DECS gently downs ustream

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And live streaming will only be a matter of time!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mumbai Indians rip off Heathfield’s playing strip

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

Private School Poaching and Meaningful Work

From Robbo

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Waiting for the revolution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* For footballers, Volleyball will always be a waste of time so long as it’s on at the same time as footy. When it it’s on a different time, you start hearing things like “it’s great for my jump and coordiantion!”

State League Lampooned on Facebook

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

Seen Better Days

My club is not well. After years of our own self-destructiveness and the small-minded self-interest of external influences, we’re in the worst shape I’ve seen for at least 9 years (maybe even 17 if you count the time when we were the Cheetahs). For the first time, we can’t field a League Mens team. A personality alienated most of the playing group then promptly left leaving a massive hole. Technically, we should fold, but the broader volleyball community in a rare moment of enlightened thinking recognized that our demise would make the league unsustainable.

In this predicament, I’ve come to appreciate there’s a big difference between being an endangered species and a protected one. As the coach of our women’s reserves team I’m not convinced the grace we’ve been given will really help us last that long.

In a spectacularly poor display of process and sentiment, my girls were informed that they would be forfeiting their late 6pm match (on a Saturday night) 10 minutes before it started because we were fielding a player whose transfer hadn’t cleared. Suitably, the challenge came in a match against her former club. The player in question had applied for her transfer in November last year, by which her former club had 2 weeks to process. The registration spreadsheet issued by VSA earlier this year identified her as a Hawk and she even got issued with a registration card identifying her as a hawk.

I only had 6 players because with the draw giving our League team an 11am game, I didn’t have many options of getting players to stay back and play down at 6pm because of work commitments (why our women’s group has barely enough people to cover 2 teams while other clubs have multiple reserves teams with 3 or 4 on the bench is an entirely different can of worms!).

That’s not to mention that these challenges should be done after the game has been done, not before. I don’t know if it was the opposing club or the organizing body who cocked this up. I don’t even know if it was a cock-up or motivated by ill will. Frankly, I don’t care and it’s far from the issue: We’ve become a self-destructive sport.

Don’t get me wrong. There are some great people still involved with the sport, but there are at least as many others who at some point were passionate about the game, and incredibly capable, who can no longer be bothered being involved. Some will plainly tell you that being involved with volleyball is simply not an enjoyable way to spend their spare time. Others will tell you they have too much else on. All of these people would make the time if volleyball wasn’t such a headfuck, and if they did, things would be a whole lot better.

And right now would have to be a bad time to not have our best people with us. When I started playing, Volleyball SA practically had a monopoly over every form of volleyball played in the state and was among the stablest of the state bodies. Now they just don’t have the reach they used to, with so many social competitions operating outside the VSA umbrella. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing and VSA isn’t necessarily unprofitable, but it says that the people who represent our sport in a traditional stronghold no longer have the constituency they once had, and that being affiliated with our association no longer holds the value proposition it once had. When our national programmes go back for their funding, I don’t imagine it’s going to be easy justifying funding a sport that didn’t qualify for the last Olympics (I’m talking indoor here) over more money for another sport that wins medals, like swimming (or even better, why not spend the money on stimulating our ailing economy). When that time comes, we’ll need every volleyballer (registered or not) to speak up but it looks doubtful that will happen. Losing our remaining indoor programme would be a bad thing indeed.

I love this sport, but quite frankly, I’m really not enjoying a lot of this. It’d be really good if I could spend more time trying to help my team win more rallies than it loses instead of trying to prevent forfeits. (In our other reserves match this year, we were 20 seconds away from forfeited because we needed two players from the earlier scheduled league game that was running late. we just got six by dragging our league libero from the game still going and putting one of my junior girls in a uniform who had just spent 12 hrs driving from albury wodonga and was just at the venue so she coulde get a lift home with her brother). Being defeated by your opponent is one thing. Being prevented from competing is whole different kettle of fish.

I like my club. I like the players I coach. I like seeing the people around me find ways to reach their full potential (on and off the court), and I like being part of something greater than myself. I’m quite happy to keep training teams and players, but this will be the last year that I set foot in a playing venue in this state as a coach (unless it’s up at Mt Lofty and run by Mt Lofty people). But for now there’s no use in hypotheticals. After all, it’s become presumptuous to assume I’ll even have a club to serve next year. Kind of sad really, since I had been looking forward to reaching eligibility for life membership (10 years next year), but it appears likely I’ll suffer the indignity of outliving my club.

U15 Nationals – Albury-Wodonga

Last week I had the great opportunity of re-visiting one of the classic volleyball tournaments on calendar – The U15 Nationals held in Albury-Wodonga, NSW.

It’s a weird format. 4-day event in April, and teams can represent schools, clubs or states. This year Heathfield High School bested Victoria for the Boys title, and seeing schools square off against states for medals isn’t uncommon.

