It’s been a little while since I’ve done any session notes so I figured it’s about time!  Did you miss us?

This week our focus has clearly shifted to system work over skill and drill work.  While we are still doing some drill work during the “competition” period, it’s really only 20-30 mins of our practice with the remainder of the time being game type work.  Right now we are focusing on transition from defense to offense.  This single team ability is by far the biggest difference between developmental volleyball and “real” volleyball.  Learning to anticipate, read, and then perform the physical task of getting ready to attack must be done faster and faster and faster as you get older and play at higher levels.  Early in the week we really struggled to catch on to just how focused and intense you must be to play at the speed needed to compete.  However, I really think we had a breakthrough tonight.  We played very hard, talked a lot more (still need more), and really played a lot faster.  How fast we grasp these concepts will go a very long ways in determining our result this weekend.

Speaking of this weekend; A lot is being made about the fact that due to certain circumstances, we are the last seed in the tournament.  This put us as the #4 seed in the same pool at TVC.  Already there is chatter on the chat boards about our match up with them being SUA vs. NDA and Buck vs. Mattera.  So far it has almost all been good natured and I want to say here and now that I hope it remains that way.  TVC has 2 girls coming to NDA so the NDA vs SUA thing is just plain wrong.  As for Buck vs. Mattera, we’ve been playing against each other for 4 years now.  It certainly isn’t about us.  I don’t think either of us would still be alive if we lived vicariously through the athletic performance of teen-aged girls!  Would you believe that we are actually friends?  We went out to dinner at Jed’s a few weeks back.  We actually enjoy each other’s company!!!  Sorry to ruin your universe if you really bought into the Buck and Mattera are mortal enemies thing :-)  TVC is the clear favorite in the pool, they have some great kids that I was lucky enough to coach last year and they have been playing great competition all year.  We hope to hold our own, have some fun, and get better by playing good competition.  I really have no idea what to expect.  We just don’t have the game experience that I’d like to have by this point, but I do believe that we’ll play hard and prove that we really shouldn’t be a #4

Viva!

Things have been crazy these past two weeks!  I’ve been swamped by various work projects and minor storms but such is life.  Things are turning around and opportunities are growing out of the challenges.  That being said, I must apologize for falling behind in my updates for all of the TR Volleyball followers out there!

The title of this update pretty much sums up where we are right now as a team.  Last weekend we took a trip down to Cincy to play in a 15 National Tournament.  This would be our first true test of the year as we would be playing up an age group against some of the best teams in the region and yes even the country.   The day started off with us getting absolutely drubbed by a very solid Cincy Classics team.   Our girls just simply weren’t ready for the speed of the game and the fact that you really have to earn points.  Most of my girls are used to winning points if they make one good play.  In “real” volleyball you have to make several good plays to end a point.  The second game was much more competitive but we never really threatened them. 

In the second match of the day, we were pitted against the mighty Team Z.  Team Z is one of the most successful and well regarded clubs in the country and their 15’s team backed up that reputation.  They came out firing but our girls after getting their feet wet in the first match we really figuring out how to play faster.  We scored a respectable 16 points in the first game against the national powerhouse giving us a bit more confidence heading into game two.  In game two our girls really put some nice thing together digging balls, hitting around blocks etc.  Deep into the game we found ourselves up 19-16 over Team Z forcing them to call a timeout!  We were pumped but from that point forward Z showed why they are Z finishing us off 25-22.  After talking with the Z coaches we knew we had earned their respect!

The rest of the day was a series of ups and downs.  We finished the day 1-4 losing in 3 to Atlantis and losing in 2 close ones to NKJV in the silver finals.  Overall the result wasn’t great but we learned some very valuable lessons about what it takes to compete at the next level.  It’s all about details.  If the pass doesn’t get all the way to the net the blockers can cheat to the outside.  If the set doesn’t get pushed all the way out you trap your hitter.  If you don’t hit smart, you get blocked.  If you don’t close the block they hit through you.  If you don’t press your hands, you get tooled.  If you don’t get stopped on defense, you can’t react to ball hit with that much pace.  These are all small details that you can get away with not doing against lesser competition but against good teams they make all of the difference.  The other thing we hopefully learned was speed.  Everything has to be done faster.  If you ever find yourself just standing, you’re doing something wrong. 

