My Mistake, Wrong Numbers & Wrong Portfolio

I should point out before someone sues me that I made some incorrect observations in my post regarding professional volleyball regarding women’s participation figures.

1. “What on earth do coaches tell the thousands of junior girls they coach (which at my last count outnumbered junior boys 2.5 to 1 in SA) about what they can hope to achieve?”

Actually, those numbers are probably only relevant to my own club’s junior programme, which last year fielded 7 girls teams and only 2 boys teams.

According to the Volleyball SA Junior League draw, the 2007 season had 44 girls teams and 27 boys teams. Clearly my estimates were exaggerated, however the fact remain, more girls play Volleyball than boys in SA at least.

According to the 2007 AVSC tournament guide, 2006 saw 198 girls teams compete compares to 179 boys teams. You’d have to check the AVF or state associations for better participation figures

2. “And if you’re pissed off like me and want to see the VTAW restored, write to the minister for sport Stephen Conroy and let Canberra know. If you can’t get something done in a populist government like this one, well when can ya?”

Well, as it turns out Kate Ellis is the minister for sport. I just assumed it was Stephen Conroy since he was appointed Minister for Communications, IT and the Arts which included the sports portfolio until recently [Big thanks to my friend and old sparring partner at Austral, Tim Riley for pointing that out]. According to the DCITA website:

“As a result of the election of a new Australian Government and the changes to the administrative arrangements that took effect on 3 December 2007, the sport programs and policies listed here transferred from the former Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts to the Department of Health and Ageing, which is currently updating its site to reflect the new government’s policies, programs and priorities.”

Good thing too, since the increased participation from girls seems quite pronounced in SA, where Kate Ellis is based as the Member for the seat of Adelaide.

On a further note, I’ve found a couple of awesome blogsites with great stats on representative volleyball at th national and international level.

• Australian Volleyball Team Archive
• Australian Volleyball Junior Championships History

There are some great contributors to these resources who were actually involved with these teams providing information. It’s a great example of how web 2.0 is helping to build our volleyball community. These records are never perfect so I urge you to take a look and help out where you think there’s a mistake. Like Wikipedia, these resources get better as more people contribute in making sure the information is as accurate and comprehensive as it can be! Have a happy new year!

Haileybury, aggressive recruiting & the burden of volleyball parents

At AVSC this year, Haileybury came out of nowhere. I literally had never noticed them before at the tournament. I spoke to one of their Open Honours players who used to go to Eltham while we were watching a game on the show court, and spotted a former Upwey player I had coached against playing against our U17 div 1 girls. So, I figured this must be a Victorian school, which made it all the much more peculiar, since you don’t just qualify for the Victorian honours spots out of “nowhere” with established schools like Upwey, Eumemmerring, Eltham, Luther, Wonthaggi, Monbulk etc all out there.

So I googled “Haileybury Volleyball” and got some interesting results. The top two results were Melbourne Age articles, which I’m sure any Victorian volleyballer reading out there would be familiar with:

• “School accused of rough play on young athletes”
• “Church to probe poaching scandal”
• “Winner takes the ball”

When google gives you these kinds of news articles ahead of the school’s official website, you can only imagine what kind of day Haileybury’s publicist would have been having during all this! [N.B. visit this blog to find out how to improve your google listing at no expense!]

It was all news to me, but Haileybury had been accused of poaching a substantial number of volleyball players to populate a new campus. According to the articles, it wasn’t just volleyball players they were attracting, but up to 200 scholarships to new students that were reportedly being advertised widely. I guess where the volleyball aspect became visible in all this was how a whole year 10 Eumemmerring team was allegedly lured over!

I’m not going to make any judgement calls on all this, since I’m not well informed of the facts, and know nothing beyond my cursory google search. [Besides, as a South Australian, I know better than to prod my nose into the parochial affairs of my neighbours to the east]. But this makes me think about 2 big issues in volleyball: “poaching”, and the price that parents pay for their children’s volleyball careers.

Poaching

I can say that as a development coach, poaching really hurts. Anyone who knows me, and my club, Henley hawks will understand why. In the short years I played at my club, we lost 4 players we substantially invested in, to rival clubs – 2 of whom are currently in VTAM. As a development coach I’ve lost plenty of players too. The very first player I coached who now plays semi-professionally in Europe ended up going to another club. Although it was bad at the time, we patched things up and remain close. In the end I was just pissed off that he didn’t tell me before I found out from everyone else. I also lost 4 players from a junior boys premiership team I had coached over three years – half the bloody team!

Poaching can be cruel. It can be like cutting off a club or programme at the knees. You do all this work and then some shrewd recruiting from a rival just takes it all away overnight. At Hawks, we needed those juniors. We had wiped the slate clean with our juniors, and had nothing but a couple of teams made up of kids barely out of primary school. We had no players in between them and an aging senior group.

The people who ran the club weren’t going to poach as an alternative. If you’re running a club, ALWAYS keep a close eye on the club out there that has an unsuccessful or non-existent juniors programme coupled with an aging playing group. Hawks was really at the crossroads. We had to shepherd these kids up the ranks. The succession plan became my obsession for a number of years and I became as vigilant as a gamekeeper warding off the poachers I knew were out there. It was a stressful time, and I doubt a lot of the people there now fully appreciate just how dire things were. Thankfully things are much better now.

I must confess with great shame that I was once guilty of poaching. There was a player I wanted to recruit from another club to bolster our junior boys group and I was less than passive in luring him over. It didn’t go ahead, and my club president stepped in before it became too embarrassing. I patched it up with the president of the player’s club, but it remains a personal blemish for me on my coaching career and life.

Poaching became a real problem in SA, and because of it, the organising body for state league introduced penalties clubs could impose on players that wanted to move unjustly – transfer fees, repayment of outstanding fees, players could even be banned from competition in extreme cases. And so my mentors at the club had instructed me that if players from other clubs got in touch with me because they weren’t happy with their club and wanted to move, I was to remain neutral and passive and let them go about the process. They were very wise in telling me this and I was foolish to not follow it that one time.

I lost a lot of players I worked hard on for years. Sometimes they left my club. Other times they were players I worked a lot with at the schools I coached for who decided to go to other clubs. 2 of the players in Brighton’s champion Open Honours Boys team were kids I lost in that premiership team at Hawks. We could have really used them at the club too. It used to cut me every time.

Over time, I got over it. People are free to pursue their own paths in life. It sucks that you might feel a sense of disloyalty, but what can you do? Only you can follow what you believe is right. You can’t impose it on other people. And so despite having my own standards of honour and loyalty, I could no longer expect the same from others. And in time i was able to accept it without being begrudging about it. After all, just because I loved my club and felt indebted to it, didn’t mean anyone else had to, and i had no right to make anyone feel bad about it.

The burden of being a volleyball parent

Some of the best people I’ve had the opportunity to meet in volleyball are the parents and families of the kids I coach. Parents give so much to their kids and the sport. Hawks is a family club, and so many of these families have been a big part of my life over the years and I’ve been lucky they’ve made me a part of theirs.

I might be preaching to the choir here, but parents have to spend shirtloads of time and money on their children’s sporting careers. There are club fees, trips to the schools cup, state trips, obscure tournaments, overseas trips if they make the national teams, injuries and operations, doctors and specialists, uniforms, shoes for feet that keep growing, petrol for long drives… the list goes on. We also shouldn’t forget that we now have beach volleyball, which ensures that this goes on all year round! If you’re a player, try adding up how much your parents spent on you over the years and make sure you buy them a nice house in their old age.

Volleyball can be real expensive. It’s not like [Australian Rules] Football, where the AFL makes so much money that it can trickle it down to the grass roots and make participation all the more affordable. So why do they do it? There’s no easy answer, and no single answer.

The dream

Some do it because they share their children’s dreams of making it in the big time. While i was watching the beach volleyball yesterday, I spoke to a parent at the club who had 2 kids attend the Bendigo camp after AVSC. Both made it into the top 20s. The whole family was overjoyed. I told him how it never ceases to impress me how much he and many of the other parents out there spend on their children’s careers. He just smiled and said that when you can see that they can really make it, it just makes it all worthwhile. I’ve known the parents of about 4 young players who have been the recipients of AIS scholarships, and I can say that there is this enormous outpouring of relief that comes when they know they’re not under pressure to find the money for 2 overseas trips a year anymore. There’s a lot of joy too. But there’s definitely relief.

