Chicken Stew with Balsamic Roasted Vegetables

Here is a recipe that was originally published in the Taste of Home October/November 2009 issue, but I made a few alterations to it. For one serving there is 31g of protein and 3.8g of fiber for this stew and it smells incredible while it's cooking. This was my first time cooking with wine and it took me a good ten minutes to figure out what kind of wine I needed. I did need to ask Google for help. It does follow the typical stew definition where there is more solid than liquid.

 And I must add, it tastes really good.

Around the World and Other Spot Serving Drills

Serving is the only skill in volleyball that is not influenced by anyone but the player serving. Unlike passing, setting, and hitting which are all dependent on a previous move by another player, serving is entirely controlled by the one person. This drill focuses on placement of the serve and also requires players to judge for themselves if they achieve a certain goal. Make sure players get a few minutes to warm-up and warn them that they will be working on spot serving during the drill.

Easy Breakfasts that Last Until Practice

A few posts ago I mentioned that many high school athletes aren’t taking the time to eat breakfast in the morning. With that in mind, I wanted to do a post that included easy breakfasts that are quick to make and quick to eat that have enough protein to last through the day. Toaster waffles aren’t going to do it anymore. The three recipes I’ve included are all ones that I eat on a regular basis and I quite enjoy. Have fun making your own variations.

Layers of a volleyball

One of the great things about my mom is that she finds a surplus of something in her house and turns to me and says ‘do something with these.’ It works well, she collects and I then create. Thus I know how to crochet with plastic grocery bags bags, I know a few dozen recipes that use various forms of jam with pectin, and I know what to do with a surplus of old volleyballs that won’t hold air.

Drill: Ready Position Reactions

Because I'm very proud I'd like to start this post by announcing that my brother earned his orange belt this last weekend. He is very excited and looks forward to more training. He officially knows how to do something that I know nothing about.

I like to write about a lot of reaction time and quick change of reaction drills. This is partially because I feel they are extremelly important for training purposes. For this drill, you won't need a ball, or even any net set up. You can do this drill with all players at the same time.

Ego Like an Iceberg

All those setter’s out there who feel unappreciated in their role, let’s talk. Moms and Dads feel free to sit in so that you can see what is going on inside your setter’s head.

It sucks to go out and make incredible plays only to have the hitter get all the glory. Liberos even get more glory then setters do because they pick up some incredibly difficult balls. I’m not about to say that they aren’t important, it’s just really hard to only hear everything your doing wrong. You are expected to make these incredible sets and you don’t get praise when you do that. I read an article the other week that said that if you had to put a bad player somewhere, make them the setter. I might have complained rather loudly to my boyfriend for a good hour about how wrong that writer was.

Breakfast, Lunch, and a Snack Before Practice

We all have those days when we rush out of the house and forget to eat breakfast. Hopefully we have enough time to grab a piece of toast or a granola bar or something, but let’s face it, we sometimes have to leave the house in five minutes flat. Unfortunately, a large chunk of the teenage population who do have time for breakfast, don’t actually use that time to eat. They skip the meal.

Let Them Play

Last night as I was officiating I was again reminded of the words said years ago by an official I highly respect. 'If you're unsure, let them play.' What exactly does this means in terms of officiating? Well, if you are unsure whether something is a fault then give the players the benefit of the doubt and let play continue.

When Do You Show Up To Practice?

When do you show up to practice? Do you show up with enough time to put your gear on? I know some players show up with their gear on as practice starts, making sure they are in the huddle or on the line with just enough time that the coach can't punish them for being late. A word of advice: early is on time and on time is late.

How to Handle Being Cut

Being cut is awful. It feels like a confirmation of all your insecurities and worries. When you find out it feels like the coach is telling you 'out of all these girls, you weren't enough.' It is a miserable feeling.
It's okay to cry; it sucks to work hard for something and then not achieve your goal. What's even worse is the cultural assumption that if you work hard enough enough you will automatically achieve what you were working towards. This is ultimately untrue. Research has shown that it is not how hard you work but rather the number of hours spent working in a manner that improves your current skills.
Just remember, you are enough. The coach isn't trying to say that you are this horrible person who sucks.

This is a highly competitive sport with only 36 open positions and when you have 70 girls trying out, half of them will get cut. Most likely, girls who have put in countless hours of work and years of service to the program will get cut simply because there are not enough positions. You did work hard and that effort wasn't wasted. You improved YOU and you are imortant. You are your first priority. Like the airlines say, put your mask on first before you assist others. A bit morbid but a good analogy nonetheless.

