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The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Vol. II
Edited by Cecile Reynaud and American Volleyball Coaches Association
Series: The Coaching Bible
288 Pages
Building on the success of the first volume of The Volleyball Coaching Bible, the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) brings you The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II. Featuring contributions from 20 of the top volleyball minds in the game today, this resource will help you build your program, shape and improve your team, and sharpen your coaching skills in key areas such as these:
• Building and managing your program
• Developing players’ skills by position
• Establishing and implementing match strategy
• Training and conditioning athletes
• Offensive tactics
• Scouting and analyzing opponents
• Evaluating statistics and using them to your advantage
• Planning practices
The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II presents the drills top coaches use for developing players at each position and offers insights on in-game strategies for various match situations, including strategic serving, defensive schemes, and on-the-go decision making.
In addition to on-court Xs and Os, you’ll learn what it takes to establish a successful high school, college, and beach volleyball program. Setting program expectations and tactics, building a positive and winning culture, recruiting the right way, and running camps are all keys to sustained program success shared in The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Endorsed by the AVCA and edited by volleyball coaching legend Cecile Reynaud, The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II covers the entire court in describing and coaching the nuances of the game and shaping a successful program. It’s a practical and motivational resource that you’ll refer to season after season in your coaching career.
Part I Coaching Priorities
Chapter 1. Sharing the Passion
Chapter 2. Defining Expectations
Chapter 3. Developing a Positive Team Culture
Chapter 4. Developing a Growth Mind-Set
Part II Program Building and Management
Chapter 5. Building a Winning High School Program
Chapter 6. Building a Winning College Program
Chapter 7. Starting a Sand Volleyball Program
Chapter 8. Running a Successful Volleyball Camp
Chapter 9. Recruiting the Right Way
Chapter 10. Developing a Five-Year Plan
Part III Positional Training Strategies
Chapter 11. Training Middle Hitters
Chapter 12. Training Outside Hitters
Chapter 13. Training Setters
Chapter 14. Training Liberos
Part IV Match Preparation and Strategy
Chapter 15. Deliberate Practice Concepts
Chapter 16. Scouting Opponents the Right Way
Chapter 17. Statistics for More Effective Coaching
Chapter 18. Offensive Tactical Charts
Chapter 19. Serving Strategically
Chapter 20. On-Court Decision Making
Cecile Reynaud was the head coach of the Florida State University (FSU) volleyball team from 1976 until her retirement from coaching in 2001, compiling an impressive 635 wins in her 26 years at the helm. After her coaching career, Reynaud was a research associate professor at Florida State University, where she taught both graduate and undergraduate classes in the sport management program.
During her illustrious coaching career, she won seven conference championships and was twice named Atlantic Coast Conference Coach of the Year (1992, 2000). She was inducted into the FSU Athletic Hall of Fame (2009) and the USA Volleyball Florida Region Hall of Fame (2011). She is a member of the USA Volleyball board of directors and the AVCA board of directors. Reynaud is also a USA Volleyball CAP clinician.
Reynaud has served as color analyst for collegiate volleyball matches on Fox Sports Net South, Sunshine Network, and ESPN. She earned her doctorate degree in athletic administration from FSU in 1998.
She is a 1975 graduate of Southwest Missouri State University (SMSU), where she enjoyed an exceptional volleyball career and was twice named among the Outstanding College Athletes in America. In 1983, she was inducted into the SMSU Women’s Athletics Hall of Fame.
The American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) is dedicated to the advancement of the sport of volleyball with AVCA coaches at the epicenter of leadership, advocacy, and professional development. With a membership of over 6,400 and counting, the AVCA provides a professional network for those individuals and companies dedicated to enhancing and promoting the sport. Members include collegiate, high school, club, youth, and Olympic coaches as well as volleyball club directors. The AVCA provides education to volleyball coaches, recognition of elite players and coaches, promotion of volleyball competitions throughout the world, and networking opportunities for volleyball products and service providers.
The American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) has brought together 20 of the brightest, most successful coaches in the game today to cover topics most critical to serious coaches and to share personal insights and secrets from their hundreds of years of combined coaching experience. Contributing coaches include the following:
Ben Bodipo-Memba
Chris Catanach
Jamie Morrison
Shelton Collier
John Kessel
Charlie Sullivan
Becky Schmidt
Randy Dagostino
Todd Lowery
Danalee Corso
Salima Rockwell
Bill Ferguson
Erin Mellinger
Wayne Kreklow
Erik Sullivan
Gylton Da Matta
Joe Trinsey
Todd Dagenais
Bill Neville
Jennifer Petrie
“The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II, is an absolute must-read for volleyball coaches at all levels, and a wonderful addition to the available current volleyball texts. With the guidance of Cecile Reynaud, one of the most respected and experienced coaches of all time, this comprehensive book provides foundational concepts and expert advice that will surely help any coach become an even better coach.”
Doug Beal-- Chief Executive Officer USA Volleyball
“As one of Cecile’s former players, I benefited from her innate ability to get the best out of me and my teammates, and she’s done the same with the coaches who have contributed to this outstanding resource. I recommend this book to any volleyball coach who is serious about bringing the best game to the court.”
