The Underappreciated Teacher-Coaches

I got this comment from our elder statesman, Devo.

“It became popular in schools because one or two teachers loved the sport and worked their butts off to make it happen. One day the state and national associations will work out how much they owe to a select group of teachers.”

As if teachers weren’t underappreciated enough as it is, some go well beyond the call of duty as educators to give the kids they teach/coach some of the most valuable experiences and opportunities that they will carry into their adult lives.

Certainly I think that the sport grew largely because of the massive and underappreciated contributions of some larger-than-life gravitas-grade educators that goes on to this day. Volleyball is the most popular unit in yr 12 PE. Thanks largely to the PE teachers who put it there. Teachers were the people who lobbied to give volleyball the prominence it deserved against established sports like football, rugby and netball. They fought for the gym. They spent hours working with hopeless athletes who had a lot of potential. They spent hours convincing some excellent athletes to play volleyball instead of football, basketball or netball. They were the champions, the pioneers and the evangelists of our great sport. Come to think of it, all my favourite coaches are current and former teachers.

I’ve wanted to do this for a while, so I’m dedicating this post to a select few of my favourite coaches who, as underappreciated as they may be in volleyball, are completely underappreciated outside of it. In addition to the usual challenges, these people have to put up with being around people who really don’t “get” volleyball on a daily basis. These coaches stick out in my mind for a number of reasons. 1) They coach teams that consistenly overachieve. 2) They’ve put players into the AIS. 3) Their programs are at risk of disintegrating when they leave.

There are probably some other great coaches who face these same challenges who i haven’t written about,. But i’ve picked these 3 for a reason: I’ve gotten more familiar with them from losing to them quite often!

Can one person make a big difference? I think so. Do they deserve more recognition for their contributions to sport and education? Absolutely.

Glen Urbani

Sometimes i reckon the most underappreciated teacher-coach i came across was Glen Urbani at Rostrevor College. For a tiny pool of talent (i reckon he usually only had 2 or 3 teams at any given time), he easily has the highest strike rate of getting players into the AIS (5 - Andrew Dwyer, Adam Maskell, Travis Moran, Matthew Hunt and Harrison Peacock). His teams ALWAYS made honours and won countless national titles. They have not missed qualification for OHB since 1999. When they don’t qualify for the “third slot” at state cup, they manage to get in through a wildcard and end up outperforming one of the SA teams that did qualify.

Unfortunately Urbani worked at a school that was far more interested in producing AFL footballers (Ben Hart and Luke Darcy to name a couple) and first class cricketers. Volleyball ranked well below even basketball, soccer and god knows what else. Imagine what he could have done with all of those athletes too!

My friends who went to Rostrevor used to tell me that it was hard for their Open Honours Boys team to get the gym to train in. This team had been national champs TWICE (U15BH, U16BH) and runners up one year)and had to wait well after hours for a yr8 basketball team to finish training to get use of the gym.

Yet Glen persevered with the dedicated help of the Barton family and the results speak for themselves. I can think of possibly only 1 other coach who inspires the sort of loyalty that Glen does from his alumni, and they all come back to help out and join his uphill battle. 5 national reps including an Olympian, 3 honours titles and 2 silvers, and god knows what else in the trophy cabinet. Deadset legend!

Noel Drew

One of my other favourite teacher-coaches has got to be Noel Drew. It’s always fun reading the biographies of coaches and players in that little booklet they give you at AVSC. According to Noel Drew’s bio in the guide one year, he only held a modest Level 1 coaching certificate, and had “been unable to get any other any other teacher at the school interested in coaching volleyball” despite his successes. Was this for real? It was like finding out how Einstein didn’t have a uni degree and that everyone thought this idea he had about “relativity” was bollocks. Were there mistakes in the copy before it went to print? was this some sort of elaborately ingenious deadpan prank? Well, apparently not.

