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).