Gabrielle Reece-- Proprietor of www.GabbyandLaird.com, dedicated to healthy living, Women’s Beach Volleyball League (WBVL) and FIVB star, One of Women’s Sports & Fitness magazine’s 20 Most Influential Women in Sports, August 1997, 1997 WBVL world champion, 1997 Florida State University Athletic Hall of Fame inductee, 1994 and 1995 WBVL Offensive Player of the Year
“This is a book for those who love volleyball and for whom sharing that love is as essential as breathing.”
Kathy DeBoer-- Executive Director American Volleyball Coaches Association
Developing a positive team culture
Think back to a time when you worked hard, had fun, learned a lot, and achieved at a high level. What characterized that environment? What characterized the relationships you had with your peers? Your leader? Seldom do people look back and recall these times as easy, but they also don’t describe them as negative.
Think back to a time when you worked hard, had fun, learned a lot, and achieved at a high level. What characterized that environment? What characterized the relationships you had with your peers? Your leader? Seldom do people look back and recall these times as easy, but they also don't describe them as negative. A balance exists on teams that reach their potential - between challenge and skill, criticism and encouragement, trust and accountability, fun and focus, as well as between team and individual. How you, as a coach, facilitate the balance of these factors, both in your relationships with your athletes and in the way they relate to each other and the environment, is where the art of coaching is found.
The aspects of your program on which you have some influence are all based on relationships. The effectiveness of the drills you choose or the tactics you employ is based, in part, on the strength of your relationships with your players. The selflessness and team focus of your players are influenced, in part, by their relationships with each other. Their ability to be engaged in the moment and focus on the task at hand is facilitated, in part, by their relationships with their training and competitive environment. Although these relationships are sometimes difficult to control, they are certainly open to being influenced by the head coach.
Balance of Challenge and Skill
You may remember a time competing, as a player or as a coach, when you got lost in the moment. Time was transformed, your movement felt effortless, your focus was precise, and your performance was exemplary. In short, the experience was perfect, and somewhat elusive. We might remember these moments so clearly because they don't happen that often. Important research was conducted by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the late 20th century to investigate why these "flow" experiences happen and how they can happen more often. An important factor in their occurrence is the balance between the challenge presented by the context of the game or training environment and the skill level of the athletes involved. If the opponent or drill is too challenging for the participant based on skill level, frustration is likely to prevent a good performance. Likewise, if the contest or drill is too easy or simple for a team, boredom will prevent the athletes from having motivation to achieve optimal performance. The key is to manipulate the competitive and training environments to keep the balance of challenge and skill appropriate to maintain maximal motivation.
Coach - Player
As the coach, you have control over the drills you build into practice, the level of performance you demand, the way you structure groups and teams, and the level of competition in the nonleague portion of your schedule. The first task in an effort to achieve balance between challenge and skill is to evaluate your talent. At what skills do the players on your team demonstrate proficiency, and where are they weak? At what point do the skills at which they are proficient begin to break down? Evaluating these factors will help you find the sweet spot in training where athletes will experience enough challenge to feel pushed but also enough success to remain confident.
Another factor contributing to the balance of challenge and skill is the way athletes and coaches interpret failure. After all, the negativity that comes with frustration is rooted in the perception that failure is a bad thing. One of the common characteristics of training programs that elicit the most success from their performers is that failure is not something to be feared. In fact, failure is appreciated because it means that participants are willing to risk and to push themselves outside of their comfort zones to improve. People who fear failure attempt only the things they can already do. The player who fears failure and can attack very well crosscourt will focus only on her crosscourt attack, limiting the opportunity to develop her line shot. If you, as a coach, focus on failure (by either calling attention to it or punishing it), then you will end up fostering a mind-set that prevents risk taking and limits growth. Table 3.1 provides examples of how to manipulate the training and competitive environments to create a balance of challenge and skill to encourage peak performance.
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Player - Player
A positive team climate is not just dependent on the relationships between the players and coaches: it is one in which the players have a positive influence on each other. But how can players influence the balance between challenge and skill for each other? The answer comes in the way the team is grouped and how team members take responsibility for each other. At Hope College in Michigan, where I coach, I often structure scrimmage teams so that the top front-row players are attacking against the top back-row players. This makes it so that players who need more developmental work in the back row are digging balls against a front row that is also working on developing skills. Both groups are playing with and against teammates in ways that are developmentally appropriate.
On occasion, ignoring developmental level when grouping players can be incredibly positive. I worked with a volleyball club that would do position-specific practice with players from every age group on the same court by position. Experienced and talented 18-year-olds were grouped with 14-year-old novices. The challenge - skill balance was maintained because the experienced players were tasked with being good models of fundamental techniques for the younger players and with providing peer instruction. The younger players were encouraged to focus on the process (technique) rather than the result.
