BC, they’re hardly going to put that player on for 6 rotations under the 12 sub rule. In a perfect world you would just take 3 players off halfway through each set and leave the subs on, but it doesn’t always work.

I have always coached junior league that way, so technically i could still get all my junior players equal court time under 6 sub rule and develop them equally. One of the (unwritten) rules eldo had when he took me for my level 1s is that every kid should get on at least 60% of the time. If there’s a chance to “create history” (an expression i’ve heard verbatim from a lot of head coaches!), then you do what it takes to win. 12 sub rule subbing will only get you to 50%. I think with junior league teams and AVSC div 1 & 2 teams, the court time should be equal and the players having a chance to develop all round skills.

I think you Ed makes a good point about it changing the game – constant backrow setter, specialist blocking subs etc. It becomes less about the best 6 players with good craft skills taking on their best six on the other side, but that’s not a bad game either. it’s become part of a necessity in tournaments. Expensive travel cost of tournaments => more game time => you have to use your full bench. I don’t think this is too bad at a national junior or avsc honours standard. it’s a different level of play with different expectations than equitable junior league/avsc div 1. And besides, at best of 5 sets, the player that plays 50% of the time subbing only on or off can play nearly as much as the div 1 / junior league player who’s on the whole time (trust me, i’ve done the maths on this one!)

Where U15s falls is the grey area. Vic, ACT and QLD have rep teams so maybe the expectations are like nat juniors. SA hasn’t entered ever as far as i know (although if we did, the group that eldo takes each year would probably make up most of the team anyway, with a couple of brighton kids that go with hawks). So for the SA teams that go, it’s probably more “developmental” than the rep teams that go over. I do find the level of specialisation at U15s disturbing. I coached against teams that employed 5-1 systems with specialist passers, and teams that played with the player in position 2 setting – in essence they could have rotated on at the serve – they were both competitive!

a uni-age player who has played for years but never dug a ball would have been poorly coached whether they played their whole career under 6 sub rule or 12 sub rule. if anything, they would have dropped out (or “weeded” out) under 6 sub rule because they never got on the court. But then again maybe getting people unsuited to quit volleyball for other sports earlier is good development (sounds insensitive, but marketing guru Seth Godin actually wrote a book about knowing when to quit). who knows.

12 sub rule is not a perfect system. and it can be used or abused. as winston churchill said of democracy “it … is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried”

Fast Food

The Bergers were faster on Saturday night but Mt Lofty still finished in front.

It was billed as a blockbuster and justly so [You can see some of it now on Devo]. It’s always a great game when teams like the Falcons, Heidelberg, Mt Lofty and USC Lion match up. The Bergers are on top of the table in the Vic Volleyball League. I’m not sure where Mt Lofty are on the ladder but they’re always in the top 3. Two great coaches – Raoul Tuul (Lofty) and Michael Brookens (Bergers). It’s old school Australian Volleyball meets new school Australian Volleyball [though oddly enough the two men probably aren’t that far apart in age].

Lofty ended up winning 3 sets to 1, no doubt helped by ex-Heidelberg and international player Dave Jones suiting up for them. Tony Scott dominated as Libero (and executed a spectacular jumping backset, leaping from behind the attack line) and Marcus Jones was too strong in attack and on the block. There were moments that Heidelberg looked unstoppable, with Cedric Legrand putting on an impressive display and George Santamaria setting brilliantly as always.

Heidelberg plays fast, and later on I spoke to Michael about their game philosophy. The pass comes in fast, preferably not going any higher than the antenna. The ball leaves the setter’s hands at hitting height. The swing hitter passes from around the middle of the court and has to cover a lot of distance to hit the ball (often they hit the ball well before it reaches the stick). It’s dynamic and there’s a lot of movement. It appears confusing and spontaneous, but that’s the general idea – to undermine the read block and get 1-on-1s as much as possible.

There are coaches who do things well, and those who re-invent the recipe. The biggest joy in watching the Olympics is seeing how coaches find that point of difference to get an edge. The Bergers style of game requires a substantial investment to reinvent nearly every aspect of play: the passers need to stab the ball in rather than slow it down; the setters have to have the right technique to be able to play fast passes; the hitters all need to hit more like quick hitters with an open-body approach and more vertical less horizontal jump.

The Bergers are still developing this style of play and it will continue to evolve [you can't get a team to play that much faster overnight]. When it was fast it was effective, but when they had to slow down the ball it was back to an even playing field. No doubt it was this early stage of development and missing a couple of starters that cost them the game. If the Bergers are dominating now in the Vic League, one can only wonder what they will look like in 12 months time. Let’s hope we get to find out at next year’s SA Open.

Tiser today

More on our attempt to stream a volleyball match live over the internet.

