After watching the incredible National Championship Match again last night (some incredible offense and defense!!!), I believe the box score tells us why Penn State beat Texas and won an unprecedented third National Championship – in a row!  As with most sports, it comes down to errors.  Texas, especially Destinee Hooker, showcased spectacular kills, but Texas committed the most errors.  Penn State kept the ball in play more (Team IPE).  As is said in the volleyball world, “Teams that win the serving and passing battle, win the match”.  Thus is true in the National Championship.

Following are statistics from the box score: Continue Reading

NCAA Volleyball – ESPNU will be re-airing the 2010 NCAA Women’s Volleyball Championship tonight, April 13th beginning at 9:30 p.m. EST. Relive the excitement as Penn State and Texas clash in one of the most thrilling matches in recent history!

I was looking through some of my old files from some of my old club teams and came across this piece on Blocking.  Ironically, the premise of the piece was written by Bond Shymansky, who at the time was Head Coach at Georgia Tech (he’s now Head Coach at Marquette).  The current Winthrop Head Coach, Sally Polhamus, was an Assistant under Bond at that time.  Sally is now the Head Coach that I work under.  The volleyball world is a small world.

Keys to Blocking Effectively
By Head Coach Bond Shymansky and coaching staff, Georgia Tech
November 16, 2005

•  Blocking is 95% work, 5% natural ability
•  Blocking can control and win matches through these methods Continue Reading

There was some great volleyball on TV today.  Back-to-back-to-back matches on ESPN-2 and ESPN-U.  I was able to watch Illinois beat Purdue in five at Huff Hall (unfortunately, I already received the results from Rich Kern before the match), Notre Dame over Louisville in four sets, and then LSU dominate Florida 3 – 0…awesome! Continue Reading

In my previous blog, I mentioned Low Country Volleyball Club’s 18s Team winning the 18 Open Division of the USAV Palmetto Region to qualify the team for Nationals in Miami. I received the stats from the team’s championship weekend (we have a parent keep stats), and just for fun compared them with the offensive stats of the 2008 Final Four Teams: Penn State, Stanford, Nebraska, and Texas. I was testing a coaching theory of IPE (read my What is IPE blog if you are unfamiliar with this concept). Here are my findings: 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