We’ve been working very hard on these details in practice this week.  I hope the girls enjoy their 3 day weekend, we’re going to be going very hard next week to get ready for the bid tourney!!!

Coach Dave texted me friday night to tell me he wasn’t going up friday night but would be there saturday morning.  He ended his text saying how excited he was to see them play for real.  I responded with “yeah, I”m trying to keep my hopes in check but I really think we’re pretty good.”

This weekend in our first official tournament, the girls blew away even my highest expectations going 7-0 to win the 15u division of the Motor City Madness Tourney.  Their performance has earned them a FREE bid to the AAU National Championship in Orlando which we will attend if don’t qualify for the USAV Nationals.  Nice to have that one in the bag and maybe even save the parents s bit of money on the entry fee

Day one of competition began bright and early at 8:00 at the Michigan Elite Facility in Warren.  I must say that the floor surface of all nine courts was outstanding.  Sport Court floors can prove difficult in finding the right mix of padding and stability but Kudos to Michigan Elite, they nailed it!  Our first pool of the season went about as well as could be hoped.  We went 3-0 with the 25-16 being the closest anyone came to giving us a scare.  While everything seemed to be clicking, Coach Dave and I worried that we might be getting ahead of ourselves.  The competition would get a lot tougher on day 2.

Sunday began with a seeding match against the winner of another pool.  We jumped on them early beating them handily in the first game then, as so often happens in volleybal, we had a bit of a let up and had to fight them off at the end of game two.  In an effort to see how we would handle the pressure, I refused to call any timeouts during the second game to see if the girls would step up themselves.  They played great down the stretch fighting off 2 game points with good plays to pull it out.

The quarter final match was the match all coaches dread.  The team we played against played hard but their skill level just wasn’t on par.  After coming off of our first close win, we just couldn’t ramp up again that fast to play clean volleyball.  We pulled it out but it wasn’t pretty.  I think (and hope) we learned a valuable lesson about playing our game no matter what’s coming back at us.

In the semi’s we had to play the team that gave us a scare earlier that mirning in the seeding round.  They wanted another shot at us badly!  It was a hard fought match but we pulled away at the endof both games to make it to the finals unscathed.  Waiting for us was Michigan Elite 15 Diamond who had knocked off both Dead Frog 15’s teams.  The match started off back andforth for the first 12-15 points before we really found our rhythm.  From that point on we went on a roll that even I couldn’t believe.  We were digging balls, blocking balls, taking swings from all over the court and our serve and serve receive games were on fire!  Normal rolls in volleyball last 5-10 points maybe an entire game if you’re really on.  This roll carried us to the end of the first game and all the way through the 2nd to an impressive straight sets win. 

I can’t tell you how happy I was at the end of the day.  Sure I was disappointed at times on Sunday that we played down a bit, but the way we finished really erased all of that.  I’m not sure how good the team was that we faced in the finals but they did play a high school system and style of volleyball and they did have wins over the very reputable Dead Frog teams.  That we played our best and most consistent match agaisnt a high school style team speaks volumes about how these girls are catching on to a higher level of play.  We aren’t kidding ourselves, we know we’ll see much tougher competition back home in Ohio but we absolutely could not have hoped for a better start. 

I’ll try to post some video highlights on the site in the next few days here…I know everyone including me wants another look at Alyssa’s ridiculous kill on the outside on saturday.  It won’t be hard to find highlights from every player on this team from this weekend.  Coaches always like to say everyone pitched in but in this case it is absolutely the truth.  The girls are really learning their roles and how each role has to be performed for us to be good.  It’s nice to see the end result of all those roles coming together!

Lots more work to do but with a group like this, work is fun!!!

Viva!!!

Following our scrimmage this past weekend we knew we had a lot of work to do!  Most of the work however was system work.  While we are really still mainly in the skills & technique work period we have really only been doing 20 mins to a half hour of system work at each practice.  We are planning to stick to this period plan through the end of March but we are shifting just a bit this week to make sure we are ready for our first tourney this coming weekend!