The tournament has become a crucial step in the development of our junior girls teams as well as somewhat of a rite of passage. We won it in 2005 and have sent teams every other year since. Sadly we’ve always struggled to scrub together a boys team to take over and it’s definitely a missed opportunity. At Hawks, we make it a family trip with most of the players’ parents coming over and staying with them at the accommodation. It’s a good chance to get to know everyone and their families.

This year I took over our youngest girls group. I don’t usually coach the team but their regular coach couldn’t make it. They’re an exciting bunch and we have high hopes for them in the future. I was lucky to have one of the players’ dad and sister help me out on the bench and in the duties. The whole parent group was great. They took a couple of early and late duties to give the kids some extra rest on the 3-game days and got into a dance routine during our last game! (I’m a subscriber to the idea that teams that sing and dance together win together).

We did ok winning 4 out of 8 games and finishing 5th overall. We had a great 5-set win over Victoria White, coming back from 2 sets down. They were coached by Gareth, who coached the Eltham team my Willunga girls beat last year at ASVC after being 8-0 down in the 5th set. I hope our teams keep having good games against each other. We also had a good match losing in 5 to a Phil Borgeaud coached ACT.

Must say, I’m still not a huge fan of watching 14-year-old-girls go through full protocol warmup. There’s the odd hit that’s strong and directed down the line, but generally a lot of hits that softly go cross court into the opposition players. Harrnless really, but given that the stats showed that my team served the ball 100 times throughout the tournament more than they attacked it, we could have used the time more effectively.

At this level, serving (in) is still king. Borgeaud’s ACT team made it into the semi-finals with about 3 girls who consistently served underarm and won points. ACT weren’t as physically imposing as someof the other teams, but they had good fundamentals – good control in the armswing and platform in their passing.

I didn’t get to stay to the end as I had a game to coach back in Adelaide the next day. It was good to hear that Heathfield (an SA and school team) won the boys title in 5 sets beating Victoria. Must give out a special mention to the Norwood boys coached by Tom West. Like us they didn’t make it to the semi’s but stayed back to cheer a lot of teams on including ours in many a tight game!

Alexis on Greg Chappell on Phil Hughes

More insight on skill models, this time from Greg Chappell’s observations on Phil Hughes. “Textbook” skill model does seem irrelevant at the highest level. After all, if everyone did things exactly the same way, how can you get an advantage? innovation has always played a big part in successes at the Olympics, Japan with the quick attacks and float serves (1964 they didn’t win but got the silver), Poland with the backrow attack (1976), The Brazillians with the jump serve (1984, they didn’t win, but they got the silver with the USSR boycott), The US with the two passer reception system. I’m sure all these things were “outside of the box” when they first appeared.

And we should listen to Greg Chappell when he talks about skill model. For no better reason than the fact he won a 1-day international match by getting his brother to apply the strangest of bowling skill models on the last ball – an underarm delivery! To this day, no one doubts that it was effective!

* * *

I read this story about Phil Hughes in the Australian yesterday:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25168449-28737,00.html

Greg Chappell makes a great point which is very relevant to this conversation: “There’s no right way or wrong way. Have a look at the scoreboard and tell me that he’s played badly.”

“He doesn’t comply with the coaching manual but the coaching manual should have been burned before it was even published because it’s been the greatest impediment to exploring batting in its fullness that’s ever been perpetrated on the game of cricket,” Chappell retorts.

“The sad thing is the better players have not necessarily fitted the coaching manual. To focus on replicating the perfect cover drive actually misses the point of what batting’s all about.”

Christian Stapff on Skill Models

Some stuff that came out of the Volleyball Symposium (held conveniently on the same weekend as SA’s state’s school’s cup last year) in Canberra where Hugh McCutcheon spoke. forearm passing doesn’t seem to get any simpler. it’s the like the IKEA of passing skill models. right foot always in front, arms swing from left side of body to right. hard to argue with the guy witha gold medal.

I happened to attend Volleyball Symposium in Canberra.
Hugh McCutcheon was indeed a wonderful and masterful clinician.

He prefaced his comments by saying that there is more than one way to execute, and he added that most of the skill model follows these rules:
keep it simple
reduce any unnecessary motion
\do what is provn to work

To that end, the US men’s program( the US womens have used different approaches) uses the following for sere receve:
right foot slightly forward
arms straight and resting a little on knees–this should help with preserving energy( i.e. reducing the load) for all other explosive movement
controlled arm movement passing the ball from the left side of the body.

the research indicated that passing from the left was more successful regardless of the handedness of the passer.

I am going to make some additional points:
1. having the head( balance mechanism still prior to passing will help in tracking the ball
2.passing the ball from the left allows the passer a look at the trajectory, which should help( of course this applies to passing from the right side too
3. passing always from the same side means double the practice time. would you throw the ball left-handed if you are right handed?
4. i suspect this makes sense as the setter is position at pos 3/2 and most serves would be more easily passed form the left toward the setter

Finally, the platform must always be straght…