Tag: Coaches

Assess Your Mindset to Increase Relevant Training

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Coaches can increase the level of relevant training in their practices with an honest self-evaluation of their mindset. The following questions can be used in such an evaluation.

  • Do the coaches have a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset?
  • Do they create an environment where athletes are challenged to learn?
  • Do the coaches focus on effort or performance as opposed to outcome?
  • Do the coaches provide constructive feedback or feed-forward comments?
  • Do they use cues that are meaningful to players to help them learn?  In the photo below the setters coach was at court side and used cues to effectively communicate with the setter between points.relevant training
  • Do the practice activities transfer to match play or do they emphasize false fundamentals or skills that make the players look good in practice?
  • Do the coaches understand that players have peaks and valleys and over time their performance regresses to their mean performance?
  • Do coaches focus on raising the mean performance of athletes rather than emphasize the peaks and the valleys?
  • Is the coach committed to relevant training and meeting the needs of the athletes?

Most coaches will find that after they have answered these questions they are excellent in some areas and can improve in other areas. Changes can be made as appropriate.

Volleyball Club Directors Don’t Always Get it Right

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The sport of volleyball is growing by leaps and bounds. About a quarter of adolescent American girls play some form of organized volleyball -that is the good news.

The bad news is the infrastructure is not in place to support the current rate of growth. The sport needs additional facilities and qualified club directors and coaches to handle the current demand, especially in Colorado.

This post focuses on comments from parents and players about club directors. The purpose of presenting this post is to illustrate the impact that club directors have on their players, parents, coaches, their program, and the sport, particularly when they don’t get things right.

The Snake Oil Salesman
Most club directors enthusiastically sell their club. Sometimes they are overzealous, much like a snake oil salesman, in describing the positive aspects of their program.volleyball club directors

• Situation 1- At an open gym the director told a group of parents, “I have worked with the coach on court 1. She is the most amazing coach I have ever seen. Given her skill and the talent she has on that court, it wouldn’t surprise me if that team qualified for nationals.”

The coach was a wonderful human being, the girls loved her, but she ran horrible practices. The team started off around 15th in the division and ended the season around 20th – they got worse as the season progressed.

• Situation 2 – The director told a group of parents, “We are the only team in Colorado that teaches mental toughness as part of their program.” NOT!

• Situation 3 – At open gyms, club directors are frequently asked how many positions the club is trying to fill for the upcoming season. A common response is, “All positions on the team are open for competition, even the girls who played last year have to earn their positions on the team.”

If parents talk to the coaches they will often get a different story. The coaches will usually be more specific and identify which positions the team is actually looking for.

• Situation 4 – In private discussions, many directors have told parents, “Your daughter doesn’t have to be tall to play on this team.”

Right or wrong, the top clubs in most age categories place a premium on tall girls.

We Don’t Like Parents
• Some clubs have a policy of having closed practices. The justification for closed practices is usually cited as safety or liability. Some directors close practices because they claim it helps the players focus.

In 99% of the cases, club directors and coaches don’t like parents to be involved in the learning process. One director told a parent that since she initiated closed practices, her complaints from parents had declined.

Club directors who close practices lose the opportunity to include parents in the learning process. Parents are entitled to be part of that process since they pay the bills.

Open Door Policy
At an open gym the club director proudly stated to the parents,”I have an open door policy and welcome any comments by parents who want to make the club better.”

• Situation 1 – A group of parents talked to the club director because a coach was playing his daughter full-time and she was the worst player on the team.

The club director said he would look at the situation, but he never got back to the parents.

The parents later learned the coach was able to get special access to a local facility that the club used for practices two nights a week. The club director did not address the concern raised by the parents for fear of losing the practice space.

• Situation 2 – A parent sent the club director an email that addressed the lack of meaningful activity in practices. This included a timeline of drills and activities. The club director did not respond. The next time the parent saw him he asked the club director what his thoughts were about the email. The club director said he didn’t remember the email. He said his wife also used the club email for her personal use and probably deleted it before he had a chance to read it. He asked the parent to re-send the email. The parent re-sent it and never heard back from the club director.

