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

This past week in Kansas City at the AVCA Convention and Final Four was thoroughly enjoyable.  It was 24 hours of volleyball.  Blissful.

Even though volleyball is one of the most popular sports in the world, we, in the United States, are fortunate it has not blown-up yet (it will).  It provides us the accessibility for legends Continue Reading

The mental game. Do we coach it enough? Do coaches know how to coach it? In club, it is sprinkled throughout practices. When I coached at Georgia Southern, the team had the benefit of working with a sports psychologist. He provided some great team insight and exercises, but he wasn’t utilized enough. I think many collegiate programs incorporate a sports psychologist with their programs because its what everyone else is doing, to “keep up with the Jones’s”. Mick Haley uses a team psychologist, Mike Voight, throughout the season with, I believe, great benefit. At the University of Minnesota, Dr. Mike Hebert handles the team psychology lessons. He prepares his “Championship Manual” during the Continue Reading

During the season at the U of MN, Mike Hebert received an email from a club coach of which he passed along to me. The club coach was concerned with devising an offense system for a team with very little height. The club coach was quick to point out that the team had three great liberos. Here is my reply with Mike’s blessing, it also gives some insight of things I learned at the U of MN:

I hope this email will help save some trees and save you some money from all the paper you are using trying to devise an offense. But let’s look at two things first: 1) Defense 2) Height, and then we can discuss offense. Continue Reading

I.P.E. is an acronym for In Play Efficiency. It is simply the opposite of hitting error percentage (IPE = 1 – error %). It’s putting a positive spin on hitting errors. Many coaches tell players, “Don’t make hitting errors”; this focuses on the negative. Instead, IPE focuses on the positive and encourages players to keep the ball in play. For example, Penn State’s Hitting Error % for 2008 was .126. This roughly equates to 1.3 hitting errors for every 10 attempts. The positive spin on Penn State’s error % or what we consider “IPE” is .874 (1 – 0.126). This means for every 10 attempts, 8.7 swings were in the court. IPE is a positive hitting goal for any team. A player can easily recognize an IPE goal of .900 or simply to keep 9 out of 10 attempts in play. An
attainable outcome goal a player can work towards. Continue Reading