Messrs Lowrie and Smith were leaving as I was ariving at Mt Lofty, so the story was probably being written as we were trying to get ustream to work. nice mention of Devo’s “popular blog”.

DECS gently downs ustream

Last night, a bunch of tragics from 3 states attempted an Australian first: To stream a volleyball match live over the internet. Sadly, their noble attempts were foiled by archaic IT principles. This is their story

My experience in volleyball has told me that if you put three tragics in a room they would struggle to even agree on the colour of an orange.

Which meant the idea from Vic volleyballer “Jason” on Devo’s blog to stream Saturday’s Mt. Lofty v Heidelberg blockbuster live on the internet with a free service must have been damn good for it to be met with such unanimity. I got prodded to read the discussion and thought it would be a great idea to be part of the first Australian volleyball match to be streamed live over the internet.

Seeing games in their untimed entirety on any television broadcast system is unlikely. But if we can get this to work on the web, it would be amazing. It could create some real interest in the game and energise the tragics out there to spread the great gospel of our game.

I’d love to see the kids I coach play national juniors in Queensland and U16s in NSW. I’d love to see the players I used to coach play for the Australian junior and youth teams and AVL. I’m sure their parents who foot the bill would like to see these games too. Could we set up a camera in the coach’s lounge pointed at the two showcourts at AVSC with live streams? Screw it. Let’s set up a FEW cameras, invest in a video splitter, find some uni media students that know how to mix and make it a bit better.

The site Jason suggested was “ustream.tv”, which after a quick on my macbook webcam  proved to a pretty neat tool (I’m sure that like YouTube, these ustream guys are hemorrhaging $$$ from the data charges). You can even add text to the live video stream, which would have been handy for keeping scores. You can have it linked in to twitter and facebook and use it to reach your existing networks. Alexis Lebedew and Chau Le were mostly concerned with the upload limits and firewalls at the Mt Lofty venue so Murph and I met with Stuart Scott and Eldo up at Mt Lofty to do another test.

Sadly, we couldn’t get it to work. The Mt Lofty Rec centre shared the adjoining high school’s internet infrastructure and the firewall just wouldn’t let ustream detect the cameras plugged in. Even plugging an Ethernet cable to my laptop and pointing the webcam toward the court wouldn’t have worked. It was a problem that went well above our heads and the authority of the school’s IT guy. It was standard Department of Education and Childrens Services (DECS) IT policy.

A tool like ustream has so many possibilities. It’s got at least a dozen applications for teaching media. How much could you teach kids about media with this and encourage them to engage with the outside world? Yes there are privacy and security issues, but we should really be trying to embrace this technology rather than blanket banning it because it’s too hard to make it safe.

Although we couldn’t get it to work, I’d have to say the passion of, and cooperation between all the people involved who wanted to see this happen was fantastic. It was one of those few indescribably enjoyable experiences that remind you why  you put up with all that other nonsense that comes with being involved with the sport.

Mt Lofty v Heidelberg tomorrow night @ Mt Lofty. Video files of the game will be uploaded to the net straight after the set is finished. Keep your eyes peeled on Devo!

And live streaming will only be a matter of time!

Just go with the bloody 12-sub-rule already!

During WAVL this weekend, I was impressed to learn from one of the Uni Blues coaches that they use the 12-sub-rule even at the highest level of the Victorian State League. Good on ‘em!

In a year where my club can’t field a League Mens team, I can find some ironic delight in seeing everyone else’s League team stacked with 4 or 5 players on the bench. Man, people really don’t want to play for us! It’s 6-sub rule, so these guys on the bench aren’t going to see much game time. Unless they get a run in reserves. But most of these reserves teams have about 4 or 5 guys on the bench too. so someone’s missing out. Maybe i’m blowing this out of proportion, since we do have the elegant solution of having the remaining league mens teams take turns playing two games each week which means plenty of game time.

6-Sub-Rule is great if you’re one of the six people who start on the court. Not so great if you’re not. Why on earth do we still use 6-sub-rule at league level in SA? It could be an argument by the purists for professionalism. Who knows. It’s certainly not worth turning up to one of these awful SOC meetings where this issue comes up from time to time to find out why we persist with it.

Perhaps the idea is if you’re on the bench and unlikely to get much game time, you could be encouraged to move to another club and get a run. bit like a salary cap that trades money for game time, which is the only real currency in amateur sport. Clearly that isn’t working out like that in SA. Why not change it to 12-sub-rule and let these guys get on the court for a bit. After all, let them come away with some playing memories before state league inevitably dies in the arse.

Maybe they should think about using it at AVL level too. Why not? Would it appear unprofessional? well what does appearances matter when no one’s watching anyway! it’s that expensive to play now, that maybe they should just charge players for the rallies they end up playing in an itemised invoice at the end of each round.

