What is a Volleyball Coach?
By: Yuri Tchesnokov
Russian Gold Medal Men’s Head Coach and Player
Excerpts from the FIVB Coaches Manual
A volleyball coach is a teacher and an educator, especially for a coach who is working with children and junior teams.
A volleyball coach is a person with a great knowledge of life. Players need advice and support in many different life situations. This is why one can say that a coach is a senior comrade and a life assistant.
A volleyball coach is a sport specialist. He works on the development and the popularity of volleyball in his own country, in a club, in a university, etc.
A volleyball coach is an organizer. One of his main duties is coordinating the work of all his assistants by keeping in touch with the management and the national federation.
The coach is a professional head of a team who is responsible for the preparation and performance of single players or of a team as a whole. A coach is a person who is responsible for the result.
In other words, a coach is a leader who must answer two questions:
- “What is he to do?” This defines the main goal and those problems which must be solved in order to achieve this goal. It means an analysis of the whole activity of a coach.
- “How is he to do his work?” These are the means and methods which help in solving training problems in order to get result. This means the individual mastership of a coach – his creative work.