Not Only Will I Stare, My Look Will Change Reality

Intimidation is a simple concept for those of us who are bigger and tougher than those around us. For those who are smaller and meeker, it can be a challenge. Women in general are considered less intimidating because of our smaller stature. People are genetically designed to interpret others to determine if they are a threat and we do this within seconds of seeing anyone’s face.

I've somewhat paraphrased someone with the title here. The direct quote is "I want my look to change reality," which I saw was said by Bell Hooks. I paraphrased because this is more of an affirmative than a wish, saying 'my look will; instead of 'I want my look to' is much firmer and stronger within your own mind.

Drill: Training Setter Peripheral Vision

For those teams with advanced setters, this is a drill I highly recommend. Many new setters have enough to deal with as it is and you might have to wait for the right player to come along to use this drill. I got to do this drill when I was sixteen and it is not easy. This is a skill that takes time and patience to develop.

Blockers are often taught to cheat while reading a setter’s body language. Most setters will position their body in a way that allows the blockers to tell which direction the ball will be going. Coaches need to help train their setters in maintaining consistent body posture so that they look the same before setting a ball to the outside as they would setting a ball to the right side. It is difficult and just takes time and focused practice. Once a setter has accomplished this, then the blockers have a more difficult time cheating and often times will misread the setter. This drill takes advantage of that cheat. One note, GOOD blockers will not cheat but often in high school volleyball, blockers are still training and feel the need to cheat in one direction or another.

Planning for Tryouts

August is well under way which means we only have a few weeks until try-out season starts; some of you have less than that. Most of you are in the two week window where you are not allowed to coach your players and some of you are about to start that. These two weeks are truly needed for players who’ve just finished club season along with team camp and individual camps. Players should be spending these next two weeks taking a break and simply training their body instead of playing.

Coaches, this is the time for you to clean up the equipment closet, prepare uniforms, and finalize tournament schedules. You should be e-mailing players the try-out schedule if you haven’t already and you definitely should be sitting down with the assistant coaches to plan out exactly what will be happening for try-outs. Having a drill by drill layout that is posted at the beginning of the day for coaches and volunteers to see is ideal.

Jen Welter: New Arizona Cardinals Coach

Many of you who keep up with sports have probably heard about the first woman to ever be hired in a coaching position for the NFL. Jen Welter was hired by the Arizona Cardinals as a intern coach for the team’s inside linebackers during training camp. This is a huge break for women in NFL, particularly when we are seeing other great breakthroughs in the NBA and in the officiating league to go along with it. This is all great and I’m excited but can we stop for a second and look at a few other things?

How Exercise and Activity Can Reduce Stress, and Avoid and Alleviate the Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety – Team Sports

The title is long winded but this series is wrapping up. In the previous post in this series, we discussed how  aerobic exercise can benefit not only your physical health but also your psychological health. The first post discussed the benefits of yoga on your mental health. This post will focus on how team sports, such as volleyball, can benefit your overall health.

Drill: Blocked by the Bleachers

Blocking is a commonly misunderstood skill. Most people feel they have failed at blocking if they are not able to prevent the opposing team from spiking the ball across the net. However, the point of blocking is to guide the ball to your own teammates by eliminating an alley on the court. It is always nice to block a ball though.

It’s not as much fun to be blocked however, and your teammates don’t really like you when that happens. Many teams struggle with being able to recover a blocked ball regardless of whether they’ve trained during scrimmages. This drill can be beneficial to a team that is struggling with recovering blocked balls and it has the added benefit of not needing two full teams of six (or seven if you include a libero).

Do You Want Me to Answer that as Your Mom or as Your Coach?

My mother had a running question for me during the nine years that she was my coach. Whenever I would say something to her she would ask ‘Do you want me to answer that as your mom or as your coach?’ The decision was not always easy. When I was upset about a teammate I would normally ask for my Mom but when it was a controversial topic I would always ask for her to be my coach. It was nice of her to offer the distinction for me.

Fast Twitch Not Slow Twitch

Do you want to know my biggest pet peeve in volleyball? Coaches’ who want their players running long distances. Want to know why? It doesn’t relate to volleyball. You can argue it increases your endurance but in all honesty it is more damaging to your training then it is helpful. There is a tradition with Olympic athletes where they run to train but it is outdated. We’ve done the research and there are plenty of exercises that are a better use of time and will benefit your body as a volleyball player.