On Monday we did a lot of skill work focusing especially hard on defensive digging technique.  Breaking it down even farther we focused on the body position and “pre-dig” technique of read-step-hop.  This technique helps the defender get into the right defensive position of balance so that they can react quickly in all directions.  It’s an easy techniques physically, but figuring out the time of when to do it in relation to the hitter’s swing and the focus to make it a habit are very challenging.

From there we worked a bit more on our defensive positioning by have three hitters hit off of my sets while the other six played defense and finished out the point if they got the attack up.  Coach Dave sure can roll shot from anywhere to anywhere.  That’s a coaching skill I’m still working on…but my setting hands still produce nothing but butter!

Tuesday I think we had a real breakthrough.  Not in technique or system, but in energy and communication.  We started with an under the net digging drill.  At the end of the drill I was upset but it had nothing to do with swings or digs.  It had everything to do with how sheepish our girls were about communicating.  If their ball was shanked they were supposed to yell to me for a new ball so that we could keep the drill fast.  I was very disturbed that even yelling to coach for a new ball seemed too much to ask for most of our quiet players.  We had a very serious talk about showing some personality and opening up with your team and your coaches.  I was very blunt that if they didn’t start being more aggressive with their communication I would question if they had the personality to be an athlete.  I think that really caught some of them off guard.  Sports aren’t just about pushing yourself physically…

After a couple other drills we did a free ball drill to work on transition from defense to offense.  It started off kind of slow and there was so little communication that coach Dave and I got fed up and started being flat out mean about it.  For every person we didn’t think shouted out “free ball”,  ”mine”, or “cover” the entire team had to dopush-ups.  After four stoppages in a row some of the girls started getting on each other about speaking up.  Nothing inspires change in 14 year old girls like a little bit of peer pressure and fear of more push ups! :-)  from that point on our communication was outstanding and almost like clockwork our performance got better.  It was so good in fact that we let the girl decide what they wanted to do for the last 10 minutes of practice.

After a shot debate it was decided that they would scrimmage 4 on 4.  Coach Dave was the ref and scorekeeper.  After a couple of points I decided to see if this communication thing could be taken to the next level.  I put in our cheer rule.  The cheer rule is quite simple; when you win a point you don’t get the point unless every member of your team comes together and cheers.  Coach Dave only had to reverse to point for “illegal non cheering.”

By the end the girls were laughing and cheering after every point…I hope they have turned a corner on opening up and understanding that having a personality on the court is as important as being a good athlete!

Viva!

A HUGE thanks goes out to CVC and Blackswamp for coming to Toledo for our scrimmage on Saturday.  What a fun day of solid volleyball, solid competition all for free with no one having to get up too early or get home too late!

Overall I must admit that i was pleasantly surprised at how well our girls competed with the power houses that came over to play us.  With only 8 practices under our belts and almost no work on offensive or defensive systems, I honestly thought we’d get our butts handed to us

We started off against CVC and for the first hour we just did 5 serves in each rotation to each side.  This allowed both teams to work through their serve receive patterns.  CVC worked pretty hard at running some different combo plays while we simply got our switches down and worked on good clean transition.  We really held our own during this portion of the scrimmage.  We passed fairly well, ran some pretty good basic offense and learned a lot about reading on defense and fronting hitters at the net.  Perhaps our most impressive showing was from the service line.  We have several servers that are firing bb’s that float like crazy!

for the last 20 mins or so against CVC we played an actual scored game.  It was very interesting to see how different our girls played in their first scored game against competition.  Let’s just say having a scrimmage like this BEFORE official competition was a good idea :-)  Learning that we don’t change how we play just because there is a scoreboard involved will be very important to our development!  Thanks again to CVC, they are a very solid volleyball team who really knows how to step it up come game time!

After breaking for and hour and a half while CVC took on Blackswamp we got warmed up to take on arguably the best team in the OVR.  We decided to do a very fast paced free ball game through our rotations.  We popped in ten freeballs to them and then they gave us ten free balls.  It really is a great way to work on defense when the other team is in system 80% of the time. 

Blackswamp came out swinging and I think our girls were a little shell shocked at the pace of the game, the pace of play and the pace of their swings!  We simply were not on their level for the first 10-15 mins.  However after a few rotations we started to figure out that this high level club thing is totally different…you have to play fast, you have to recover, you have to move on right away.  Things really evened out as we caught up to the speed and we had several impressive runs.