• Situation 3 – A group of parents approached the club director because there wasn’t protective padding on the net posts where the team practiced. The club was renting the gym from a school and the club director blamed the problem on the school system. The parents offered to do a fundraiser to buy net pads so practices would be safer. The director said she would get back to the parents. She never followed up on this safety issue.

Out of Control
It was the last crossover match of the day in a 12U tournament and the teams were vying for 5th and 6th place in a Division Three match. The down referee, a 12-year old, made a call the coach didn’t like (the coach also happened to be the club director). For two minutes the coach yelled at the head official, the 12-year old down official, and then her team.

After the match the discussion in the parking lot varied greatly. Her supporters said, “She tried to get the kids to rally, but she waited too late. She usually throws her clipboard in those situations. I love her coaching style.” At the other end of the spectrum parents said, “Why doesn’t she pick on someone her own size. She is a good coach and club director. She doesn’t need to be such a jerk.”

It is My Way or the Highway
It is important for club directors to develop policies and make decisions that are in the best interest of the club, the coaches, and the players. Sometimes club directors make decisions for reasons that are hard to understand. Volleyball Club Directors

• Situation 1 – At an open gym a club director talked about how certain teams traveled out-of-state. A parent asked him, “While it is fun for the kids to travel out-of-state, it doesn’t make sense for most teams to travel because they are not competitive at the national level. If a majority of the parents don’t want to travel out-of-state, does the team still have to?”
The club director, curtly responded, “I know what is best for the kids. If I think they should travel they will. The parents don’t have a say in this matter.”

• Situation 2 – In a Q&A session at an open gym, a parent asked the club director, “We have been in tryouts for 10 weeks. What team is our daughter going to play on – Black, Green, or Blue?”

The club director responded, “I appreciate your concern. Trust us, we know what we are doing. We appreciate your patience. Your daughter has been given a position on a team in her age group. We will continue to have tryouts for the next three weeks to see whether she plays on the Black, Green, or Blue team. We want to place as many kids on teams as possible. At this point we don’t know how many teams we are going to have and who is going to coach those teams. As the club director I want to personally make sure every player is properly placed in our program. There is a lot that goes into making this decision.”

The decision was delayed for three additional weeks so the club director could assign the handful of players “on the bubble” to their appropriate team. The reason for the delay was the coach had to attend to personal business.

Trust us, we want to do what is best for your daughters.

• Situation 3 – At a coaches conference, a club director talked about the steps he took to eliminate the problems caused by the parents of the players at his club. He resolved them by holding a meeting for the parents and telling them it was his job to be club director and not their friends. He politely said he didn’t care about their personal lives or the personal lives of the players. He pointed out that it was his job to provide the kids with quality instruction and a quality program and he didn’t have time to do that if he was chit chatting with parents or having to deal with their problems.

It Doesn’t Matter Who Coaches Your Kid
Parents and club directors sometimes do not see eye-to-eye about hiring qualified coaches, as illustrated by the following conversation.

Parent: Your club fees are $3,500 for the season, plus travel expenses. From my perspective that is a lot of money. Who is going to coach my daughter’s team? Of the 15 coaches on your staff, only one is certified. Why don’t you have more certified coaches beyond the mandatory USAV IMPACT certification?

Club Director: Actually we have other coaches who have taken First Aid courses and attended other workshops.
Parent: It is great that some of your coaches have attended workshops, but only one of your coaches is certified. Who will coach my daughter’s team?
Club Director: We haven’t decided yet. Besides, it doesn’t matter who coaches your daughter, all the coaches on my staff are excellent. In fact, I can guarantee you that your daughter will be happy with any of my coaches.
Parent: There are two reasons I am asking. First, my daughter has had some bad experiences with coaches in the past. It is important for her to be with a coach who she respects and who she will learn from. Second, my daughter has attended open gyms at your club and has found there are coaches who she could work with and there are coaches on your staff who she does not respect. I am hesitant to pay $3,500 to have her spend time with a coach she doesn’t respect, especially when I don’t get a chance to see the person coach or have the coach talk to my daughter.
Club Director: I don’t know why you feel that way. When you take your daughter to school you don’t have any say in who her teachers are. She needs to grow up and learn to deal with whoever is there to coach her.
Parent: Comparing your program to the school system is an inappropriate analogy. At the school my daughter attends we can request many of her teachers. You seem to forget that parents are paying you $3,500 for quality coaching. You may have the best staff in town, but if they were as good as you say, the parents and the players would be able to talk with them and watch them work with the players.