Just think; “Getting on to serve at 24-14 and putting the ball into the net: $500. Standing in the back corner while your team sides out to win the game: $500. The opportunity to play at the highest level you can: PRICELESS!!!!”

Mumbai Indians rip off Heathfield’s playing strip

Well i thought there was a passing resemblance anyway. AVL up at Mt Lofty this weekend. Don’t know what the times are. Don’t care. Watch it all and make a day of it. Be there!

Private School Poaching and Meaningful Work

From Robbo

Sorry for slightly digging up the passed here Huy, but i just read this post on Haileybury. As an ex-Carey student (another competitor in the APS system with Haileybury), i can say that the Volleyball competition in the private school system is significantly lower compared to that of the public schools like Eltham, Billanook, Yarra etc. Although i was playing against Nick Goldsborough-Reardon, Steve Wallace and Tom Bawden (other than that i think there might have been a max of 3 players who went on to play state league). Private schools tend to concentrate on different sports like football, cricket, and rowing. Scholarships have always been a touchy issue when it comes to sport…

Back in my day (what am i saying? I’m only 25 ), we had a couple of boys brought in to the school on general excellence or music scholarships to play footy when everyone knew they were definitely not the bright students that they were made out to be, and i don’t think they had ever picked up a musical instrument…. This was when you technically weren’t allowed to give someone a sporting scholarship, but i think a lot has changed these days. Haileybury have obviously decided that they want Volleyball to be their sport that they excel in, as each school has their 1 or 2 sports they seem to get consistent results in.

I am not sure what the level of competition is like these days but hopefully this will force other schools to work on their programs and generally raise the level of Volleyball overall in the private school system.

* * *

Aaaah yes. The “Academic Scholarship” for gifted athletes. We had it too at my private school. A lot of the professional athletes my school marketed as alumni were actually given scholarships around yr 10 or 11 – convenienetly when their sporting ability manifested.

Speaking to more people about Haileybury, I have to agree with Robbo that it could make the standard better. They have the cash to pay good coaches. Eg Luke Campbell taking Haileybury’s open team last year. Getting more of these guys to participate by paying them well will make volleyball better overall.

But money is only one part of the equation. Robbo’s observation that private school volleyball could be of a lower standard is generous. It can be F!@#ing awful. For a coach, it’s good money. It must be. I’ve coached at four private schools and respectively paid at $15, $20, $25 and $40 an hour. At Adelaide High they paid for my trip/accomodation to Melbourne and for some of my trainings, at Brighton they paid for my trip/accomodation but not the trainings, and at WHS I am an exception to the rule where coaches  have to pay their way over (A couple of times i have “sponsored” teams and coaches to go).

The private girls schools comp in SA used to have the highest standard coaches around – current and ex national team players and coaches. I remember seeing ex senior national womens team coaches Harley Simpson and Johann Olesk coaching 6-a-side yr9 division D2 girls on a drooping outdoor court where the grass had grown over the marked boundaries.  It was surreal and F!@#ing funny. Since I already have a job, it’s not about the money but rather if I find the work “meaningful”.

In his book, “Outliers”, pop sociologist Malcolm Gladwell identified three things that made any sort of work “meaningful”:

1. Autonomy
2. Complexity
3. Relationship between Effort and Reward

Coaching any team gives you plenty of (1) and (2). Effort/Reward is the tricky one. Most of the private schools i coached didn’t play state or national school’s cup. They might have played in competitions against other schools but there usually wasn’t finals. The kids mainly played because sport was compulsory and it was more of a bludge than other sports (unless they had me on a day i felt like doing honest work). Forfeits were common where the other team didn’t even turn up without explanation. From a coaching perspective it made absolutely no difference whether i coached well or not. I just found it really unenjoyable so i stopped and took the vow of poverty to coach only club teams and AVSC schools.

The School’s cup is about as “meaningful” as it can get. It’s got complexity, autonomy, and no matter how big or small you are, if you put the work in you can still be rewarded. It’s a bit like Formula 1. There are a couple of behemoths you have no chance of beating for the overall cup, but as a privateer you can still win an event here or there. Just look at Tin Can Bay!

Coaching a private school that goes to the cup – like Haileybury or Rostrevor College is the best of both worlds; Getting paid to do what you love and having a shot at seeing your efforts rewarded with a national title of some kind. Haileybury’s Open girls team ended up taking the bronze medal in honours beating Heathfield. The national team captain taking on the winningest coach in AVSC history for a medal. it makes for exciting volleyball at the end of the week!

Waiting for the revolution

State League on Saturdays. State School’s Cup in the middle of Footy/Netball Season. Is taking on the cultural hegemony of Australia’s winter pastimes a bold manouvre or an ill-fated revolution?

