Over 40 families have expressed interest in TR already and all we did was post something on the website…apparently there is a market for new ideas!!! 

There will be another meeting this sunday October 25th at 7:00 in the gym at NDA.  Things are looking good for multiple teams.  Lot’s of interest at 13’s, 14’s, and 15’s with possibilities at 16-18.  Again once we get our interest lists compiled we’ll work with our partners to determine our best course of action for tryouts or referrals to other teams.

Please take a few minutes and read through TR Theory and About pages and let us know what you think about our ideas on what club ball can be!

Hope to see you at the meeting…Viva!

I’ve gotten several inquiries about girls that want to play a spring sport asking if we could put together early bird teams.  We are open to the idea but it would have to fit into our philosophy.  Please come to the meeting and we’ll discuss the specifics of early bird ideas after the general meeting!  Also, keep the emails coming if you are interested at all in TR.  The response has been very interesting so far

Also I’d like to address a statement I made in the last post in which I offered to put my reputation and track record up against anyone in the volleyball world especially the OVR Board.  I’ve recieved a few emails from OVR board members that were upset and felt attacked.  First off, it’s nice to know you are watching us like a hawk even though we’re not a part of your organization, I hope you are watching everyone this closely…   Secondly, offering to match reputations is a defense of mine, NOT an attack on yours.  I still have a lot of respect for various individuals on that board and know that several of their track records would stack up very well and I have a number of years before I could be considered up there with some.   My goal has never been to get into a war of words with the OVR.  This is the first time I’ve made any public statement in my own defense and that one line in a blog post doesn’t even register when compared to the way my kids and I have been treated.  I consider this the end of that issue, and will move on without any further involvement with the OVR.   Good luck to the OVR and USA volleyball in the upcomng season.  The volleyball world is big enough that we can both move on.

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!

Well the first stage of our official training began this week and the girls are feeling it!  Every player has at least one workout in with Maryellen and here is her assesment and explanation of what they are doing right now;

At this time, they are learning the movement prep and warm-up exercises along with focusing on developing the mastery of specific exercises techniques and including multi-dimensional exercise.   I am having the girls do some exercise that will help correct some of the postural deficiencies and to increase flexibility. Most of these exercises are related to the assessments we did with the  girls.

Most of girls are using their own body weight as resistance at this time. Eventually they will be loaded up but not until they conquer the mechanics of the particular lift and learn the movement pattern. And believe me this will be sooner then anticipated!  I know some of them are sore, but…. sore in all the right places!

After a week off, we had a pretty solid session last night.  After letting the girls screw around for a bit, which I find to be very useful at this point in the team building process, we played some random queens games including toss game, two on two with only 2 touches allowed per side, and regular two on two.  These types of games are great for warm up and provide lost of random training becasue of the lack of structure.  For a more detailed explanation of random training versus structured training check out the two articles that I wrote for prepvolleyball.com.  I’ve posted both articles as blog posts and links can be found in under my bio in the TR Staff page.

After playing, we decided to do some hitter training.  We believ very strongly that all players no matter what their position should be trained in all skills, especially at this age.  First off we did some hurdle hitting drills in which the hitter takes the first step of the approach to a low hurdle then hops over the low hurdle landing into their second and third step.  This type of hitting reinforces the details of the approach technique that transfer forward momentum into upward momentum.  After that we added a series of target dots on the floor that outline specific areas of the court.  We had the girls hit using different hip turn and hand to ball techniques to direct the ball to the specifc areas.

After hitting we had a little time at the end to play some four on four.  I forgot who won, but everyone seemed to be having fun!  Including guest coach Hailey Marvin who volunteered her time while home on break to help us out.  Thanks Hailey!

Well the 2nd get together was a lot less formal than the first.  It was clear from the get go that everyone still had some triptophan left in the system from the thanksgiving weekend

We ran quite a few cooprative ball control drills then just kind of played a few games.  There are several reasons behind the cooprative drills early in the life of the team.  A cooperative drill is a team drill based on a number of succesful rallys across a net.  The teams are not going for kills, they are trying to pass, set, and swing and have the other team dig, set, and swing back to them until a certain number is reached.  If the ball is misplayed, they have to start over.  This style of drill requires patience, focus, and communication, while bringing leaders to the forefront.  It also forces specific ball control and the ability to perform skills in a team setting and under some pressure as you don’t want to be the one to ruin the streak for the team. 

Overall there were signs of life, but much work is needed   As they get to know each other more and more, I’m sure more personality will come forth and with that, communication leadership and intensity will arise.

After the ball control drills I decided to display my awesome setting abilities and we played four on four……yes, yes my team lost both games………..

Looking forward to getting back in the gym.  We have such a great group of girls!

Well last night we had our first real training session.  We had planned it as an optional open gym, but with everyone there I figured we might as well do some training!

This early on we are trying to establish some basic motor skills that are needed to be able to teach certain techniques in the detailed way that we want them performed.  We went over how to cover the same distance of court in several different ways and several different numbers of steps.  We also speant a great deal of time with hip direction in regards to passing.  Lots of catch and freeze and catch and flip toss was used to work on hip orientation.  We are strong believers in hips initially face where the ball is coming from, then in flight are redirected to our target.  We also worked on body placement for arm swings.  Way too often coaches and players focus so much on the arm swing when truly 90% of the issue is getting you body in the right place to perform the arm swing. 

Overall, I thought it was a very successful practice in that we speant a great deal of time and effort on the building blocks of skills.  Movement patterns, hip orientation, hand to ball contact, and body positioning for the arm swing.  It wasn’t overly intense…..that comes later

I can’t tell you how excited I am to continue working with these girls.  Next Sunday is out becasue I have my NDA Volleyball Banquet, but the following Sunday is looking pretty good!  Check back for more updates!