"L" Cone Drill

This is a drill that I learned from one of my favorite trainers. It emphasizes several different motions as well as quick changes in directions. I call it the L-drill simply because I don’t have another name for it. It’s a drill that uses cones and I have a lot of those drills stashed away in the back of my mind.

The reason it’s called the L drill is because the cones appear in an L shape, or a right triangle. The cones are about six feet apart, a little over one body length. The L can also be in reverse but I’ll talk about that a bit more later. If you decide to do this drill on grass you want to make sure there are no hazards like holes or sprinkler heads. You also want to make sure that the grass is dry so that you won’t slip. One thing you’ll notice in my drill is that I use filled water bottles with a wide base instead of cones. I personally don’t own cones but water bottles work just as well as long as they aren’t top heavy.

My Argument Against Team Shoes

When I was sixteen I was talking to my club coach, a Rice University men’s volleyball alum, about volleyball shoes. He pointed out that when he was playing in college, the team bought them a new pair of shoes every month because that’s how hard they were on their shoes. Personally, between club, high school, and personal training, I went through two pairs of shoes and four insoles a year between the ages of fourteen and nineteen. I wished my family could afford to change that to four shoes a year and eight insoles but that wasn’t in the cards. The constant jumping and change of direction wears down shoes very quickly and the longer you go in an over worn pair of shoes, the more likely you are to get injured. 

Ingrown Toenails

I bet most of you can guess the inspiration behind this post. I went running for the first time in two weeks  and I ended up waking up the next day to horrid pain and swelling on the corner of my big toe. Let me tell you, I’m not a morning person to begin with and this was not what I wanted to wake up to an hour before my alarm. I suddenly understood what other people had been complaining about when they had an ingrown toenail.

My Brother Planks Better Then You

Planking seems very simple as a concept, simply get on the ground and lift your core off the ground, and then hold. Anyone who has done a proper plank will tell you the holding part is harder than it looks but it is very beneficial. Apart from gaining a strong core, you will also strengthen your back, see better posture, and improve your balance among other things.

Capsaicin for Pain Relief

Capsaicin is a chemical compound found in certain peppers that make them hot. It is the most pungent in a group of chemicals called capsaicinoids. You’ll find it in most chili peppers and in some of the hottest peppers on the face of the Earth. When eaten, it makes you mouth burn, but when used in a topical cream, it can actually reduce your pain.

How to Read a Pool Sheet

When I am a tournament director, the question I hear the most is ‘how do I read this?’ It amazes me how many coaches, players, and parents haven’t been taught how to read a schedule or the results sheet for a tournament. So now, prepare for a rather long post.

How Exercise and Activity Can Reduce Stress, and Avoid and Alleviate the Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety – Aerobic Exercise

In the previous post in this series, we discussed how yoga can benefit not only your physical health but also your psychological health. You can find this post here. This post will focus on how aerobic exercise can benefit your overall health.

(Photo credit freedigitalphotos.net)

3 on 3, No Touch You're Out

 I have to give full credit to Amy Jones for this drill. She created it  when I was about ten,  playing with my best friend who is now a DI volleyball player. She, by the way, was the best at the drill the first time we tried it.

The goal of the drill is simple: be aggressive.

Karl-Anthony Towns Demonstrates Drive Step

Last week we talked baseball talent, this week I’m going to talk about a basketball player, a very young NBA player. Karl-Anthony Towns was signed by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the 2015 NBA draft at the age of nineteen. Before that he played on the Dominican Republic National team where they missed making it to the 2012 Olympics by one place. He was sixteen at that time. He has also racked up a ton of awards through his time playing.

Crowds Lessen Impact: AKA Donaldson’s dive into the stands

I know this is a blog about volleyball but I pick up topics from all sports and after seeing something on FSN and searching for hours to find the video, I gave up. Well, I couldn’t find exactly what I had seen but I found the play that was being referenced in the show and that’s close enough for me.

Essentially, I was watching a highlight reel of last week’s MLB plays which include Josh Donaldson’s wicked catch from the Blue Jays game against Tampa Bay. I mean, this is the reason he’s playing professional baseball and I’m not. Not because I can’t hit a ball more than ten feet, which isn’t relevant. Anyways, check out his catch below.

No Ninja Volleyball

Ninja volleyball is a term one of my coaches used that refers to a player not making any noise on the court and sneaking up on their teammates. So for those of you who think I'm against the app, I only found it two minutes ago. This often causes at least one of the players to get injured. When I was officiating coed recreational volleyball the other night, two players on the same team went up to block the same ball and the guy slammed into the girl, causing her to fall to the floor. He also fell on top of her afterward. I immediately stopped play because she was clutching her head do to the fact that it had just hit the ground. Neither of them had verbally communicated that they were going to take the block.

