{"id":16242,"date":"2016-12-19T10:54:28","date_gmt":"2016-12-19T16:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coachingvb.com\/?p=16242"},"modified":"2016-12-19T10:54:28","modified_gmt":"2016-12-19T16:54:28","slug":"avca-convention-2016-wrap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/2016\/12\/19\/avca-convention-2016-wrap\/","title":{"rendered":"AVCA Convention 2016 \u2013 Wrap-up"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The AVCA Convention for 2016 is over. See my reports on Day 1<\/a>, Day 2<\/a>, and Day 3<\/a>. I want to wrap things up in this post, and provide my final thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I only actually attended one session on the final day (Saturday) of the convention. That one focused on fundraising – something of immediate potential use for us at MSU as we plan an overseas trip for August 2017. It was probably a little more long-term in thinking, as it focused largely on developing relationships. I still came away with some good thoughts on what we can do, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from that session, I mostly just talked with some people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I ran into one of the leaders of Juniors in New England. That’s where I came up as a coach, but I haven’t been involved in a decade. Hearing the progress made since then was interesting. The inter-regional tournament we started in about 2003 as a 10-court January event is now a big 3-day convention center-based competition. They also now run another big tournament in Boston in early March. Plus, membership is growing at 10% a year. That’s awesome!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also saw a former college club teammate of mine. He’s the assistant coach at our alma mater, and in line for the head job now. I think the last time we saw each other was 2013 when I visited them in pre-season<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course the NCAA Division I final match was that night. I did not attend, but those I spoke with afterwards said the environment was much better than for Thursday’s Semifinals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, I enjoyed the event quite a bit. Although the city of Seattle was more interesting to me, I didn’t have as good an experience at the convention there in 2013. That is a function of not knowing as many people there, though. I had lost a lot of contacts after my years away from US volleyball (see my reports here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>), and was there by myself. I have since developed a base of contacts, and it’s always more fun when you can spend time with people you know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here are my final thoughts on the 2016 American Volleyball Coaches Association Convention. Overall, I had found it worth the time and money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[94,395],"class_list":["post-16242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-n-r","category-volleyball-coach-education","tag-coaching-convention","tag-volleyball-convention"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}