To be fair, I’ve never really “lost” to Noel Drew. Since his teams were usually in honours and mine… weren’t. And that one time i lost to one of his teams in div 1, they were just coaching themselves….

It was in 2005 and I coaching open div 1 girls for Willunga. We came up against what I thought looked like the most unimposing team in our division. The girls were short and didn’t look athletic. they were mainly of southern or south eastern asian descent, which isn’t traditionally athletic. It looked like they only had one hitter and the rest struggled to clear the height of the net. And they didn’t have a coach. It’s safe to say they wiped us off the court, and I think went on to finish in the top 4. This group of girls had made honours previously, but didn’t train enough that year because of study commitments. They quickly became my favourite team to watch in that tournament. Noel had to coach two teams, so he let them take care of themselves, which they ably did.

The whole episode just summed up Noel Drew. Under-resourced, with less-than-imposing athletes, under-prepared, and with practically no support, he developed a kick-ass team that were good enough to take care of themselves. Like Urbani, he did a lot with very little. Where a dogmatic, blueblood sporting tradition stood in Glen’s way, an academic tradition stood in Drew’s. Baulkham Hills was an academically selective school. It didn’t exactly attract super atheletes. It didn’t exactly attract kids who were into sport, or came from households that thought much of it. Half of Noel’s challenge was to get his players out of the house away from the books to play some sport! Under Drew, BHHS won 2 honours titles and Rowena Morgan got into the AIS. LEGEND!

Denise “Denny” WIlliams

I first lost to Denny’s Great Lakes boys team in 2006 coaching U16 div 1 boys. Her team had some really cocky players but they were a lot of fun and our teams got along great. Must be a country thing i don’t get. We always seemed to get stiffed playing our games somewhere in the stix so we shared a long shuttle and train trip back to Melbourne where we talked about Australian films. Denny’s actually seen more Australian Films than I have which is a bit embarrassing for someone in my line of work.

I think Denny originally taught at Strathfields where she worked with Christie Mokotupu. She went to Great Lakes for a holiday and never came back. Where Noel was a guy who refused to waste his time coaching boys, Denny was a woman who refused to waste her time coaching girls. Great Lakes’ teams have consistently performed well in div comps. Their Open div 1 boys won the national title last year (while we came second tolast) and their open div 2 girls lost to ours in the final. With the quality of players they have, they could really push for honours, but apparently, they don’t really have access to a gym to regularly train in!

The Aussie men’s big left-handed scoring machine Paul Carroll was coached by Denny. Legend! I think she’s traveling around canada on a holiday sabbatical and will be a pity if i don’t get to catch up with her in melbourne at the end of the year.

* * *

To not like volleyball is understandable. After all, a bunch of parents at Willunga apparently started a “parents against volleyball” group, and if this gets traction, my colleagues there will soon be added to my list. But to not respect it is another thing altogether. And to not appreciate the craft, dedication and brilliance of these people is a travesty.

What do the colleagues of these coaches honestly think they do? Do they think it’s some crackpot eccentric hobby like home brewing? It’s a serious sport. Outside of 4 australian states could you say the same about AFL? Volleyballers go on to play professionally overseas, get college scholarships in the US, and reperesent australia agaisnt countries that have proud volleyball traditions. Even if they don’t, volleyballers tend to be high achievers in whatever they go on to do because they have to do a bit better than run into someone to be good at what they do.

These teacher-coaches have my admiration for their ability to do great things under trying circumstances. I hope they have yours too.

Why did volleyball get more popular?

One of my players asked me last night if i could help her with a school assignment about why volleyball has grown in popularity. Statistically and anecdotally, it has gotten a lot bigger in the last 20 years. I had a few ideas, but to tell you the truth, i have no real conclusive idea why. so i thought i’d post up my ideas and see what people think since a lot of terrific authorities on the game have contributed their ideas when they feel i’ve gotten it wrong!

