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!

Tonight’s blog comes courtesy of our Trainer, Maryellen Jordan.  I had no idea she was going to do this, but it was a very plesant surprise when I opened up my email tonight.  Here is what she wrote;

To the parents of Toledo Revolution,

I just wanted to let you know what a privilege it was to train your girls! They are all great girls and I enjoyed my time with them.

I am honored that Scott trusted me enough to bring me on board of Toledo Revolution. 

I have the utmost respect of Scott’s ability as a coach. He has taught me much doing this time.

The training program that was designed for your girls was to develop a solid foundation of strength. Building a solid foundation of strength is critical for every female athlete competing in any sports that require strength and power.

My training philosophy is to expose youth athletes to a level of training which is appropriate for their age and ability.  Because the girls came into the gym and gave 100% they mastered the proper form and execution of several important exercises therefore helping themselves prevent injuries.

That is to be applauded J

The girls should realize that this added strength will be of great benefit to their performance on the court and they should have great confidence in it!

My ultimate goal was to provide a positive, enjoyable learning experience so that they may be hooked on exercise for life!

We had some “challenge” contests at the end of some of our trainings and I have decided to give All the girls a Positively Fit T-shirt. They are all winners!  (T-shirts on order- Do you blame me for wanting them as walking billboards!!)

Thanks again for the fun and rewarding experience.

Good Luck and go have fun!

Maryellen

Thanks for the note Maryellen.  Astheir coach i can’t tell you how nice it is to work with players who are properly conditioned.  They sure don’t look like 14 year old athletes. 

As for practice tonight, it was very productive again.  We did quite a bit more hitting tonight and some players made some real break throughs.  Surprisingly one of the keys was simply telling them to open up their hands bigger with making contact!

We ran some cooperative ball control drills and frankly we sturggled with them.  The silver lining was that it gave us an excellent opportunity to have a “conversation” about heart, focus, leadership, and teamwork.  The “conversation” being one sided with me laying down the law a bit and them running sprints .  I’m pretty sure they all still like me though and I got some pretty good nonverbal feedback that told me they got the point!

We also got to seperate out the setters and do some work with them while coach Dave showed off his athletic ability challenging the other players with a ball control digging game called coach on three.

Finally we ended with four on four back row only games to 7 with the loser having to do a consequence.  They played extremely well during these games.  Enough so that I got the bad taste out of my mouth from the poor performance during the cooperative ball control drills. 

Overall it was a solid practice with lots of improvement going on.  Things are moving so fast for some of our less experienced players, they are really getting a crash course and hadling it beautifully!

Coach Dave can’t make it tomorrow, so I’ll be on my own…

Viva!

So finally at long wait we had our first official practice of the year!!!

I had been in Florida all weekend and my flight home today that was supposed to get into Detroit at 12:30 didn’t get in until 3:00…that made for some hectic driving to Perrysburg for our first go around.  The nice part was that I got to go over practice plans and potential rotation projections in the airport for about 2 hours!

Tonight was mainly ball control work as most of this week will be.  We focused a great deal on basic passing breaking it down in all of the details we want them to be focusing on.  Both Coach Dave and I are big believers in centerline passing, a form of midline passing that focus on getting hips behind every ball.  We constantly harpped on using hips and shoulders rather than platform movement to pass the ball.  Drill wise we did 50’s, perfects, around the horn, acceleration, and firestep.  If you’d like more info on these drills feel free to drop me a line!

After about 45 mins of ball control we gave the grisl some time to work on serving.  I’m a big beleive that serving drills are vastly over rated.  The main reason for this is that almost every serving drill is based entirely on zone serving.  While zone serving is important, the way zone drills are scored does not reward palyers for the toughness of the serve.  When we do serving work, I want my girls to feel like they can try something new.  How else are they going to learn to serve tougher if every practice drill penalizes for misses?

we speant a little bit of time running our favorite dril, clock serve receive.  We had moments of excellence, but still a lot of miscommunication and passers unsure of themselves.  Once we learn our responsibilities and how to play next to each other, we have the potential to be a very good serve receive team.

Fianlly we ended with competiton.  We ran our favorite Notre Dame game today.  It deosn’t have a name yet!!!  It involves getting 10 opportunities in serve receive in each rotation and having to score a certain number of points in those 10 opportunities with a first ball kill resulting in 2 points.  Again we had moments of brilliance, but saw A LOT to work on.

Overall I was very happy with todays session.  It’s a good base upon which to build and the girls worked hard and were in good spirits.  Coach Dave and I both agreed that we have great athletes on this team as demonstrated in how fast they are able to correct and adjust when we give them instructions and cues.  Maryellen truly did a wonderful job as our girls are in great volleyball shape.  Coach Dave was amazed at how strong they are for 14 year olds. 

We are excited to continue, especially when we get to the point where the girls know the drills and what we are looking for.  At that point the intensity rises as we don’t have to pause to instruct so much.  I can’t wait to push them…I know they can handle it

Viva!