Keeping out of trouble

Others know their kids won’t make the national team, but they know that when their kids are at games and trainings, they’re not out there getting into trouble. I’ve seen a lot of troubled kids stay out of trouble because of sport. Sadly, I’ve seen enough that get into trouble when they stop. There was a very troubled kid that Funky and I coached over the years that many people said the club should have thrown out on numerous occasions. Sadly the decision was finally taken away from us when he broke a court ordered curfew and ended up in juvenile detention.

Metaphysics

For some parents, they just feel that sport teaches their kids valuable life skills. My folks were definitely in that boat. I had little propensity to get into any real trouble and was pitifully talentless that I would never really amount to much as any sort of athlete.

The Payoff

A couple of days ago I wrote about the professional opportunities you can now have in volleyball. Well, obviously benefits can also exist beyond the professional sphere. For everything that parents put in, there can be more tangible benefits than just a professional career.

A scholarship to a private high school would seem to be an example of this in the case of Haileybury. The ethics can be argued till the cows come home, but I bet that there’s at least one parent out there who has already spent a shirtload on their kid’s career who would find an affordable private education quite attractive and justified. You can’t blame a parent’s motivation in doing what they can to give their kids the best opportunities in life with what they got.

Special Interest Volleyball

In SA, we don’t really have academically selective public high schools anymore [like Melbourne High, MacRobertson, Sydney High, Baulkham Hills], so you just have to hope your live in the zone of one of the better public schools. Easier said than done, since they tend to be in the more expensive areas. Outside of the eastern suburbs, the best public school could quite possibly be Brighton Secondary, and lo and behold, they have a Special Interest Volleyball (SIV) programme that gives kids outside the zone the chance to enrol there! [N.B. Brighton Secondary also has an elite music programme open to kids outside their zone that pre-dates SIV. Ironically, it was how my sister got to go there before SIV came in]

Henley Hawks is one of the few clubs that has a juniors programme that extends to kids in primary schools. We’ve become a place where primary school aged kids come to get skilled up in volleyball so they can get into the Brighton’s SIV programme, and in turn Brighton Secondary School. Some are in the zone, some aren’t. Not all our juniors play for us just to get into Brighton. Like my parents who tutored me to do well in the private school scholarship exams, I now tutor kids in volleyball so they can get into Brighton SIV.

After they get in, the future’s uncertain. Some stay with us, and some leave us for Brighton’s junior Holdfast Shores club to play with their new school friends. And some are lured to play for other clubs that used to have stronger affiliations with Brighton, but still have a strong influence there. It’s always bit of a worrying time for the club. It’s usually “all in or all out” for the players who have to make the choice. Like Eumemmerring, we could lose an entire team or keep an entire team.

It’s not cheap for parents to send kids to our club, or any club for that matter, so I can understand their perspective when they feel that their obligations to the club end when accounts are settled. Clubs don’t make much money out of any of this [I was the treasurer for 3 years, so I know!], so I can understand how clubs would expect that the return they get for developing players is more than just monetary.

So what’s more important: The debt of honour you owe to the individuals and their institutions who give to you things that they receive little in return for, and have profound yet minimal intrinsic value? Or, getting the best opportunities you can for your kids out there given that you spend so much on them already and you don’t always have all the money in the world to make the other choice?

As a development coach and hardline zealot of a club that was in a lot of trouble, the answer used to be very simple. But I don’t have the answers anymore. And with my Buddhist/Taoist leanings these days, I no longer have the desire to find them.

But what I do know is that for all our sakes, volleyball needs to be getting in The Age for all the right reasons. Let’s all hope that we get better search results next time we google a school’s volleyball programme that we’re curious about.

Beach

We’re now right in the middle of the Australian beach volleyball season. I’ve never been involved with beach volleyball so it’s a welcome break for me. For many players though, it’s literally like trading in the stadium for the sand for a few months. Not to mention their families, who support their kids by following them out into the severe heat and beach destinations all over the country.

I could never really get into beach volleyball. My father got me into volleyball. He played a lot in his late teens and twenties in France during the 70s where it was technical, cold and ascetically (and aesthetically) unfashionable. Volleyball was essentially daggy and so was dad – the sport of engineers, academics and those who liked sport that was more cerebral than physical. And that was how I was brought up to love the sport, and so any glamorous interpretations of the sport have never warmed to me.

I also HATE beaches (even now that I’ve taken up surfing I don’t stick around long after getting out of the water). I hate having the environment as an opponent – having the ground beneath me shift, the wind having input on where my serve goes, and not being able to tell which way I’m facing when looking up at the clear sky to set the ball.

But beach volleyball is undeniably popular in Australia with the Olympic successes. It’s quite big in Adelaide with the national beach programme based here as well as at my volleyball club, Henley Hawks which is based near the beach. So I just have to learn to live with it. So important is the development of both beach and indoor, that SASI now has components of both disciplines in its programmes.

My favourite aspect of [indoor] volleyball is how setters and blockers try to outdo each other with multiple hitters, blocking systems and different paced attacks. You don’t really get that in beach volleyball. I always thought indoor volleyball was more team focused and beach was more individual focused (although you find plenty of hedonistic players on indoor teams!).

I am the first to admit though that playing beach volleyball definitely makes you a better player. With only two players on each team, everyone is involved in pretty much every rally forcing them to play the ball plenty of times. I’ve seen this at my club, with a lot of our juniors playing beach in the off-season and coming back a lot stronger. The only problem is I think beach can bring back some bad habits – suspect setting actions, high platform passing with less emphasis on getting low and behind the ball, tendencies to tip and roll the ball which doesn’t work against 6-defenders etc.

I used to joke that beach volleyball was “WWF Volleyball” – like wrestling it had a credible ancestor that was a traditional sport, but like WWF wrestling it was full of spandex, glamour and not much substance.

I was wrong however in this assessment and there’s a lot more skill and tactics involved. It forces players to fix problems themselves instead of looking to the coach for all the answers. They have no choice but to learn self-awareness and how to exercise self control, because no one is going to tell them to “snap out of it” if they’re in a lousy mood.

This weekend is a big junior tournament down at Glenelg beach, where early next year they will be hosting the first world tour event. It’s a big deal (the world tour event, not the junior tournament). I’ll be out watching the junior tournament to lend my unconditional support to the many fine kids I’ve had the privilege to coach, and pay my respects to the discipline that has blessed me with great players. It’s funny, but some of the best players I’ve coached, like Chris McHugh are now great beach players. I still don’t get it though, and I’ll probably never like it.

Phill DeSalvo (and the evolution of Aussie Volleyball)

Phill | Hey mate,

I enjoyed reading a bit about your teams at school cup. It’s a great tournament and I hope that over everything you had a fun week.

I was just having a look at what you had to say about the panic plays… I think the reason that we ended up taking Korea at world cup in the 5th (29-27) was the fact that we did not have a panic play. I think this came down to the fact that we played so many games during the year (60 national team matches plus some people up to another 25 with their european club). Many of these games went to 5 sets and for me now at 15-15 in the fifth it feels a lot like 0-0 in the 1st…

I am going to start giving some insight into players palying over seas here in Europe on my blog so if any of your youngsters want to know anything about playing pro or maybe finding out some things about the guys that play national team then tell them to jump over to my site. I am going to get started on it over the next couple of weeks, see how it goes and take it from there.

take it easy mate
phill

—————————

Not a lot of people read my blog, but I was fortunate that one of them was Phill DeSalvo, current Libero for the Australian team (although I’m sure he gets plenty of competition for the spot from Aden Tutton). Phill is the son of Victorian Volleyball legend Allan Desalvo. I first saw Phill play in Victoria at national juniors. His brother, Matt was the starting setter for a fierce U21 team that thumped us and took the gold. I think Phill was more of a passer-hitter than setter, although i don’t doubt he was a good setter too.

He went to Wonthaggi and in 2002 played in one of my favourite teams I’ve seen there in Open Honours Boys. David Jones played in that team, but they didn’t have a lot of height, or much on the bench. They worked their arses off and won off really long rallies. In the end they finished with a Bronze medal, behind a Stuart Maycock led Heathfield and a Nathan Roberts led Brighton. I’m pretty sure Phill’s performances built a strong case for his selection into the national programme, because it wasn’t long after, i started noticing his name on the AIS/VTAM lineups.

Phill now also plays for Czech club CZU Praha with fellow Aussies Andy Hunter (who was one of my first coaches in junior volleyball) and Andy Earl (who I played U21s with a few years back). You can read all about his experiences on his blog, which is a great read and has a lot of great insight for anyone looking to follow that path.