Teacher’s college

Before it became part of Uni SA, we had a teacher’s college in Magill, where there was a thriving volleyball competition. These people went out and spread volleyball to the schools they worked in.

Clubs

At some point, at least in SA, it was made prerequisite that any state league club had to have a men’s team, a women’s team, a junior girl’s team and a junior boy’s team. suddenly getting more people to play was part of compliance. A lot of teams/clubs folded because they couldn’t measure up. but the net effect was a much more sustainable environment for growth.

School’s Cup

Back in the 70s and 80s I think volleyball was a sport people took up in their late teens. Usually when they started University with the many University based teams and competitions. Some great players of that generation started volleyball at that age and made it to the national team. I think Mike Reu started quite late, and I’m definitely sure Denise Kloeden was about 20 when she started! You didn’t really start playing volleyball any younger than that unless you were ethnic.

What i think really changed this was School’s cup which started in the mid 80s. Suddenly, schools had a reason to have teams and start teaching kids in high school. By the time I started playing (mid 90s), it was becoming increasingly common for people to start when they started high school - when grail seeking teacher/coaches finally got their hands on them.

High School Programmes

School’s cup also gave us the SIV programmes. 130 odd kids at Heathfield. Anywhere up to 500 at Brighton. The kids at Girton, Luther, Upwey, Rossmoyne, Craigslea etc. ‘Nuff said.

Mini-Volleyball/Spikezone

kids tend to have to be a bit older to have the strength to start playing volleyball (and enjoy it) than they do with other sports. I remember Eldo describing the counter-intuitive nature of volleyball when i did my Level 1 coaching certificate: “it’s sport where you’re asking kids to play the ball with the softest part of their body…no, the second softest part….”.

Problem with that is, a lot of the best athletes have already picked sports by then. You’re either getting second rate athletes, or competing with other sports for a better athlete’s time and budget. So one of the best things that they did was introduce a modified version of volleyball for primary schools that would compete head on with Footy, Basketball and Netball at the grass roots. My observation is our junior programme grew with a lot of kids that wanted to pursue the experience they got in spike-zone further. A lot of these kids are firt rate athletes. and a lot of them aren’t really interested in other sports.

The starting age in volleyball went from adults in the 80s, to early teens in the 90s, to young kids in the 00s.

Expanded Junior League

Junior league in SA exploded when they (1) got rid of the age categories and put it all into skill-level, and (2) let non-club teams enter.

Expanded State Teams

Love it or Hate it, it got more people playing

Kerri Pottharst and Natalie Cook winning gold

I think Beach certainly got a lot more popular after they won in Sydney. In SA, social indoor declined as interest in social beach soared, building a business case for the two beach centres. whether this effect was cannabilistic on existing participation or brought in new people i do not know.

Alexis Lebedew on where the “T” is

This  comment came from one of SA volleyball’s favourite sons, Alexis Lebedew, who last i heard was coaching for a college somewhere in the US…

Alexis

Interesting story. My recollection is that the term came from America back in the 80s. But I wouldn’t dare argue with Eldo! In the end what you call it is irrelevent (though obviously cues can help as a teaching tool). The most important thing to remember is that the position you should be in is the most likely position that a first tempo attack is hit. The better you know your opponents, the more refined this position can be. For example, if you are playing against a team who hit all their a-quick’s deep to Position I, where should the ‘T’ be?

Most Volleyballers can’t find the T-spot

French Fries aren’t French. They’re Belgian. Thebarton is actually “The Barton”. It’s named after our first PM, Edmund Barton, so saying the “The Thebbie theatre” is just grammatically retarded. And Bryan Adams is definitely not singing about having his “first real sex dream” in “Summer of ‘69”. That would just be creepy…

Over the last few weeks, David “Eldo” Eldridge has been kind enough to allow me to watch him work with the Schoolgirl’s U16 State Teams. It’s a 9:00am start up the freeway at Heathfield, but well worth it to watch a master craftsman at work. Whilst it would be improper of me to give away the many trade secrets that I get to see, there is one anecdote from his first training session that I’m sure is harmless enough to share. The anecdote is one of Etymology (For some reason, the origin of words has always been of great interest to me) and relates to the positions that “1” and “5” must assume when expecting an attack – known colloquially as the “T”.