Finally we finished with a full game to 25 that was quite competitive.   We lost down the stretch but definitely made a game of it.  We are really looking forward to seeing our friends from Blackswamp down the road.  You always know you’re going to get a great match from a great team!

Overall, I’m thrilled with where we are at so early on.  Most of all, I’m thrilled at how fast they are improving.  You could see it as the day went on that the girls were really starting to “get it.”  We’re not getting ahead of ourselves by any means.  We have a LONG ways to go before we can really compete at the top levels but both coach Dave and I agree that with the right work we can get there!

Viva!

Ok here’s the deal for saturday;

I need all of my TR people there at NDA at noon to help me get the gym set up.  We are only having three teams so we’re going to set up the main court and pull out the bleachers.

Play will begin at 12:30 with TR playing against CVC Black.  That will go from 12:30 - 2:00  At 2:00 Blackswamp will come in to play CVC until 3:30.  At that time CVC will eat and get on the road while Blackswamp will stay on and play TR from 3:30 - 5:00.  At 5:00 Blackswamp and TR will eat dinner and call it a night.

Fans are more than welcome to attend as this will be the only time we play in Toledo this year.  Please drive around to the back of the building and enter the main entrance back there.  Don’t bother with chairs as we will have the bleacher pulled out.  There won’t be an entry fee or concessions.  Also, the teams may not play games that keep a normal score.  I have already discussed running some different drills with CVC and they agree that might be more useful than actual games. 

In terms of expectations, i’m encouraging everyone who comes to understand what this is.  It is our first chance to play against anyone other than ourselves and we managed to get two of THE BEST teams in the region.  I expect our techniques to be solid, but we’ve barely scratched the surface on installing our offensive and defensive systems.  We are still in the technique development period of our schedule until after Motor City Madness.  Our goal has never been to peak in March.  We want to play well at bid and peak at the end of the season.  Saturday just gives us a chance to see where we are, what we need to work on, and who can play where effectlvely or at least shows potential in positions.

WOW! What an outstanding practice tonight.  The girls techniques, especially passing are looking so good and our free ball drills were really solid at the end of practice.  It’s nice to see them putting together good clean pass-set-swing plays.  Our setters are really stepping up their game as well!

Our session started with a 3 station 20 second per station rotation that we did 3 times.  Today was mainly plyo and speed work using our jump box, floor line, and stationary benches.

After that our on court work began with normal arm warm up and hand to ball contact drills.  From there we went right to passing drills including perfects, corner drills for the first time, and triangle passing for the first time.  Corner drill and triangle passing are drills that focus on getting feet behind the ball and turning hips towards the target before the pass.  Corner drill is really a habit drill in that doing it once doesn’t really help the player improve, but doing it on a regular basis trains your mind and body to move a certain way and to naturally get behind the ball without really thinking about it.

From that we did a butterfly passing drill in which the girls really kicked some butt.  It was at this point in the practice that I knew we were getting it.  The knocked out 50 perfect passes with coach Dave and I hitting down balls in about 3 minutes!

We finished off the night with some freeball drills.  We put all six girls on the court in their position using a back row setter and then popped free balls in and let them play it out.  We were very impressed with what we saw.  If we can get our setters transitioning a bit quicker, get our middles expecting the ball, and get our right sides to reach high all the time…we might be pretty decent

I’m so pumped to have everyone at practice tonight as we get ready for our scrimmage on saturday!!!

Viva!

Well I finally missed a day…oh well, I’ll just combine the last two days!

Tuesdays practice was as good as Monday’s was bad.  Not being mean, just being honest about Monday.  I think coach Dave might have been the only one on his game as he can be a great coach in his sleep!  I completely take 100% of the responsibility and I apologize for not “bringing my A game.”  Don’t get me wrong Monday wasn’t a total loss, we still got some things accomplished with the 5 that were there and we got some quality touches on the ball.  In my mind the feel just wasn’t there.  Anyone who has played sports knows that those days happen.  We refocus and we move on. 

Tuesday we did just that!  The plan was better, the girls were more focused, and we really played very well at times.   Most important the girls really displayed their ability to correct things on the fly.  That ability truly separates athletes from everyone who just plays. 