Phill’s experience says a lot about just how far Australia has come in the last few years in terms of competitiveness in international volleyball, and just how many more opportunities there are now for talented players. But, maybe it’s worth remembering how far we’ve come.

The Stone Age of Australian Volleyball

It’s hard to imagine just how bad volleyball was here but my dad told me a great anecdote once. My father lived in France for a good 15 years from the late 60s to early 80s, and played volleyball there in div 2 or something. He said he once saw an exhibition game between France and Australia. While the professional French warmed up in pairs, the Aussies seemed to be standing in a circle knocking 1 solitary ball back and forth. It was real social-standard stuff not even fit to be played in a nudist colony. But at least it told him that there was some form of volleyball here which I’m sure made the choice to move here shortly after all the much easier.

Ethnic based clubs

It’s hard to tell how volleyball came here. Much of this is now in the realm of the mythical. Someone told be once Mark and Alexis Lebedew’s dad brought it over. I know a lot of it in SA came from the Eastern European migrants that settled here who formed some of the first clubs like USC (Ukrainian Social/Sports Club) Lion, Polonia and Estonia.

The “All-stars”

By the 80s things were starting to look a lot better and we had some sort of national programme and organising body. I once coached ex-Australian setter/captain Raoul Tuul’s nephew and he gave me this great tape of a 1989 match between the “Australia All Stars” and a Japanese club team.

It was a series of 6 exhibition matches played in each state to promote the game (If anyone has ANY of these matches, PLEASE let me know!). The Aussies were called the “all-stars” because they had bit of a weird line-up. Their starting included Craig Buck, 6′9 middle for the 1984 & 1988 Olympic gold medal winning USA teams. I heard a rumour once that he’d originally come to Australia to play beach with Steve Tutton (again, this now falls into the realm of the mythical and is purely speculation).

The team also included Raoul Tuul (i’ll see if I can youtube this footage of him setting a quick from his knees facing the wrong way. It’s hilarious!), the Tuttons, a rookie Mike Reu with mullet and young Eddie Vukosa. they won the game i had on tape in 5 sets, but they also lost a few. our best weren’t good enough to beat a club team from japan.

Sydney and Beyond

I think volleyball started to get a lot better with the buildup to the olympics. The government spent a shirtload on getting the teams up to scratch and the VTAM and VTAW expanded significantly. they got a great coach in Canadian Stelio DeRocco, and we were seeing more and more players play for clubs overseas. The men beat Spain and Egypt, and made it to the quarter finals. They were beaten by a #1 ranked Italy but took a set off them. It was a quantum leap from where we had come from, but the country was too absorbed in teenage swimming sensations, the beach gold medal, water polo and obscure cycling events to truly appreciate (or even notice) the achievement.

I thought with the Olympics gone, public enthusiasm would die down along with funding and the sport would go down the tubes. But the men kept getting stronger. Former Argentinian international and silver medallist Jon Uriarte was now coach, and they qualified for the 2002 world championships (which i don’t think they had done before). They were silver medallists in 2001 and 2002 at the Asian championships, losing out to Korea. Finally, they made the 2004 Athens Olympics through the Asian qualifier. They did it on their own! I remember reading an article in the Australian about it. I think a lot of Asian countries were pissed off because Australia had qualified as the “Asian” country. Just splendid.

Unfortunately, the women didn’t go too well and some time not so long ago VTAW got shut down. Maybe they figured it was better for them to just put money into the beach programme and find the next Pottharsts and Cooks. I didn’t like that much. As far as I can remember, Volleyball has always been a very equal sport locally and internationally. Men’s and women’s volleyball have truly equal status and profile. They have the same international competitions (world league/Grand prix, World Champs, World Cups, Olympics, Grand Masters etc). South Australian clubs are required to have both a men’s and women’s team. There aren’t a lot of other sports with volleyball’s sort of participation numbers that can say they’re this equal. Women’s Soccer and Basketball doesn’t get nearly as much respect as their male counterparts.

The thought that they would cut the national women’s programme was just absurd. Obviously, there’s probably some rhetoric about costs and some worthier place the money got put to, but it still sucks. What on earth do coaches tell the thousands of junior girls they coach (which at my last count outnumbered junior boys 2.5 to 1 in SA) about what they can hope to achieve? [NB, exaggerated here. Read my post on 31/12/2007 for the corrections].

These days

You take a read of Phill’s blog and you can see how great it can be now. Phill is one of the many Aussies out there making a living out of playing volleyball (Allan DeSalvo’s blog seems to be the nexus for all the comings and goings of these guys). And it’s not just the guys and girls on the national teams. There are other like Brad Tutton, Nik West and Jonathan Hague and Andy Hunter who have all had opportunities. Thankfully, even without a national programme, we’re seeing women’s players out there too like Lauren Bertolacci playing overseas. You might not earn that much, but to get paid to do what you love and get given maybe a car or apartment and to see the world, it’s certainly not bad!

I remember as a kid hearing from my dad how Tania Gooley got into the University of New Mexico and thinking it was pretty remarkable. Seeing people getting scholarships into the American colleges is a lot more common now. You can now get a free overseas education from being good at volleyball! beats an inflated HECS debt if you ask me.

Who would have thought any of this would be possible just 10 years ago? It used to be hard to justify to parents why their kids should play volleyball instead of (Australian Rules) Football or Netball, but the evidence is compelling now. I love and respect both of these sports, but can either of these sports get you a college education? can they give you a career based overseas? will they let you see more of the world than the average end-of-year pissup in Bali? Can you wear the green and gold playing a game that makes sense to both teams? Well, maybe netball can do some of these things, but the question with volleyball should now be why not?

I guess to cap it off, it was nice to hear from Phill that the Aussies beat Korea 29-27 in the 5th set of their game at the World Cup. I remember how excited we all got when they lost to Korea in 2001 and 2002 to win silver at the Asian Championships just a few years ago (we were overjoyed in SA. Adam Maskell was the Libero and Andy Earl was a starter!). Now we can beat them. And Japan. It wasn’t even that long ago that we couldn’t even beat one of their club teams! These days the Australian Men are formidable. They qualified into the World Cup as the Asian continental champions, and fingers crossed, they’ll do the same to get to Beijing. So get on board and support them!

And if you’re pissed off like me and want to see the VTAW restored, write to the minister for sport Stephen Conroy and let Canberra know. If you can’t get something done in a populist government like this one, well when can ya?

[NB. wrong minister. see here for the correct minister]

Top 10 Signs you’ve been coaching too long

1. You’ve tried everything from the vending machines at the stadium. Twice.
2. Your players aren’t sure if you ever played volleyball
3. You don’t need to draw a pie diagram to work out the rotations
4. You’re bad with names
5. You know every trick to get out of putting up and taking down the net
6. You know where to find ice. Anywhere.
7. Kids you remember coaching invite you to their weddings
8. You keep a bag of balls in the boot of your car
9. You have a whistle on your keyring (or you’ve just read that and thought it wasn’t such a bad idea)
10. Your favourite CD is the beep test

Games within a game

Frank Solomona | huttrapids.wordpress.com |

Hey Hugh, I reckon you have a niche with your web-log. You have a lot of thoughts which is great (I’m looking forward to reading more). I think a reward to coaching is definitely helping gifted athletes excel in Volleyball. I find kids enjoy the sport, but when they are not taught proper fundamentals and techniques they must think to themselves, I have more fun playing netball, rugby or something else. But volleyball has a factor that & its why people like it. I think its beacause of the dueling (a point made by Coach Peter Nonnenbroich) the fact of players challenging an opponent with games with in the game of Volleyball. Like serve-recieve, server versus all the passer’s, spiker vs blockers, setter vs blockers and so on. But I have seen players enjoyment level explode when they start to understand and enjoy the new techniques of getting around court or making passes & so forth. Cheers Frank

Frank makes a good point. The games within the game are definitely what makes volleyball interesting, since a team doesn’t necessarily have to do any skill better than the other team to win. For example, a team doesn’t need to hit better than the other team to win; they just need to hit better than the other team blocks and covers. The hitting warmup is never a conclusive indicator of who is a better team, and as coach’s we’ve all lost to scrappier teams.