We’ve all had a coach or teammate yell at us to “Get on the T”. It’s commonly referred to be where the attack line bisects the sideline. But apparently not. Eldo puts his players in “1” and “5” two-metres in from the sidelines and one-metre behind the attack line. From here the players are in good position to receive an overpass or tip, before moving to the perimeter if the ball is set.

According to Eldo’s anecdote, a useful visual cue for telling his players where to stand was an alternative set of court markings (presumably a basketball or badminton court) in the old Heathfield gym* that formed the letter “T”. As the phrase “Get on the T” became familiar with Heathfield teams, the visual cue took on a viral life of its own and became used by everybody. However, without having Heathfield’s unintended court markings in every gym throughout Australia, the location of the “T” became misappropriated to the now-common spot of where the attack line bisects the sideline.

A lot of coaches and players (including me) identify the “T” to be where the attack line meets the sideline. I’m sure there are a lot of good coaches and players who don’t, and place it closer to where Eldo does, but there’s no denying that if Eldo’s story is true, then most of the time the phrase is used, it’s referring to the wrong spot. Where exactly the right spot is is a matter well above my pay-grade. There may even be conflicting explanations to the origins of this visual cue. But the proposition that an idea can take on a life of its own, catch on, and come back unrecognisable can definitely be as funny as watching a Bulgarian Idol contestant singing a cover of Mariah Carey’s “Ken Lee” (which was actually first sung by Dolly Parton).

* Post Script: On the “Big courts” of the new Heathfield gym Alternate markings for badminton courts actually indicate Eldo’s “T” in striking black. Whether this was deliberate or coincidental remains to be seen. Having it pointed out to you is like a watching a scene out of The da Vinci Code.

Beach Volleyball telecast

Footage from the Adelaide leg of the World tour…

Sorry about the tasteless snipe at beach volleyball. You can take the man off the indoor court, but you can’t take the indoor court off the man.

Why are ALL featuring volleyball in them intrinsically F!@#ing awful?

If it made sense to the producers of Top Gun to let doubles fly fighter jets for these guys, couldn’t they spare a few bucks and hire some professionals to play some decent looking rallies? It’s safe to assume that not everyone in the audience is a volleyball expert, but i’m pretty sure that even to the layman this whole sequence just looks lame, more homoerotic than a Charlton Heston film.

Anyway, this isn’t an isolated instance. Film and Television has not been kind to Volleyball. For a sport that gets such minimal media exposure, is it too much to ask that in the few instances that volleyball gets featured in film or TV that it looks half decent?

Some bad offenders:

• “Side Out” (1990). Bad Beach Volleyball film. Forgivable that it had people who could actually play volleyball in it. Watch out for some really hokey acting from Randy Stoklos, Sinjin Smith and Steve Timmons. Possibly the worst on-screen performances from sportspeople until Leigh Matthews did those Divine Homes commercials.

• “All you’ve got” (2006). Starring R & B singer Ciara. I think i bought a copy of this out of the bargain bin of a music shop at my local bogan shopping centre out of morbid curiousity. I threw it out after watching 20 minutes of it. A group of girls brought it along for the bus trip to School’s Cup last year but I refused to put it on because of its overall crapness. Regardless, they watched it on a portable screen and i blame this movie on their 12th place finish. In Div 1.
• “The Iron Ladies” (2000). To be honest, this one is kind of OK. Truth being stranger than fiction, this one’s based on a true story. A team of Thai LBGT volleyballers compete in the Thai national cup and win. Worth watching just for the footage at the end of real-life players.
• “Can’t stop the music” (1980). Volleyball did originate from the YMCA movement, and so suitably it pops its head up in the “YMCA” sequence of the Village People movie. Ain’t nothing manlier than playing some v-ball at the “Y”

Does anyone have any good volleyball movies out there? Anything suitable for kids on a long bus trip to Melbourne? Otherwise, it might be another nine hours of formulaic Will Ferrel movies….