Tonight we started with a pretty cool bench circuit workout.  The bench circuit is a circuit of exercises that all use a bench as the only apparatus.  After the workout we did some hand to ball contact drills including dot & partner warm up swings, and self toss swings. 

We then moved into some ball control drills that reinforce body position before the pass and attention to details during the pass.  Form there we ran a serve receive type drill in which we needed to get 40 good passes to our target in 5 minutes.  To reinforce attention to details, we subtracted points for lack of communication, not being in the right place in the drill and even made them start from scratch for not keeping the score right.  This attention to the mental details of the game is such an overlooked area of practice, but it is vital for success at the higher levels.

To finish up, we worked on free ball and read, perimeter defense.   Our transition offense was pretty darn impressive in that when we made the defensive plays we turned them into swings pretty darn well.  We really need to work with our setters on releasing properly and we have a ton of work on defensive positioning but that will come as the year goes on.  We are still focusing on the techniques more than the system at this point.  We’ll be ready to put a team on the floor for the scrimmage on saturday but really none of our systems will be anywhere near where they will be in a few weeks.

Here’s hoping Morgan B feels better, WE MISS YOU!!!

Viva!

Today was by far our best practice.  The girls really worked hard, showed some impressive skill, and even showed a bit of energy and intensity in a competitive drill!

We started off with a 4 station warm up workout.  The girls worked hard as always, another by product of 2 months of proper workouts.  After the warm up work out, we did some arm swing warm up/hand to ball contact drills including one I call, “trick hits.”  Trick hits involves the coach tossing so that the girls have to swing at balls from strange angles moving quickly to get into position to put a good swing on the ball.  It’s a great hand-eye, hand to ball contact drill, not to mention it’s pretty fun!

After that I took half of the girls and worked on arm swings from our brand new steel jump box while Coach Dave worked the other half through run through passing.  Run through passing focuses on proper movement to the ball, proper angles to the ball, and hip orientation.  The arm swing work off the box allows us to focus on the small details of the arm swing including hip rotation, hand placement on the ball, and ab contraction upon contact.

From there we picked up with another favorite team drill called Clock serve receive.  Today we put a score on it and a time limit to reach that score.  While we failed in the first attempt, we beat it the next two times.  Perhaps most importantly as the clock drew down, the girls talked more, got more into it, and encouraged each other more.  That’s exactly the reaction to pressure we are looking for.

Finally we ended by throwing a lineup on the court and going through several serve receive points in each rotation.  There were flashes of brilliance and moments that reminded us how young we are and how little we’ve practiced

We’ll try a bunch of lineups over the course of the next several weeks.  We have so many girls with multiple talents that we have a ton of flexibility with what we can do!

I’m pumped after the first week.  They are improving so fast that if this keeps up we might be a pretty competitve team.  I remain realistic about our chances of success early on if success is measured by wins.  We just need to continue to remember that our true goal is simple; have fun and get better!  I know we’re doing that right now!!!

Viva!

Well it’s pretty late and I’ve been working non stop since 9:15 this morning.  The only break I took was for practice!

Practice today got off on a bit of a sour note for me as I quickly am discovering that our facility isn’t used to having a regular volleyball practice schedule.  Minor details, but annoying ones.  the facility really does fit our needs very well, we just need to work out the kinks.  I may call for some help over the weekend to head over there and do some court and equipment maintainence.  Could be a fun team builder

As for practice, it was more ups and downs with more ups than downs.  We did a lot of new things tonight including free ball drills in which we actually work on the seemingly simple skill of placing the ball where we want it if we have to give the other team a free ball.  We also worked on out of system back row attacks for a while.  This a big part of how we play.  We hate giving up easy free balls.  At this level I know it will result in more mistakes than are normal, but I want to develop aggressive palyers!

After some hitting and quite a few ball control drills including some dive and rolls drills, we set up six on the court and popped in free balls rapid fire and let them play it out.  Many flashes of brilliance during this.  Our DS’s really are doing a great job!

After some serve work including jumpers we did some ab stations, stretched out and called it a night.  Another practice in the books, see you tomorrow!

Viva!