As a coach I take great delight in seeing my team “beat the odds” by winning the improbable duels – like winning a rally after conceding a free ball. Sometimes I’ve had to explain to players how they’ve turned the tables in a rally and tell then to celebrate it. At the School’s Cup this year, one of the setters in our yr 8 U14 div 1 girls team blocked out a spiker who was hitting an overpass. It’s hard to win a duel like that with the ball coming from behind you, and she wasn’t aware that she had won a point that was practically lost. Maybe it’s better not to tell them. As the Tao says, that which is perfect is not aware it is.

I try to spend at least 1/3 of training on exercises that improve my team’s percentages in any dueling situation. I think I got that proportion from Eldo when he took me for my Level 1 coaching course and it’s always stuck. Wash drills are most commonly used for this, where exercises are used to address a specific game situation and the team is required to make a specific execution to score a point – just getting the outcome is not good enough and usually results in a “wash”, where neither point is lost nor won. When I played state U21s, we must have spent hours playing these tedious backrow hitting games. You could only win with a clean kill that didn’t clip the net. It made ball control a lot better. If anyone knows any other good wash drills let me know, because the standard set can be a bit boring.

The more specific the criteria of execution the better. They have to win the exercise, not merely “not lose” it. Eldo also says the drills should be set so they can complete it 40-70% of the time. I like to force my team to take risks in my drills. Penalties exist if they fail, and penalties exist if they play like chicken shit. I want them to want to take risks in games even though they know there are consequences.

Truncating the game through these sorts of exercises are far more effective than playing games. The players get more repetition and you can really zone in on their weaknesses. They’ll always prefer to have games, but I’ve often ditched the usual scratch match at the end of the training to accommodate more practice in these areas. A scratch match is a reward, not a means to improvement. I remember there were a few years when Brighton teams were lamentably bad, and the students who also played for Henley said all they did in their “lessons” was play scratch matches and king of the court.

I’m anal about execution. I just like it when things “work” the way they ought to. It’s not just about winning the rally, but how you win it. What can I say, i like Plato’s ideas about Ideal Forms and think it extends to everything (Plato’s ideas in The Republic are a bit Confucian actually). My players rarely my level of enthusiasm for this. Heathfield teams always have the best execution in just about every area.

Aftermath

Closing Ceremony

The closing ceremony was long as always. They have to move all the winners into the stadium. Then they present the MVP awards for each division. Then they present the Div 2 medals, then the Div 1 medals, and finally the Honours medals. There are like 30 events! we were going to leave as soon as our teams got their medals. The plan was to leave after we got our medals – we didn’t have honours teams so there wasn’t much point sticking around.

Siv and I have been on Adelaide High trips where without winning a medal or any awards, we’ve decided to leave early after our last matches. I didn’t get to see a closing ceremony until about 4 years into going to the cup.

Being a bit bored i counted the amount of medal winning recipients being ushered into the hall by the officials who i coached at some point or another. There were Lewis Dalby and Ben Leaver, the Brighton OHB setters I had coached for three years with Chris McHugh and Liam Finn in a juniors team at hawks. There were about 4 girls in an U17 honours brighton team i coached a couple of years back and about 5 year 8 girls including emma McEwen in a Brighton U15 honours team i had coached at the SA open this year for Hawks. In total i got up to 27.

There were loud cheers for our two girls teams when they walked in and got their medals. We also won 3 MVPs – Sarah Gould (U17 div 2), CJ (U15 div 2 girls) and Amy Hoffman (U17 Div 1 Girls). Willunga also won the banner competition with a great painting of the Futurama characters playing beach volleyball. They’ve won this competition before i think [I love seeing Heathfield's banner. it's the same one they have every year. they just add on the extra titles they've won the previous year. The asceticism of it all just says quitely to everyone they're here to play and win. everything else is just a distraction]. Chris Little and Steph were also on their way to bendigo, so with two kids at national camp, 3 MVPs and 2 Gold Medals it was easily Willunga’s most successful year yet.

[Our MVPs. L-to-R: CJ Mejica, Sarah Gould & Amy Hoffman. Photos Courtesy of Spike Magazine]

Pleasant Surprise

As we walked out to take our annual big photo outside the statues, Chris put his arm around me and said that the open boys were going to present me my coach’s gift at assembly. he said it was going to be big (the assembly i think), and that he wasn’t going to let me get away from coaching Willunga that easy. Heaven knows why, the three teams that played in finals today were the ones I had the LEAST to do with in training this year! Nevertheless, I was feeling good, and Princi and Chris have always been very hard to say no to. I’m usually pretty down round this time of the week.

As the Open Girls came by, Gianni stopped and said they thought i deserved something and handed me a gold medal – they had picked up an extra one at the ceremony. I hadn’t joined them in the ceremony since i wasn’t their coach at the tournament and didn’t really have any formal responsibilities as their assistant, only really being there for moral support. What they did was totally unexpected and I was really touched. i’d been chasing a medal for so long, but i never thought i’d win one. i guess i had given up since i had decided to be more of a trainer, and not take a team as coach at the tournament. Strangely, i had set out to win a medal, but by the time i got one i had learned the journey was about something else entirely.

The girls also gave me a mini-volleyball they had signed. They thanked me for the trainings, and Kate thanked me for helping her over the years. Casey thanked me for “the dish” – the nickname i used for the switch play when the setter was running in from 5. She had made it work really well for them, getting Megan out there and siding out nearly straight away each time. Overall they were just grateful for everything. I was really touched and didn’t expect any of these things at all.

The bus trip was quiet and everyone got a bit of sleep. We got in at about 6am and my dad came to pick me and Siv up. Siv’s Adelaide High coach had offered her a job to coach next year, which she accepted. Obviously the coach was impressed with Siv’s work with Willunga. Princi and Griffo both said they were going to talk to me about next year.

The End?

Later that afternoon i went to my work’s annual christmas BBQ at a co-worker’s house. I was tired and still hadn’t slept enough. the medal was still hanging from my neck. They have no idea what i did in the last week, just like the all the cups i’ve done in the last 6 years. they’ll never really understand. A lot of coaches are also teachers at the schools they coach or work in health/sport so it’s not really a stretch. But since I finished high school it’s been like living a double life. One that runs an animation business getting itself off the ground, and another that plays and coaches volleyball. I guess after this it’s just one life now.

But to tell you the truth, i really don’t know if this is the end. I said it would be, but i’ve said it before. usually i would have made plans by now but i havent. So I don’t know. and it doesn’t bother me. i guess that’s the big thing i’ve learnt this year.

Friday – Finals

I’ve never had a team that played in a medal game at the School’s cup, but that’s not to say i’ve never coached a medal game. I’ve always helped out, and sometimes a bit more than an “assistant” should. I gave Chris’s team a lot of direction and motivation in their bronze medal win a couple of years back and did a lot of the talking in the timeouts.

Coaches don’t win games

However, i’m a firm believer that coaches don’t win medals, players do. And in that particular game, Chris took over midway in the deciding set and grabbed the game by the scruff of the neck. Cav was getting worked out after we lost a rally in the tight set, but i wasn’t worried and i said to him “it’s time to step back and let leadership take over”. Those boys definitely learnt something in those last 10 rallies.

Protecting the coach

So my job today would be to support the coaches wherever and let them do what they did best. I have a lot of empathy for coaches, and i know how to not impose. Sometimes i might need to point something out, but it’s important to me to never hijack the game from them. At this point, there are a lot of the other staff who want the school to win the medal and might try to help by telling the coach what to do. But the best thing to do is to let them do their thing. So part of my job is to insulate the coach from these influences. don’t let anything turn into a circus that will distract them. All the coaches of finals teams have less volleyball coaching experience than me. I can see if they miss stuff, but if the team’s going well it’s best i shut up and let them keep going.

The match schedule today ended up being:

• 10:00 – Semi Final: Open Girls v, Te Aroha
• 11:00 – Semi Final: U15 Div 2 boys v. Heathdale
• 13:00 – Gold Medal Game: U17 div 1 girls v. Santa Sabina
• 14:00 – Bronze Medal Game: U15 div 2 boys v. Paralowie
• 15:00 – Gold Medal Game: Open Girls v. Great Lakes

My open boys had the red eye duty at 8 followed by the 9th place playoff against heathfield straight after. We lost, the scores were close but the numbers lie. We didn’t have Chris or Schubert and heathfield dropped to our level but were always in control. Then it was off to help the Open Girls.