Back

Been a while since I posted something. Have had a lot on my plate and a lot of stuff going on. Just finished a “volleyball project” transferring all my international matches on VHS to DVDs [I know, I have no life]. Just one of those annoying things that should have been done ages ago.  Anyway, I can’t blog while my laptop is capturing video, but all done now.

Looks like the plan of quitting coaching didn’t quite work out. It is too much fun and a welcome break from the complexities of my day job. I’m coaching a Div 1 junior girls team and overseeing the Hawks’ boys programme again. They’ve also introduced a womens division below reserves called “div 3″ and I’m coaching our club’s team in that too. Then there’s Willunga too. I think there may be 2 or 3 teams this year at a shot at honours (my elusive white whale). And to make an even bigger fool of myself, I’ve decided to play reserves this year. Haven’t played since ‘04 and it’s bloody hard getting fit again.

All in all, I don’t have a volleyball-free day in the week anymore. I’m getting the weird cabin fever again. the feeling of dullness and indolence in between matches and trainings. getting home late, eating bad food and waking up tired. and then in 6 months it’s all over as everyone’s last indoor focus switches to Melbourne (what on earth is this talk of holding it elsewhere?)

Anyway, before I go, have to say a big goodbye to my clubmate/housemate/ best mate, Jono “Funky” Dragt. With truth being stranger than fiction, he’s running away to join the circus. well, not quite. He’s been offered a job as a flying trapeze performer for Club Med in Phuket (which I’ve since learned does not rhyme with “Nantucket”). It’s a big change from his job as an engineer, but as someone who makes cartoons for a living, I’m really not qualified to tell him to make sensible professional choices. after all, life’s short, so why spend any of it doing something you hate.

See you round

More on setting the serve

 Trav responds to Eldo’s observations here. Interestingly, since an experienced player in Brad Saindon with good setting hands was unable to finger-pass serves on a women’s height net, what should we be teaching junior boys? Many junior boys competitions play on women’s height nets or lower, and they’re likelier to have smaller hands…

——————————-

Travis Moran

I would not necessarily profess to have much knowledge of women’s volleyball!

Eldo is likely to be somewhat correct in his approach to girls and float serves.

Generally, i think men struggle to pass the style of float serve that (some) women possess. However, i’m not sure what eldo is driving at about being a setter and how (by implication) having that helps reception.

Eldo on “Setting the Serve”

 Anecdotes like these are great!

——————-

Eldo 

Guys can set the serve much better because of the size of their hands. Brad Saindon the USA coach who took the Aussie girls to the Sydney Olympics tried it for a couple of months with little success. Brad who was a top level setter was challenged by me to set the girls serves himself and found he could not do it.

The net was too low and the ball travelled too flat. Couple that with the average size of girls hands and you have a problem.

Of course setting free balls. Now that is another story.

Travis Moran on “Setting the Serve”

I got this response from Travis Moran on my post on setting the serve. Travis was a member of both VTAM and TABV. His career culminated in playing as the Australian Mens team’s libero at the Athens Olympics.

Extract from original post:

I’ve respected Sue [Dansie] for a long time as the ultimate authority on all things Volleyball so I asked her if girls struggled finger passing a serve more than boys did because their hands weren’t as big or strong. Her answer was simply that no one should receive a ball on their fingers.

She said that on reception, players should stand far enough to let any ball
above their chest go out.