A friend of mine coaches a colts team for the Brighton Bombers Football Club. He and I will be on different ends of the same dilemna when State School’s Cup comes round on 7-9 August this year. He reckons he’ll be missing about 10 players from his side who will be playing volleyball. I reckon I’ll be missing most of the players in my Willunga High volleyball teams as they go on to play for their netball and footy teams in the Great Southern League.

Having to choose between sports can be hard for a kid. Being in a specialist sports programme at school makes that choice a little easier. But for those of us coaching in schools that don’t, the timing of State School’s Cup can make all the difference. I’ve had years where it’s been in ate September, so I have to wait on hearing if a couple of my players will be selected in a grand final team while the rest are able to play with their teams out of contention. Last year’s October date was just about perfect. Only problem being that it was too close to the national event making it hard to nominate teams and save up the $$$. I was surprised that with such complexity to the problem, the decision to hold it earlier was met with apparent unanimity between the schools.

State League on Saturdays (at least in SA and Victoria) is also an interesting case in point. It wasn’t always on Saturdays. It used to be during the week but changed round the time that volleyball was moved to the velodrome (yes, a bizarre chapter in SA volleyball history that I’m sure the people who remember are in the minority). Having it on Saturdays is a ballsy move. As an old coach of mine said to me recently “Saturday is the day people choose to go to footy or netball, to clean the house, go shopping or spend time with the family”. It’s a big ask on a day that already has a lot of demands on it.

Which brings me to the existentialist question. What role does volleyball have in Australia? Do we see it as a sport that has a “complementary” existence to our dominant sports (the football/rugby codes and netball), or do we really want to tackle these other sports head on. It sounds stupid, but I’m sure some bureaucrat is thinking about this in Canberra while VTAM tries to get its funding extended.

I’m sure there are some of us out there who feel that our sport should be number 1 and if it isn’t we should be trying to fight for it to be. It could be expressed in the moral indignation of seeing articles like Devo did about “volleyball being a waste of time” *. On the other end, there are some of us who think to try to compete would be suicide and that at best we should try to coexist and remain dominated.

Communist Thinker Antonio Gramsci pondered why it was that by the 20th century the proletariat revolution in most industrialized countries hadn’t occurred yet. His theories suggested that a “cultural hegemony” existed whereby the “proletarians” had been convinced by their oppressors that their interests were best served under capitalism. In other words there were those in the “movement” who had no real interest to start a revolution. He also pointed out that for a revolution to occur, they would have to win people’s minds first.

We’re in the same kind of problem now. There are pockets out there who have won over the minds of their athletes by creating their own hegemonies. But for the rest of us, we’re working in a very different world.

Over the years I’ve changed from one extreme to the next. From a zealot I’m now a pragmatist. Following the kids I coach at Willunga play football and netball in their local leagues and I can see that other sports have a lot more to offer past the school years. I’m finding that I no longer court skilled school players to play club volleyball unless they’re compulsive addicts. I love the sport, but I can’t build a case for it anymore. The value proposition just isn’t there compared to other things they could be doing.

If anything, clubs should be finding ways to affiliate with associations in other sports and interests. The benefits can be enormous. Football was invented for people to do something when the cricket wasn’t on and the two sports continue to benefit from staying that way. It’s only at the very elite level that people have to choose between the two. Yes, people can play beach volleyball in the summer and indoor in the winter, and while that arrangement helps us keep our existing players, it doesn’t help us draw from a bigger pool.

A lot of successful sporting associations do this. The Myponga-Sellicks football club where a lot of my school volleyballers play has strong links with other associations in their isolated community – namely the netball club, cricket club and local school. They serve dinners at the club every Thursday night and at each home game which the four associations take turns in running and receiving the proceeds. I know some volleyball clubs have these sorts of relationships with other associations, but a lot of them don’t. Creating these relationships begins with finding ways to coexist. Competing for the same days doesn’t help.

To take sports like football and netball head-on is like suicide. We might win a few but the collateral damage could be huge. Co-existence might seem like copping out. It’s not an option that appeals to those that want to see a revolution. Gramsci and his mates never got to their proletarian society (thank god), but some of their better ideas managed to find their way into the hegemony through the people that found a way through coexistence. After all, even though a lot of players I coached don’t play volleyball anymore, I’m sure they’re all better individuals because they did.

A lot of the people who can, and do champion our sport are those who love being involved with other sports (it’s true for major sports too). Let’s try to not piss them off.

* For footballers, Volleyball will always be a waste of time so long as it’s on at the same time as footy. When it isn’t, you start hearing things like “it’s great for my jump and coordiantion!”

State League Lampooned on Facebook

Devo wrote a post recently commending VSA’s move into 21st century marketing with its facebook group. Interestingly, someone has taken satire into the same direction with this DIY quiz. If you’re reading this, i’m sure you’ll have no problem finding it.