Open Girls Semi

Gianni had it covered. We lost the first set. Te aroha put a big fight up and Megan was struggling to hit a winner – they kept getting everything up. i could see at some points she was losing confidence. The passing wasn’t helping the setter. In between points i just cheered them on and urged them to just keep on swinging. I think in the timeout i told megan that she had to keep attacking no matter what and to make sure that she never looked worried. As the best player she had to put on a face that would give her team confidence and her opponents fear.

Kate and Megan hit really well. Bonnie and Casey served really well. I could see Bonnie’s arm hurting in her eyes, but she kept a poker face. I remember simone taking a big hit to the body that went back over the net and bought them some time to get a replay from a ball on court. it’s those little things that help.

They came back and won the next two sets, and a wave of elation came over Bonnie, Becky and Simone. they had lost this semi for the last 2 years. Bonnie confessed later that she was a bit worried after they lost the first set that history would repeat itself. The girls played brilliantly and i started getting emotional, which is hard these days. They were now 8 women who shared a vision for what they wanted and how they were going to get there, and they were doing it.

U15 div 2 boys semi

I had to get to the boys game right after. kate had told me her brother mike’s ankle was a bit sore and that he’d be going easy. i found him and told him to tell his team to help him by making the pass go to the right spot and slow down. i told him they would do that for him because they know he’s going to set up the winner. Moon is really good at firing these boys up and has a great rapport with them. it’s great to watch. when coaches have rapports like this, i try to stay out and just let it take it’s course.

The boys were nervous. Josh, one of their best hitters was just having a bad game. The look on his face just said he didn’t want to be there. He was low on confidence and making plenty of panic plays. he was getting away with some of them, but unless he got himself into the game, it would eventually cost them. thankfully the other team had a bad start and we managed to win the first set quite comfortably.

I could tell we got a bit lucky with heathdale getting off to a bad start. i told Moon that it won’t be so easy with this one and we’d have to fight a bit more. If we played like we did the last set, it’d be a new game. the set was close and the lead kept changing. we were getting weaker as the set went on, just clinging to stay in and get in front from time to time. in the end we lost 26-24. i could feel the confidence ebbing away.
In the last few rallies we took Josh off to talk to him and get his confidence back for the decider, he looked shell shocked. Moon spoke to him a bit, and then he sat down next to me. I told him his team needed him and that he had to focus on getting back in the game. I told him to sit up straight, stick his chest out and shoulders back because right now he was not inspiring a lot of confidence. I’m conscious of how my players look at coaches. One part of my job in these matches is to sit impassive and remain unnerved. if the most experienced guy isn’t worried, then neither should they.

The boys just looked dispirited in the third set. we put josh on and he did some good things in the backcourt. dario had been playing pretty well all game and had stepped up. Michael was setting pretty well. But we trailed the whole set. nothing went our way. Moon used all his timeouts at the right time but there wasn’t much anyone could do. Moon had taken this team as far as it could go, and it was now up to them to do the rest. They couldn’t get there, and eventually heathdale ran over them 15-8.

The loss was very emotional. some started crying. the dream had been so real in their heads for so long that the loss had become traumatic. they had really believed in the dream. It’s an awful thing to go through. But to lose like this is just as important to win, because you learn the lesson on the other side of the coin. and that’s the important part. I told the boys to remember how this feels, and to ask themselves if they want to feel this way again.

it wasn’t the losing that hurt them so bad, but how they played and knowing they could have played better. some of them played like zombies. at the end of that hour or so, you’re either going to win, or you’re going to lose. either way you should do it proudly and in control of yourself. It was painful for me to watch but i know this experience will only make them grow as people. Truth is a relative thing, and deciding sets in games like this are living proof. Both teams were part of the same game, but the truths that were learned by those boys were different on either side of that net.

It’s difficult what they do now with semi’s and medal matches on the same day. the teams that lose the semi’s have to pick themselves up and try to win a bronze within a couple of hours. I’ve been fortunate to play in gold and silver medal teams, but to tell you the truth i’ve never won a Bronze medal. I have never lost the game to get into the gold and then come back to win the Bronze. i don’t know exactly how they feel. But i know someone who has.

I found Simone, Bonnie and Becky and asked them how they felt those times they lost that semi, and how they got themselves back up to win the bronze. they said the first set was always hard and they didn’t want to be there, and then it clicks that they can still win a medal, and that they don’t want to go home without a medal. at that point it clicks. they said it requires a mind shift to say that you’ve lost the gold and silver but you can still win a medal. Being ever so nurturing, Simone decided to go find them and talk to them. It was nice for them to do that and share with the boys their experience there and how they got back up. there a good example that eventually you can get there.

About Fear

I asked Gianni and Princi if i could talk to the their Girls teams a bit before their game. I was going to be brief. I often give the calming speeches, and the other coaches give the fire-up ones. you don’t want to tell them too much before a game, so i’m mindful that i make sure i don’t confuse them with what the coach wants to say to them.

I wanted to talk to them about fear and nervousness. The speech about regrets is one i have used before but i wanted to make a more positive one. As this is my last coaching assignment, it would be the last time I would talk to players. What i talked about was quite close to my heart and I was getting a bit emotional. These sort of ideas are what i’m about as a coach.

My mother used to work as a community health worker with drug users and told me that when people take drugs their fears are amplified and they hallucinate. What they found is that running away from these fears and hallucinations often causes harm. It’s always counterintuitive but best to remain calm and move towards that fear and work out what’s behind it. Similarly if you’re out in the wild and you come across a wild animal. As soon as you run away from it you’re in a bit of trouble. the best thing to do is stay calm. It’s always calmest in the eye of the hurricane.

Volleyball isn’t that much different. there are plenty of things we fear as players. As hitters we fear hitting the ball into the net or out. As setters we’re worried we’ll set the ball over the net or stuff up the quick attack. As passers, we’re worried we’ll overshoot the ball over the net. As blockers we’re afraid we’ll touch the net. they’re all fears that get amplified when we make an error or what we do doesn’t pull off the way we wanted. But the answer isn’t to play a soft roll shot, set the ball loose off the net, pass the ball behind the attack line or block with your hands away from the net. I told Megan that if they keep getting the ball up against her it won’t help her to hit softer. I told Casey, Bonnie, Kara, Emily and Nikki that it wouldn’t help their hitters to set the ball loose off the net, close to them or too high. Because none of these things will help you prevent the things you fear most – losing.

And so when you feel a hint of fear, you have to use all your courage and run at it and tackle it. You can’t stop swinging at the ball, setting the ball aggressively, or passing it close to the net. You can’t let the fear chase you away, you have to run towards it. And it takes courage to do all these things and you should never let anyone tell you otherwise. Fear is fear. It might look different from time to time but it’s still the same thing that prevents you achieving that vision you have for yourself.

Once you’ve made that decision to tackle your fear, it’s irrelevant whether or not you succeed or fail, because you’ve made a decision with your life that you’re not going to run the other way. And that’s the difference between living and dying.

I also told the Open Girls i was really proud of them, about how they have gone about this week and their commitment to achieving their goal. They have set a great example for the younger kids. I said to them it’s rare to find people who share your vision for something and how to go about getting it and they should treasure the last game, because you may never get to work with people like this again.

I think they responded ok.

U17 div 1 girls gold medal match v. Santa Sabina

[Photo Courtesy of Spike Magazine. Back Row: Emily, Nikki, Amy, Taylor. Front Row: Rachael, Chantel, Kara]

Princi and the girls were fired up. They took the first set quite comfortably. there was a lapsemidway, but they held on to win. The other team look tired, and Amy and Chantel were firing winners. Rachel wasn’t hitting at her best but was making a lot of smart plays that won us points. Jake, who had been taking stats for most of their games noticed Amy had won a lot of points of serve so we got her to start serving in the second set.By now, the courts were getting quite hot and sweaty, so I made sure that the water bottles were filled. there’s nothing more irritating for a coach in timeouts and between sets trying to talk to his players and having them scrounge around for their bottles so i pretty much just helped as a waterboy refilling bottles and getting to them quickly whenever a timeout was called.

Amy started serving the second set and we won 8 points in a row. But Santa Sabina caught up and they started to win a lot of points off their serve. our confidence with passing was waning. Princi called a time out and I asked them if anyone was afraid of the serve to which they all yelled out “no”. i asked them who was going to nail this serve, and they all yelled out “me”. their spirits were quite high. They managed to get some confidence back on the pass but we lost the set 21-25.

