This is an entry in my volleyball coaching log for 2016-17.
Spring Break has come and gone. We’re now into the “non-traditional season” where we are back to 20 hours per week.
Recruiting
I mentioned in my last update that we are looking to bring in one more transfer player for next season in MB/OPP role. That remains an on-going process, but we may have found someone for the position. Hopefully, more will follow on that shortly.
Looking at the 2018 class, we had another setter in to practice with the team on Friday. With only three more weeks left in our Spring season, we are trying to get in as many good prospects (in all positions) as we can so we can see then in the context of our team.
Team Training
We did not practice on Monday because of the 2-days-off rule given that we were playing on Saturday. Tuesday and Thursday we continued with the sand training – smaller groups doing drills one day, then doubles competition the other. Friday we had a recruit in practice with us, so we dedicated much of the session to working through line-ups and rotations ahead of the next day’s competition.
Wednesday I actually ran the session. The head coach is due to have her baby in the next week or so, and wanted to use the lack of having a recruit working in with us to get the team used to me directing things for when it’s likely to happen later.
My practice plan
I developed the primary structure of the practice plan for that session as well. The focus was to continue the work we’re doing in the beach training in terms of defensive tenacity, reading, and ball-handling.
We started with 3-person over-the-net pepper as a ball-control warm-up. In this version each group has to get 7 consecutive pass-set-X sequences, with only one “wash” allowed. A wash was a rep where they either just kept the ball in play or didn’t execute well enough on their X. They had to do down ball, push-tip, roll shot, and back row attack as their X. So, basically they had four sets of 7 sequences to complete. There was an 8 minute time limit.
After pepper we gave them five minutes of target serving, which we haven’t done in a while. The targets were deep 1 and deep 5. I told them their goal was 7 serves to their favored zone and 4 to the other.
We then played a Servers vs. Passers game. This is one we started using in the Fall. The servers earned points by hitting seams (between players or sideline), but lost them for serves in the net. The passers earn points by good passes. Each round the servers served 5 balls (misses did not count). When a round was complete, passers and servers changed places. They combined their serving and passing scores for an aggregate. We went through twice.
Next up was Player Winners. We did this half court, so had two games going on side-by-side. After each round, the players with the most points on Court B moved up to Court A, and those with the fewest on A moved down to B. Rounds were five minutes long. We played a total of four rounds. The last one ended when one person reached five points.
The last part of practice was 5-on-5 play. We played 5-point games, alternating between 3-up, 2-back and 2-up, 3-back. This was to give our middles a break and to let them play a bit of defense.
Tournament
We hosted a 6-team tournament on Saturday. It featured a trio of area junior colleges along with two other Division II teams along with ourselves. One of the latter was fellow Lone Star Conference member West Texas. We did not end up playing them, though. Instead, we played two of the JUCOs and the other Division II team. It was a schedule that saw us play progressively tougher matches, which was a good challenge. The format was 50-minute rounds. That generally worked out to two full 25-point games and part of a third.
As you do in Spring tournaments, we used multiple line-ups in our matches. There were three of them we rotated among. One was a straight up 5-1. Another was a modified 5-1 where our taller setter played front row and our shorter one played back row. The other was a 6-2 in which our taller setter played OPP when she was front row. This allowed us to mix things up with our three pin hitters, one of whom also played as libero. And of course our one MB had to play full time. We set up an on-off-on-off-on schedule to help keep from running her down.
Overall, it was a pretty good day. Naturally, there’s a list of stuff that we could have done better – some bigger, some smaller. Given our current active roster, there were always going to be some soft spots in our play. We were much better in defense than was the case back during season, though, and generally scrapier in all aspects. Those have been big focus points this term, so it was good to see that playing out against other teams.
It’s worth noting that one of the common themes in the player’s comments after the tournament was communication. They said it was really good on the court. I think this comes from all the non-structured situations we put them in over these last however many weeks. They haven’t had a lot of defined roles and positions. As a result, they were forced to work things out amongst themselves.