Travis’s response

- with respect, disagree in a major way.
- with respect, that is a very much a 1990’s approach to vball
- overuse can lead to deficiency in forearm skill
- float serve especially is a very good time to use hands. Definitely on good deep float serves

—————————————–

Travis made some valid points, and as someone who received plenty of serves at the highest level he’d have a pretty good idea of what makes good passing technique. Indoor volleyball will never go back to the days when people exclusively forearm passed the serve, but there’s something undeniably refined about it in a vintage kind of a way. It may be a 1990s approach (or even more outdated), but nostalgia ain’t always a bad thing.

* * *

I first heard of Travis when some of my Norwood clubmates from Rostrevor talked about this freak of a player in their open honours team who was just 14. While in high school, he played with maturity well beyond his age and dominated every competition he played in including state league and AVL. No doubt he learnt a lot from his coach Glen Urbani, who deserves a notable mention for putting 5 players into the national team from an exceptionally small school programme. So it was only a matter of time before Travis got offered an AIS scholarship.

I was lucky enough to play U21s with him in my last year. He and Andy Earl flew back from an international tournament to join us on the third day. Although jet lagged, they managed to help us get over the line in wining the gold medal in a memorable 5 set final against the Vics. A couple of years later I was surprised to see Travis as Australia’s libero at the Athens Olympics. It was hard to shake the memory of him being such a terrifying hitter. But in reality, Travis only spent 4 months of his international career as a libero.

I haven’t seen him play for a while, which is a pity because he was great to watch. He’s involved more in coaching these days at various levels, where his experience is nothing short of invaluable.

Mikasa Gold Ball Tournament - In Heathfield for the Heatwave

As an agnostic/buddhist, I can’t help but think that if there is a God, then s/he really must hate the city of churches, because this heatwave [in March?????] has gone on longer than it is tasteful.

Willunga’s annual Beach Family Day (to be held on the Sunday) was cancelled due to “Unpredictable Weather”. Although the news media kept on talking about it, Princi assures me that the fires were always under control. Tea Tree Gully’s Volleyball Association’s anniversary BBQ/party complete with fun and bouncy castles (also to be held on the Sunday) was also cancelled.

But before I could find something idyllic to do, Paul [Finn] gave me a ring to see if I could fill in for the team Esther [Finn] usually coaches as she had to get to U19 training, at a new Tournament up at the new Heathfield Gym. I’ve got a pretty short attention span, so besides taking in the location and times, i didn’t pay too much attention to what Paul was saying.

The Mikasa Gold Ball Tournament was a lot of fun. For U15s, it serves as a good warm-up for the National U15 tournament held later in Albury-Wodonga. Besides the 5 Heathfield teams going up there, Hawks fielded 2 teams and Unley 1. Games only went for 30 minutes, which was a good idea with it being so hot.

We had two teams made up of primary school-aged kids I had never seen before bar 1 or 2, so it’s good that we’re still getting kids come through at a young age. I took the boys and i think by their 5th games they were struggling a bit. Young teams usually peak in the middle of a tournament and then drop off. I find their best game is usually their 3rd or 4th game. Although i didn’t know most of the kids well, they were all the younger siblings of kids I’ve coached - with an exception being a new kid who was an only child.

Eldo mentioned this was the first time he didn’t had to travel to go to a tournament. He hopes that more teams will come in the next few years, and that the matches will go for longer. Janice Scott organised most of it and it was a good event at such late notice. She and her husband Stuart were involved with running the Riverland Open for years up in Renmark which I have a lot of fond memories of going to (I think it’s a pity it died in the arse after they moved to Adelaide).

The gym’s a pretty good venue. Whereas the Brighton gym stands as a beautiful monument for exclusive volleyball use (3 taraflex courts with no other line-markings!), the Heathfield gym has been built as a multipurpose centre. The size of both these stadiums will make them great venues for international and national events.

After 10 days, the heat doesn’t seem to be leaving us anytime soon. Maybe God just doesn’t like volleyballers. After all, we seem to be planning too many things on Sundays!

[N.B. maybe not too bad at Brighton. They have the sea breeze and their gym has awesome air-conditioning]