The game was going into a decider. i wasn’t wortried, since our girls were playing a lot better. although Santa Sabina had scored a lot of points, most of them weren’t through rallies, but serves. So long as we were confident we could pass, i felt we had the advantage. While Princi worked out the rotation i spoke to the girls. I just asked them what they feared, and they shouted “nothing” in unison. I asked them if they were afraid of those serves, and the chorus of no’s came back. they were ready to win.

Princi set the rotation up so that Amy would serve first again and she came through giving us a 5 point lead. we changed ends at about 8-2. At 10-3 they called a ball we played out in and there was a lot of confusion between the referees and coaches.

The referee wanted to award us the point. the linesman said it was out and Princi said she should just call a replay. he was getting fired up. I tried to calm him down and told him he should sit down. whatever the result, the girls were on a roll and shouldn’t get distracted by this. He angrily yelled that at least the referee should learn to do something right if she wasn’t sure, and that if his girls couldn’t win from that scoreline, they didn’t deserve it. While this was happening they all huddled and kept their focus.

We eventually got awarded the point and the game went on. Chantel and Amy were really on, with Chantel playing some beautiful shots i had never seen from her. Amy was just aggressive at the net and serve, and Rachel kept winning the smart points. I can’t remember much from here. Santa Sabina were really dispirited. the second to last point we won was a quick attack by chantel that was perfect – the best quick ball i’d seen them play. The play the other team didn’t want to block. they didn’t even jump on it.

They won the match point and the crowd exploded, running in to join the girls on court with Princi. I stood back and clapped. I don’t like to run in. It’s their moment and I’d just cheapen it. I remember working a lot with these girls the year before last, but it’s really been Princi who has stuck with them so long and worked so hard for them this year. The moment is his and theirs alone. I gave him a big hug and told him him how much he deserved this what a great job he’s done all year. He thanked me for my help and then it was on to help the Yr 8 boys with their Bronze Medal match.

U15 Boys Div 2 v Paralowie

It was hard to watch, but the boys lost again in straight sets. they just looked like they lacked the desire and had the life sucked out of them when they lost that gold medal. After losing the first set, i thought they might have a chance still. Simone said that the desire usually kicked in for them then.

Unfortunately it did not. Perhaps it didn’t click that a bronze wouldn’t be handed to them and they had to fight for it. perhaps the medal just held no meaning for them once that gold medal was dead. I don’t know. All i could do was fill up the water bottles (which they went through a lot), suggest to Moon when to call the timeouts and give encouragement to the guys coming on and off the bench. Moon didn’t give up. he kept doing what he did best to fire up his team, but they just couldn’t respond. he had done everything he could, and the players couldn’t find the rest of the way. they’ll learn from this, and be stronger next year. i know it.

Brighton Boys

The Brighton Open Div 1 Boys played at 3:00pm too, and were leading in the third set of their bronze medal match against Monbulk by the time i finished up with the yr 8 boys. They ended up losing a couple of points near match point before winning. Liam’s mum, Terri was watching. over the years, she’s always found it hard to watch Liam’s close games. Once you work out there’s nothing you can do, it’s quite easy i think. I was really glad they had won a medal – it was their last year, and the same team had tried so many times falling short. i was happy for them but had to leave to get to the Open Girls Gold Medal Match against Great Lakes.

Open Girls Gold Medal match v Great Lakes

[photo courtesy of Spike Magazine. Back row L-to-R: Megan, Casey, Kate, Jordan. Front Row: Katrina, Becky, Bonnie, Simone, Giani]

The Girls simply played brilliantly and won in straight sets. they started both sets from 6-0 down and came back to win. Megan and Kate were hitting and serving at her best. Casey proved to be the surprise packet bagging a lot of early points spiking. they didn’t know what hit them. Bonnie continued winning a lot of points off her flat serves, and Jordan was just impassable blocking everything!

The game felt like it went for a long time. There were a lot of timeouts and it was quite hard to carry the drink holders and their hand-towels (yes, they were the only team smart enough to bring them). Gianni did a great job, but there was just no stopping these girls. There was never a point they weren’t in control of the game. When they won, i reckon the noise was even louder than when the U17 div 1 girls won. after all, there were some very jubilant U17 girls running in there to congratulate them. Again i stood backand watched them enjoy their moment. I gave Gianni an embrace and went in to shake the girls’ hands and pat them on the back when the crowd cleared.

Beer o’clock

There’s always some matches left before the closing ceremony starts. As the kids make it to the showcourt and are watched by some of the parents who have come down to watch, it’s a tradition for the coaches to go to the bar and Griff buys them drinks. I think they all had cougars except Siv and Kate who got some premixes and I had an iced tea. It was our best result yet with two gold medals. we had won bronzes and silvers in the last two years and only one gold the year before. I had sat through 5 straight medal matches and kept a calm face and was now quite glad to have it finished. some of the parents of the medal winners came by to thank me for my help. I was quite flattered for a waterboy!

Then it was time to make our way to the closing ceremony.

Thursday – The business end of the week

By the end of today some teams will know they’re in a medal game tomorrow. Others will have a game to get into a medal game tomorrow. For others, it will be the end of the ride. For my open boys, it seems like an eternity since we had a shot, so it’s just another day. I’m at Dandenong today. Then i have to get to MSAC to help Princi with his girls’ semi-final. My timetable:

• 09:00 – Open Girls v Kew (SVC)
• 09:00 – U17 Girls Div 2 v Elizabeth (SVC)
• 10:00 – Open Boys v Blackfriars (SVC)
• 11:00 – U17 Girls Div 2 v Sunbury (SVC
• 12:00 – U17 Boys Div 2 v Emanuel (SVC)
• 13:00 – Open Girls v St. Clare (SVC)
• 16:00 – Open Boys v Luther (SVC)
• 16:00 – U17 Boys Div 2 v The Gap (SVC)
• 20:00 – U17 Girls Div 1 v Holland Park (MSAC)

Open Boys

About 4 teams had to go to dandenong today so we got to take the team bus. When we got there, there was a spare court and I showed the open boys how to get some simple combos working. Mainly a-ball/metre-ball crosses and b-ball/metre ball crosses. Luther didn’t turn up to their game against heathfield, but they still had to “play it.” so heathfield had to go through the motions and serve the ball into an empty court. weird. our game against Blackfriars went to a decider – they were trying to play combos to not much success. need more practice. we ended up winning but it was the most boring game i’ve been involved in.

Our second match against Luther went to a decider too. I got pretty fired up at the boys. Schubert wasn’t reaching for the ball and i think i said something to him along the lines of “if you don’t start swinging high, i’m gonna cut your arm off at the elbow and you can hit the ball with your stump.” By halfway through the first set, Chris had hit all of our winners, and Brad just 1. I called a timeout and asked for a show of hands of who had scored a winner. not encouraging. They all whinge when i don’t play them as outside hitters, but none of them are putting forward a strong case why. i asked them to prove why they’re worthy of that spot.

We eventually won, but it was a Pyhrric victory. Schubert’s shoulder finally got too bad and i had to take him off. he won’t make it to the next game. Chris’s ankle was hurting into the first set too. too much of wouter crashing into him on the blocks. he played valiantly and had to go up against triples practically every time. Watto was getting tired so i played Brad as a setter whenever i could to give him bit of a rest. I’ll have to bench Chris tomorrow too, leaving me with only 6 players.

The physio said he could play if he could do a leg squat, but i said not-negotiable. he’s going to the national camp after and quite frankly a friday playoff for 9th place wasn’t worth it. he wanted to play a good last game – since he had elected to not to play but coach next year. i think after my speech on tuesday he worked out his team would never truly want to work as hard as he would to play to the standard he wanted. he’s now getting into coaching for the same reasons i did. i told him he should be happy with the luther game as his last game, and to think about it as not the premature end of his school career, but the start of something better in bendigo.

Open Girls

Kew put up bit of a fight, but in the end they won both games in straight sets. the results went their way and tomorrow it’s a semi for the gold. so medal match assured. they finished early, and it was a bit warm, so i suggested to gianni that they, and siv’s team take the coach back early and the boys can tram it back. a bit of rest at the hotel would help them for tomorrow. in the end they just stayed around.

Dicko & Rubber

Harristown, who looks good to win our division have tow players named “Dicko” and “Rubber”. I think i saw Rubber cover Dicko on the hit. no end to the jokes.

U14 Div 1 Girls

Lost another game and are out of contention for a medal. They could have made it. I wish i could have helped them and marty out a bit more. We really need to try to get a coach and manager for each team.