The preceding comments illustrate some of the challenges club directors and parents face. Club directors have a thankless job. It is difficult for them to get it right all of the time. Having said that, most of these concerns could be eliminated with improved organization and honest communications.

• Club directors should keep the focus on the athletes.
• Parents are part of the learning process.
• Parents have a responsibility to hold club directors accountable (in a professional manner) when they don’t get things right.  And they should sing their praises on the many occasions they provide exemplary service.
• Most clubs do an adequate job, but they should be held to a higher standard. Parents should not support clubs that consistently do not get it right.
• Club directors should encourage their coaches to get certified in the USAV CAP program.
• Currently, the sport is in a growth mode. That will not always be the case. Some of the current business practices of club directors will not be satisfactory when the popularity of the sport levels out or declines.
• Volleyball club directors must be proactive in supporting the growth of the sport. This includes the construction of more volleyball facilities and the promotion of doubles and boys and adult volleyball programs.

Parent and Player Concerns with Volleyball Club Coaches

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As August draws to a close, most volleyball club tryouts have come and gone. Players have been assigned to teams and they are anxiously waiting for practice to start in November. Volleyball has experienced rapid growth over the past ten years – that is the good news. On the other hand there aren’t enough qualified coaches to support the growth, particularly in Colorado.

This post focuses on parent and player concerns with volleyball club coaches. It can be compared with a previous post that emphasizes the qualities of strong programs and coaches. A comparison of both the positive and negative perceptions of club coaches illustrates the impact coaches have on parents, the players, their team, and their club.