This is something I see often in rec ball. Players don’t communicate and it is the ultimate downfall of the team. Teams could have poor technical skills but if they communicate they’ll beat a skilled team nearly every time. One of the easiest things to do to improve your game is to communicate with the person you’re playing with. This limits the number of assumptions made. And when I say communicate, I mean say anything and everything that you see or that you are going to do.

We avoid concussions simply by calling the ball we’re going to take. Remember the seagulls from Finding Nemo and how annoying they were, constantly saying ‘mine, mine, mine’? That is exactly what you should do. Call the ball and call it three times. If you hear your team mate call the ball then open to them and say their name. This lets them know that they have been heard by you and solidifies their claim to the ball.

For those of you that are new, I frequently reference Disney movies. I admit that I have an addiction but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a problem.

Anyways, we don’t have much time between plays, it can range from ten to thirty seconds at most so you need to make those seconds count. When I coach and I need to talk to a player during a game, I limit it to five words or a predetermined signal. If I want my hitter to wait and go fast when she goes to attack, I form a ‘W’ with my hands and call her name. If I want my setter to follow through, I make a setting motion and hold it. It can be difficult to limit yourself to five words, but you don’t have time for anything else and honestly, the message won’t sink in mid game if you use more than that.

Another simple communication technique is calling for the ball when you want to hit. I can’t tell you how many times I simply dumped the ball over the net when I was a setter and I didn’t hear a single hitter asking for the ball. I take that message as them not being ready or not being confident in their hitting abilities. My favorite thing to do when I play middle is to scream what I want and get the middle blocker on the other side to stick to me. This allows my setter to set up the outside or right side with one fewer blocker on the other side.

Other things to talk about include how a ball is going to come back over the net. If you see the hitter going to tip the ball, tell your team so they can adjust in to pick it up. If you see a split block, tell your teammate between plays. If someone is bumping the ball over the net, you need to call ‘free’ so that your team can set up for a kill.

There is no limit to what you can say when you’re playing. And I promise, you can always talk more and you can always be louder. I’m the loudest one in the gym and I still don’t think I’m loud enough or talking enough. You should lose your voice by the end of a tournament because of how much you talked.

I’d love to hear from you about things you find essential to tell your teammates. Leave a comment below!

My Mission

In this day and age, there is no reason for anyone to go into something without the information you need. However, it seems like everyone’s going into tryouts ill informed. Parents spend their first season figuring out what not to do and it appears that everyone keeps trying to reinvent the wheel.

My goal through this blog is to do the research for you so that you can be informed before and during your experience with volleyball, in whatever that capacity might be. I have a plethora of knowledge that I want to share with you.

I eat, breath, live volleyball. I will always be an active participant in some fashion, be it as a coach, a player, an official, and hopefully someday as a parent.

I’m a student of the game, first and foremost. I’ve been on the court absorbing information since I was two years old. In all honesty it started when I was in the womb. My mom won MVP at her woman’s tournament and then her morning sickness kicked in a week later (you’re welcome, mom). 

I’ve played nine years of club volleyball for two different clubs, I’ve been to countless camps at various organizations, I played four years of varsity volleyball for my high school, I’ve trained with some of the best trainers in Washington State, and I played a little collegiate volleyball. Over the years I’ve gotten to coach for club, boys’ and girls’ club, and US Youth Volleyball League. I’ve also gotten to officiate club, high school, and recreation volleyball.

Through all of this experience I’ve listened and learned. I’ve done my own research and I continue to do more research. I know that my way isn’t the only way to do things but it is my preferred way of doing things.

The volleyball community is vast at this point and some people argue that it still could be grown. In my opinion, the focus now should be on quality over quantity. I want to help give players, parents, coaches, and officials a quality experience and for them to help provide others with a quality experience with their knowledge. I want everyone to become students of the game.

Some of the things I will focus on through this blog include the physics of the game, kinematics of the body, drills to improve psychological skills, nutrition, and general information about various organizations.

How Exercise and Activity Can Reduce Stress, and Avoid and Alleviate the Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety – Yoga:

Stress will often cause people to become anxious, irritable, overly sensitive, tense, unfocused, or depressed. When we participate in exercise we often are focused on our physical health and we don’t realize how much it also benefits our mental health. The famous line from Legally Blonde comes to mind.