U17 Div 2 Boys

They were the troublesome lot, but to be honest, some of them are playing the best volleyball i’ve seen them play. They’re playing great. they’ve gotten better as the tournament went on. tends to happen to teams that haven’t had a lot of practice together – i think they played together for the first time on monday. the early losses means they had to rely on the results of other games. there were upsets and now they’re out too. i was enjoying their games too.

Brighton Open Div 1 Boys

I coached the Brighton team in our division 3 years ago when they were in yr 9. it’s their last year now and last chance for a medal. i think we finished 8th the year i took them in U16 div 1, and the following year they missed out on a medal in U17 Honours, and had a rough ride the year after as Brighton’s second open honours team. I’m ashamed to say it, but there’s a feeling of relief you get when your team doesn’t go that well, and then a peer takes over and they don’t succeed either – you know it’s not all on you. They lost the semi to Great Lakes, and on the other side. Harristown beat Monbulk on the other side so looks like brighton’s still got a shot for bronze. I’m still fond of those boys since they’re good kids and a couple of them are a big part of my club.

Princi’s Semi

After 8hrs at Dandenong, i made my way down to MSAC to help Princi out with his girls. I haven’t seen them play all week, but they haven’t dropped a game. They’re playing at 8, and i’m supposed to meet a friend at Luna Park at 8, so i’m going to have to get there a bit later. Can’t miss a semi.

Princi’s got it covered but I’m there to give some moral support. Give him someone to vocalise high thoughts to, and as an assistant make sure that nothing distracts him and the team from what they have to do. I had some time before the game so I snuck into the showcourt to watch the last set of Eltham losing to Monbulk in Open Honours Girls. They really need to set Skipper more. I reckon they could have beaten Monbulk if they fired up a bit more.

It was good to see a lot of the other kids come out to support the girls in their semi. a few of my open boys came out which was great. they like to try to sneak on the bench which doesn’t help, especially with the officials clamping down more in finals matches.

The girls played well and came from behind to win the first set. there was a complaint that there was trash talking from our crowd so i went to handle it. It was definitely my boys and I blasted them and asked them to make sure they kept our supporters in good taste. We really needed more staff there. It was a tough choice whether i should just sit in the crown or help Princi but i chose the latter.

They switched ends and we were on the side with our supporters and i thought they were pretty well behaved, but the complaints kept coming in. apparently they didn’t like a mexican wave we did, and thought our cheering was putting off the opponents serve. The duty team had their coach top-reffing and she was in a foul mood. i asked her what was wrong and she sternly told me that if the crowd had been warned and if they didn;t behave she’s kick them out. I told her i had asked them to do everything she asked and that they didn’t seem ill-behaved to me but she stayed firm.

I’ve done enough of these to tell she’s had a lousy day. i bet they’ve lost a medal chance and are now being stiffed with a late duty. I could understand that she was in a foul mood. She might have been overreacting about the crowd, but arguing with her wasn’t going to help. If i kept arguing with her, an official would be brought out. the game would be halted etc etc. I didn’t want that. Princi’s girls were playing good and it was my job to make sure they could keep doing that undistracted by making sure that no one (crowds, officials, referees) was going to hijack this game from them.

So i made a call and asked our crowd to quieten down. I told them i didn’t think they were behaving badly but it wasn’t about that. the referee (and probably the other team) was being unreasonable, but we couldn’t control that. We could only control what we’d do, and we were here to get them over the line and the best way to do that would be to make sure that the game wouldn’t get interrupted by this nonsense. My mantra has always been “Don’t get mad, don’t get even, just win the rally”. Being right has never helped persuade a referee.

They won and that was that. Gold Medal playoff tomorrow. a big improvement on not even making the semi’s last year. I still think our supporters were well behaved. If we had staff in there, i reckon they wouldnt have tried to pull that sort of rubbish on us. Besides, there are far scarier things than a well behaved crowd that stand between a team and a medal at the school’s cup. if you can’t hack that, then you shouldn’t be playing spectators sports and don’t deserve a medal.

On the town 

I managed to get out to Luna Park to catch up with my friend for a while but had to get back. Thursday night’s a bit insane. Emotions run high – good and bad. We also have to pack – the next day everyone has to load everything onto the bus first thing in the morning and check out. Many of the coaches go out to the casino to let off some steam. last year i went to the AFI awards.

I got back at about 11:30, and many of the coaches were leaving to go to the casino, so i decided to join them. They like to play a bit at the blackjack tables but it’s never really interested me. I already run a business that is speculative enough as it is. I gamble everyday. i definitely don’t need to gamble for fun! i grabbed a meal at the buffet. it was about 1am, and i still hadn’t had dinner yet.

We walked back to the hotel, I packed and went to sleep. We had two semi’s (Open Girls, Yr 8 U15 boys) and a gold medal match (Princi’s girls). we could be up for 3 gold medals! it would be a busy day. On medal day, my job is to be everyone’s assistant and help wherever i can. with two semi’s and three medal matches, that’s 5 tense matches i’ll be helping out on!

Wednesday – Make or Break Day

Everyday you wake up in Melbourne and have a chance at winning a medal is a good day. If you have more good days than bad, it’s a good tournament. i haven’t had many good tournaments.

By the end of Wednesday’s play, you know if a medal is in reach or not. At the end of the day, divisions get split in two and put into new pools, or if you’re all in the same pool, you know mathematically if you still have a chance.

My Schedule today was:

• 09:00am – Open Girls v Bendigo / U17 Div 2 Girls v Waniassa
• 10:00am – Open Boys v Heathfield
• 12:00pm – Open Girls v Rochedale / U17 Div 2 Girls v St. mary’s
• 17:00pm – Open Boys v Luther (Cross over)

Then i had to catch up with a Canadian couple that lives here. 6 games in one day is hard to do. my open girls and Siv’s U17 div 2 team had clashes so i’d have to walk back and forth.

Commander’s Intent

The open girls beat Bendigo quite convincingly. They’re playing great volleyball. You don’t see a lot of teams like them – teams that not only share a vision for what they want (Gold), but also how they’re going to go about getting it (get the ball to the three talls). The Open boys are the opposite – they don’t all want the same thing, and when they all decide they want to win the next game, they all have different ideas how they want to do it.

I read a book not long ago about effectively communicating ideas. It talked about something the US military introduced called “Commanders Intent” (CI) to make orders simpler. The president might issue an order like “storm that bunker”. The CI might actually be to “destroy their morale” but then it would filter down and mean different things to all the different people who had to make that happen. It’s how a simple idea with a lot of complexity in implementation can be effectively communicated by making clear the intent.

The Open Girls’ unspoken CI is “get the ball to Kate and the Hoopers” – it’s not rocket science when you have three players 6′0 and over who can put the ball away. For the passers, this means playing the first ball so that the setters can get in the best position to make the play they want. For the setters this means setting the right (and often obvious) option, and for the three big hitters, this means making themselves available to hit. It’s working beautifully. Teams with these sort of hitters often have a strong vision on how to play. A Team with 2 great hitters and 4 bad hitters, will often beat a team with 6 average hitters.

National Camp

While watching the open girls play, Jenny Becker, the new Women’s National Technical Coach came to have a look. She’s looking for younger players and asked if we had any worth looking at and i referred her to Sarah Gould (Tall skilled left hander) on Siv’s team on the far stadium. She said we were doing some good things at Willunga which i found quite flattering. The School’s Cup is the biggest event in the Australian volleyball calendar. Everyone is here, and so it’s where all the scouts turn up to find the new talent. I’ve had a number of my players go to these camps – Chris McHugh, Luke Schubert, Tegan Ramsey. This year there are more, but i’m not allowed to say because it’s always confidential, and i’m not supposed to know to begin with.

I’ve only seen Jenny before on TV coaching the rare televised AVL game. She used to be in the Army and is a disciplinarian. I’ve heard you get rude wakeup calls first thing in the army and it’s like boot camp. Perfect for Gen Y’s. Jenny came back to say she had a look but didn’t give away too much about what she thought of Sarah. Nor should she.

Deciders

Sarah’s team won in a decider and she played well. she’s been averaging about 8 kills a game which is pretty good (for best of 3 set games). Their next game was against St Mary’s. Siv was coaching against Lindsay Finn (daughter of ex-VSA General manager Paul Finn), an ex-teammate and best friend. It was nice to see two players i used to coach ply their trades against each other as coaches and bring out the best in their teams.