The list of parent and player concerns follows:
• Weak coaches appear to be lost on the court. The kids don’t respond to the drills, they get bored and stop paying attention. Once they have lost focus the practice spirals downward.
• A lot of meaningless chatter comes from poor coaches. Because nothing of value is shared with the players, they tune out the coach five minutes into practice.
• Too many coaches think that just because they were a good player that they will automatically be a good coach. It takes a lot of work to become a good coach.
• Teams with weak coaches stand out like sore thumbs. The players don’t talk to each other during the warm-ups. Even though they may be trying hard, they look like they are struggling to go through the motions. On the other hand, well-coached teams walk and talk like winners on and off the court.
• Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. When practices are not well-organized the players have time to get in trouble. They gossip, goof around, and next thing you know someone gets hurt or players become mad at each other.
• Poorly coached teams play the blame game. You can spot hateful gestures and the negative body language from two courts away.
• Bad coaches punish players for making mistakes. The server doesn’t need a coach to point out that she missed her serve in the net – everyone the gym knows it. A good coach will find a way to help that same player hit the ball in the court next time she serves. I have yet to meet a competitive athlete who erred on purpose. Don’t coaches realize that?
• Weak coaches often have unusual starting lineups, rotations, and substitution patterns. At times it seems that some parents have paid extra to have their kids in the lineup.
• Young coaches talk way too much. They feel obligated to comment on everything that happens. For example, a team had an enthusiastic young assistant coach. The players were always upbeat at the start of the tournament. After the first huddle a few players lost their edge. As the competition progressed the team became more downtrodden. When a father queried his daughter about this she said the assistant coach began every team discussion by saying, “Now girls, if you want to win, you have to do this, you have to do that and you have to stop doing this and that.” The coach was toxic. The criticism went on ad nauseam. Even if the team ended the day as winners, they were so beat up by her negative talk that they looked and felt like they had lost every match. The following season, only two of the ten players returned – and one of them was a coach’s daughter.
• Then there was the young coach who summed up the qualifications of her peers, “The coaches in this club suck. I have tried to help them improve, but they don’t listen to me because I’m a woman. I can’t wait to start my own club so I don’t have to deal with them.” While her assessment was correct and she was rightfully frustrated, she lost credibility every time she shared her opinion.
• The club’s weakest coach appears to keep his job because he has access to the keys at a local school where the team practices on Tuesdays.
• The purpose of holding practices is to help the players improve their skills. Too many coaches view the team practice as a time for them to get their workout. Too often the coaches touch the ball more frequently than any of the players.
• Two parents watched a veteran coach “help” his young team with their serves. After each player had a chance to hit one serve, the team had to run a lap for every missed serve. The players with good serves were punished because the coach couldn’t teach their teammates how to serve. The performance of the team got worse the longer the team did the drill. Afterwards the parents told the coach, “What was the purpose of that drill? You didn’t improve their serves by having them run laps. They are two different skills”. His response was, “Running laps motivates them to serve better and it is good conditioning. This is a popular serving drill used by all the clubs.”
• One of my pet peeves is coaches whose behavior is different in practices and competition. For example, a team had a coach who encouraged the players to go for their serves in practice but then told them to just get it in during tournament matches. The coach seemed fun-loving in practice, but yelled at the girls when they made errors in the game. They didn’t know if their coach was Dr. Jekyll or Mrs. Hyde. Their confusion about how to react to his multiple personalities was reflected in the way they played in competition.
• Some adults shouldn’t be allowed to coach. A team had an assistant coach who wanted her daughter to be the setter and she convinced the head coach that was a good idea. The fact that the team had an excellent setter and her daughter had never set before was irrelevant. The experiment resulted in a wasted season for everyone, including the assistant coach’s daughter. The only legitimate setter quit the team once the coach announced her decision. By the time the season was half over, everyone (parents and teammates) hated the coach, the assistant coach, and her daughter.
• The worst coach at a local club informally classified her players as “natural athletes” and klutzes. The “natural athletes” had an inflated impression of their skills and the klutzes were convinced they would never be able to do anything right. As a result, nobody was challenged and nobody improved that season. The coach didn’t understand that the key to improvement is working hard.
• One season a young coach was challenged by a group of parents for the way she coached defensive skills. The remainder of the season she focused on showing the parents and the players who was boss. Helping the kids become better players was of secondary importance to her. She won the grudge match, but the club was the overall loser. All of the players on the team switched to different clubs the following season.
• A young coach focused her attention on the top six players of her team because they had better skills. Then, one tournament two of her top players got sick, one was injured, and another had a family emergency. Unexpectedly, she had to play four kids who she had not given a chance to play in practice or competition. The fans applauded the efforts of the weaker players while the young coach yelled at them for making errors. She acted as if it was their fault the top players were not available to play. Even after this situation the coach didn’t understand the importance of coaching all the players on the team.
• At an open gym a coach was asked to spend 20 minutes doing his favorite drill with a group of 20 kids. He selected two players and hit balls to them for two minutes while the other 18 players surrounded them in a circle and counted their passes out loud. After 20 minutes each player hit 5 to 10 balls, they stood around for 18 minutes and the coach hit several hundred balls. It was only fitting that the coach walked off the court dripping sweat and said to the parents on the sideline, “Gosh, the girls had a great workout!” On the other hand, the 20 players walked off the court and muttered under their breath, “That was a waste of time.” The coach was too busy trying to impress people to see that he was a loser as a coach.
As can be seen, a lot can go wrong on the court, even when coaches may be trying to do the right thing. It takes a lot of work to be a good coach.

