Soccer’s World Cup, which comes around once every four years, has a great following around the world.  Even the US had a great audience for those games.  Low and behold, Volleyball has a World Cup.  How many of us know that the USA Women just took silver at the FIVB World Cup?  Unfortunately, not enough of us know about this awesome competition. Continue Reading

Here is my picture of the week. Do you know who this is?

Scroll over the picture to learn who is this fine looking gentleman.

Today, I listened to an audio recording of USA Volleyball’s Head Coach Hugh McCutcheon’s Q & A presentation at last December’s AVCA Convention in Kansas City.  A question raised to Hugh was, “How does the world perceive the success of USA Volleyball when it does not have a professional league?”.  Hugh’s response was based on the United States’ culture of “fighting until the end”, competitive advantages, and coaching methodologies.  Of which I agree, but these are small pieces of a larger puzzle.  An Open Source puzzle. Continue Reading

At the AVCA Convention, I listened to a presentation by Russ Rose and Terry Liskevych titled: What We have Learned in 75+ Years of Coaching. Besides it being quite comical, Russ and Terry provided some great insight into how the sport has changed from Continue Reading

Basic Team Systems and Tactics
By: Doug Beal
USA Volleyball CEO and 1984 Gold Medal Winning Coach

Excerpts from the FIVB Manual

In volleyball, we must work very hard to position our bodies correctly before returning the ball.

In volleyball defense, we want to be aggressive to create opportunities to score points.

The coach must train his team to actively “win” the game as opposed to waiting for the opponent to “lose” the game. Continue Reading

Doug Beal at the USAV Annual Meeting

USA Volleyball held its annual meeting just prior to the USAV Open Nationals.  In the meeting Reid Priddy presented on the importance of a professional league in the United States, “We began to lay the foundation to discuss the creation of a U.S.-based indoor professional league for Continue Reading

Arie Selinger, Head Coach, 1984 USA Volleyball Women’s Olympic Team, wrote “Setting for the Setter”. He believes the setter is the most important player on the court who’s qualities include: play-maker, architect, decision maker, cooperative, an extension of the coach, perceptive, great mental stamina, leader, hard working, creative, disciplined, crafty, aware, well liked, and inspires trust and confidence. Continue Reading

I was looking at your resume and trying to figure out how you made the jump to college coaching. I would love to coach at that level, but am not sure when and how is the best way. Obviously the competition is steep. Continue Reading