It went to a decider. Lindsay’s team were up 8-2 at the change of ends. But Siv stayed really level-headed – this is where i rate her really high as a coach. Willunga got back in within a few points, thanks largely to a serving run from Lauren McMillan. I think the score got to 14-12 in favour of St Mary’s when siv called the time-out. She settled her team down and focused them on the simple things. St Mary’s finished their huddle early with an over-excited cheer 10 seconds into a time-out and i knew then they’d lose. The team that’s that nervously excited will surrender errors – especially from losing such a big margin, they would be high on anxiety and doubt, and low on confidence to “win” the points. they were hoping the other team would make the errors.

Panic Plays

There is something i have identified in tight games as the “Panic Play”. It occurs when it’s close, and nerves cause an individual player to do something uncharacteristic that turns into an error or an opportunity for the other team. For young kids, it’s setting or digging a ball over that could easily be hit. It’s making a loopy set instead of a tip. it’s the setter trying to dump instead of set, and doing it unaggressively, or into the net. Often it manifests from not wanting to “win” the point and hoping that if you give your opponent the ball they’ll “lose” it for you. Panic Plays disappear with maturity but never go away.

For experienced players it’s the passer passing the ball a bit off the net so it doesn’t go over but cuts out the middle attack. It’s the setter foregoing the quick attack for an outside play. The middle-blocker hoping the setter won’t play that quick attack and not jumping on the perfect pass. The setter putting that set just a little too loose, too high, too short etc. The outside hitter choosing to hit cross instead of line. By this age, it’s more commonly known as choking, but it’s the same thing. Same cause, just different symptoms and less-pronounced reactions.

You should never be the Panic Player. And even worse you should never let the Panic Players off the hook. If you sense it, you have to swoop in like a vulture ready for the kill, because that free ball, or soft tip, or error will come if you keep the pressure on.

St. Mary’s made a lot of panic plays, and Siv’s team eventually won 19-17. it was a battle of who could get the nerves out of their team first, and in the end Siv got their first. St Mary’s really didn’t make the most of Willunga’s early lapse. Lindsay confessed to me later that her girls were a really emotionally extreme bunch. those teams are never easy.

A win’s a win… except when some wins are more equal that others

Lauren’s yr 8 U15 div 2 girls team lost both their games today – their first for the tournament – and so are out of contention. Stefan’s yr 9 U15 div 1 girls team also lost their first two matches of the tournament today and also got knocked out. The open girls lost their second game today to Rochedale but are still in the hunt. this is where luck comes in. The team that beat them on the first day only did so because they got lucky, and lost a game too, so Willunga stayed on top of their pool. going into the next round, they could lose a game and still stay at the top.

There might be a lot of reasons why our teams lost. i feel i might have been able to help out a bit since i knew all those players and their abilities pretty well. It’s a learning experience for them and the coaches i guess.

6-2 to 5-1 – two setters become(s) one

The boys lost in a decider to Heathfield. Can’t remember much except that Wouter played like shit. at some points, i was skeptical whether he had any spatial awareness of whether with (left) hitting arm was below or above his head when playing the ball. he didn’t even turn up to the game with socks – which usually says a lot about the preparedness of a player to me. he reckons the alarm didn’t go off in the morning. i got really angry with him. which is hard for me to do these days

With Chris’s urging (in some part from Great Lakes’ Denise Williams’s suggestion) we tried a 1-setter system. I’ve planned for this scenario, but have never thought it would work. We didn’t have a setter good enough to set all around. Watto, might have been the closest, but in that situation, passing would be weak, and we’d need someone like him to play libero. But i thought, why the hell not. we’ve got nothing to lose. may as well throw them in the deep end and teach them some new systems.

Where to put your best hitter in a 5-1

Where to put your best hitter in this sort of set up is never an easy answer. Do you put them next to the setter so that in the front court rotations the setter usually has strong a strong option? if so, should they be clockwise (ie setter starts in 1, hitter starts in 6) or anticlockwise (setter starts in 1, hitter starts in 2) from the setter? anticlockwise is the norm, and gives the hitter two attacks from 4 in service reception, but clockwise gives them 3. However clockwise causes some really awkward switches on service rotation – namely when the setter runs in from 1, behind the middle blocker in 2, who then has to run the quick. The whole thing is pretty counter-intuitive.

Or do you just put them opposite the setter so that they can always be the third option? You’re stuffed if the setter can’t get the ball to them in backcourt. The hitter tends to switch to 2 as well, unless you rig it the other way round which brings you back to that awkward rotation where the setter is in 1 and the middle blocker is in 2.

Overwhelmingly, coaches choose a bit of both and you find the two best players usually line up in these positions (setter starts in 1, hitters in 4 & 2), leaving a strong lineup when they’re both in front (setter in 1), and a weak one when they’re both in frontcourt (if you can’t rack up the points here then god help you!).

My solution is a compromise, that i’m sure a lot of coaches will disagree with me. I think the best spot is the one 2 rotations clockwise from the setter (ie setter starts in 1, hitter starts in 5). The beauty being the following:

• the 2 spots 2 rotations from the setter don’t have rotations when the setter has to run in behind them – so they can always pass easily without a setter on their tail making a long run. These slots usually go to a middle and an outside, unless you’ve got a blocking triangle system or a 3 setter system
• This spot gives you three attacks out of position 4 on service reception
• There are two rotations when the setter is in frontcourt and the hitter is in backcourt. they can be the backcourt option if they want

I’ve called this the “Slugger” position – Due to it being where the South Adelaide League Men’s volleyball team always put their best passer/hitter Craig “Slugger” Watson.

So that’s where I started Chris. We beat Luther convincingly. I benched Wouter for the whole game. Luther had this one great hitter, a blonde guy named Josh. they set him some awful balls though. like balls in the middle that were set 3 metres above the tape. but he kept hitting winners. it was s shoot out between him and chris. Gareth played, and hit a beautiful line shot out of 4 that six-packed and split the nose of the setter. it was bleeding on the outside.

Gianni fires up the troops

Gianni makes great speeches. I’ve been watching him. one of his boys that played in his footy grand final win this year told me that what he did before the game is show this video on a laptop before the game with 4 great coaches talking – Allan Jeans, John Kennedy, Ron Barassi & Tom Hafey. The boys all hundled around silent and by the end of it they were either in tears or really fired up. He just knows how to motivate. So i asked him to talk to my boys before the game. they already knew the gameplan, they just needed someone to fire them up. Gianni’s speech was great before the heathfield game. they held on top every word. i think brad even got hit by some spit. Man, i could never do one of those speeches.

The Girl with the Headband

[Photo courtest of Spike Magazine, 2007]

I had about 4hrs to kill between my open girls and open boys games, so i snuck into the showcourt to see a game. Siv wanted to show me this giant kiwi girl playing that could hit attack-line balls down the line. They were playing Eltham, and she was good but not dominating.

But the interesting girl i got to see was Eltham’s Lena Skipper. She was great to watch. she kept splitting double blocks or going over them, hitting back-row winners, making great jump-serves that either aced or cut down the attack options, and she was so chilled out and relaxed. She just did not look or act like an intimidating player, but she had awesome technique – definitely not garden variety. Fast arm-swing and high reach. Her opponents found it hard to block her and she kept finding gaps. We had a lot of fun watching her. You couldn’t miss her with the white headband.

Eltham’s setter was making some bad options. they couldn’t win, but she could have brought them within a couple of points with better options, and then who knows what could happen?

Duty Calls (or more accurately, bad calls you make when doing duties)

The Open Boys had an interesting duty. It was a heated game between Great Lakes and Caulfield with semi spots up for grabs. Matty usually top-refs for the boys and had been in bad form. in one set he called 4 replays and was just slow on the whistle. i think they wanted me to do the duty, but i was having too much fun watching Lena Skipper play to be bothered. I remember last year he reffed one game so badly, one of the teams called him a “Fat C***”. Amazing how kids get worked up – JUST MOVE ON. It couldn’t get worse than that, and besides, Cav had it covered. The game ended with a punch-up between the two teams after Great Lakes won in a decider. Maybe i should have been there…

Timeout

I eventually made it out to Brighton to visit my Canadian friends. it was nice to get away from stadiums, hormonal teenagers, and volleyballs, even if just a while. When i got back to the hotel, i decided to do something different with my open boys. nothing to lose now, and we’d just be playing some weak teams in the other pool. So I showed them how to run combos…