There are some common themes in the concerns voiced by the parents and players.
• The negative impacts of a coach can last for a season (five to six months). When players quit the sport the impact of a bad coach lasts a lifetime.
• Just as there is a tendency for young players to make a lot of mistakes, there is a tendency for young coaches to make a lot of mistakes. It is essential for volleyball clubs mentor their coaches, especially the younger ones.
• Young coaches often talk too much. They can become better coaches by organizing their practices, using cues to more effectively provide feedback, and practice the timeout axiom (limit discussions during drill sessions to the length of a timeout – a maximum of 60 seconds). They must also learn to watch and listen. It is not necessary to comment every time a ball is hit or missed.
• Athletes learn by touching the ball. They don’t improve their skills when they are running laps.
• Communications is critical and the coach is responsible for making that communications happen – on and off the court.
• Most coaches have good intentions and they choose to coach a volleyball team as a labor of love. They are to be commended for their altruism.
• Club directors have an obligation to help coaches improve their coaching skills.
• Parents, players, and coaches are all part of the team.

Great coaches make it look deceptively easy. Over the years they have made lots of mistakes, but they have made a conscious effort to learn from them. Great coaches are successful because they are students of the game – for them the learning process never stops.

Parents Identify Qualities of Strong Volleyball Programs

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Many parents breathe a sigh of relief at this time of year because the most stressful part of the club volleyball season has passed – summer open gyms and tryouts. For the next two months their daughters will play on their junior high or high school teams and wait for the club season to begin in November.

Because the sport has enjoyed rapid growth over the past ten years, the quality of programs varies greatly between clubs and within clubs. The following list is a summary of the qualities of strong volleyball programs based on comments from conversations with parents. A similar post will provide the reasons young athletes decide to play other sports.

• The best coaches are the ones who have a purpose for everything they do and say – from the drills in practice to substitutions in competition. Not only are they organized, they communicate their purpose with the athletes and the parents.
• It is like going to a BOGO free sale when coaches teach on-court skills that have lifetime applications, such as learning to deal with success and adversity.great volleyball programs and coaches
• The best coaches provide cues to players that help them improve their skills. It is helpful to hear a coach enthusiastically say, “You’ll get the next ball” or “Good footwork” or “Where would you hit that shot next time?” It doesn’t help when a coach says “good shot” in a monotone on every ball.
• It is great to see practices where kids are constantly engaged in meaningful activity and not standing in line.
• My daughter enjoys going to practice because she likes most of the kids she plays with and she respects the coach.
• It is important to have coaches who can communicate. Coaches who yell at their players or make them run laps do so because they don’t know how to convey their expectations to the athletes. These coaches are only capable of identifying an error, but not correcting it.
• Kids must be taught how to communicate with their teammates on and off the court. This is a skill that has to be taught and practiced.
• Athletes learn best when coaches create an environment where kids aren’t afraid to try new things and make mistakes.
• Athletes have to be taught mental toughness skills. Then they have to practice them.
• Coaches should give the kids a chance to touch the ball and play the sport. They don’t learn by watching the coach get a good workout.
• Kids like it when coaches call them by their first name.
• Performance trumps outcome. It is more important to teach players to give 100% in practice and competition than it is to focus on winning. When you give 100% all the time, the winning usually takes care of itself.
• Coaches must learn to have a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset, as defined by Carol Dweck in her book Mindset. In a growth mindset, players will view practices and competition as opportunities to learn.great volleyball programs and coaches
• It is great to see coaches teach their players how to set goals based on performance and help the athletes work towards achieving those goals.
• The top club directors will honestly provide their players with the criteria for making the team in a tryout.
• Great coaches value the benchwarmers as much as the starters – and they let the benchwarmers know what they can do to become starters.
• Parents can be a pain in the butt; however, they are an important part of the process in making a program successful. They also pay the bill.
• My kid has a volleyball at home, but when she joined the team they gave her a new ball with the message that she needed to practice on her own. Not only that, they taught her how to practice on her own.
• It is great to be in a program where kids, coaches, and parents work together on a community project. Typically these projects are local, but some clubs will give their athletes a chance to travel outside their hometown to a foreign country.

There is nothing on this list that is rocket science.  Strong volleyball programs are built around club directors and coaches who excel in all aspects of coaching and programming. Strong volleyball programs have coaches and players make the learning process look very easy.