Player - Environment
Another way that we try to promote a balance of challenge and skill is to make sure that our players understand the big picture of our training. We use a whiteboard at practice to share our practice plan, the focus points and goals of each drill, and where our players are supposed to go. This helps players identify how the skills developed early in practice will prepare them for performance in the scrimmages later on. It identifies coaching cues and focus points that our staff will be verbalizing during the drills. The whiteboard also helps us track our performance in drills over time, which facilitates setting appropriate goals and standards. For instance, we do a crosscourt ball-control exchange drill in which players try to take a specific number of aggressive swings in five minutes. We keep the highest scores in that drill in the corner of our whiteboard as a reminder of the standard and players' past achievements.
Balance of Criticism and Encouragement
A positive team climate is one in which athletes improve their ability and learn more about their potential. The feedback they receive from their coaches, each other, and the environment contributes to both of these objectives. Telling players what they do well, although positive, does not help them maximize their skills. Focusing on the negative, for most athletes, results in frustration and decreased self-confidence. Again, the coach's task is to find a balance between the two as well as provide multiple sources of feedback.
Coach-Player
In my experience, athletes desire two types of feedback from their coaches:
- To be acknowledged when they do something well
- To be told specifically how to improve when they fail
At Hope College we want our coaches working hard to provide both types of feedback. We want to acknowledge and celebrate when our athletes succeed, both in result and process. I went through a phase in my coaching when I felt as though telling players "great pass" after getting the ball to target was redundant. They could see that the pass was perfect and didn't need me to tell them. I found that my athletes appreciated my praising their passes (or any other obvious demonstrations of skill) because pleasing me was important to them. This is further demonstrated in how often my players ask, "Coach, did you see that?" when they achieve success at something they have been working on. The athlete knows that she was successful, but she wants to share that success with me.
In addition to praising successful execution, we also want to praise successful process. Specific feedback on techniques that improve athletes' chances of success or attempts that are outside their comfort zones are worthy of encouragement. It helps to know exactly what your players are working to improve, so that you can give appropriate feedback when you see them make progress. Write down their goals or objectives, as well as the areas in which you would like to see them improve, and carry it with you during practice. Sharing those goals with your assistant coaches will keep them engaged and help them know where they can make a contribution.
When I realized that praising both success and progress toward goals was valued by my players, I also realized that I could be much more specific than just saying, "Great pass." We don't have a lot of time to convey a lot of information, so we use specific cues to convey exactly what led to the success. During one afternoon of our preseason, we spend a couple of hours in volley-school (an idea taken from the U.S. national team program), in which we explain all of the coaching cues our staff uses and exactly what each word means. This cuts down on needing to use whole sentences to explain the specifics of what the athlete did well or poorly; we need only one or two words that are well understood. We use words such as balance, square, plant, and press to convey specific aspects of skills quickly. You can use instructional feedback with motivational feedback to let your athletes know specifically what led to their positive results. Have a manager track the type of feedback you provide to see whether you are as positive, specific, and motivational as you can be.
The Positive Coaching Alliance (www.positivecoach.org) uses the phrase emotional gas tanks to convey athlete's emotional health. Praise, instruction, opportunity, and positive body language add to the emotional gas tank of an athlete. Criticism, punishment, and decreased opportunity result in emotional gas tank withdrawals. Keeping an eye on the emotional gas tank of each player on the team (how often you have made additions and how often you have made withdrawals) will help you predict how they will respond to the feedback. This is not to say that you should never make a withdrawal. Sometimes it is important to be critical, to uphold a standard, or to let athletes know that their behavior, attitude, or effort is unacceptable. However, in those situations, unless significant investments have been made, their motivation or self-confidence may diminish.
Player - Player
Players sometimes receive feedback from teammates more easily than from coaches. Such feedback can feel less threatening and also increase trust between teammates who are competing for the same position. We have developed a culture in which peer feedback is an important part of our program. The foundation is a lack of hierarchy within our team. For instance, we do not want our seniors to believe that they are any more important than our freshmen, or for sophomores to believe that they have any less value than juniors. We encourage our freshmen to give advice to seniors when they see an opportunity, and we ask our seniors to take the advice that they get from anyone with an outsider's perspective regardless of year.
In our program, the first 15 to 20 seconds of time-outs involve players getting into position groups so that the players on the bench can tell the players on the floor what they are seeing. This also gives the coaches a few seconds to meet and put together a cohesive, concise message for the entire team. For drill work in practice situations, we break up the team into smaller groups; while one group is performing the drill, another is positioned to give feedback. When we are working on blocking, one player says yes or no to communicate whether the middle closes the block, another player along the net says yes or no regarding the blocker's hands getting over the net, and another player identifies whether the block is timed correctly with the attack. The goal for the blockers, regardless of the result of the block, is to get three yeses from the players giving feedback. How can you strategically position your players who are not involved in drill so that they can provide valuable feedback to the players in the drill?
In a drill we call hot seat, which is a 6v6 scrimmage, one player is designated as the only one who can score a kill. One of our players did so well in that drill that a teammate bought a little red stool and wrote hot seat on it and put it in her teammate's locker to call attention to her great performance. When another teammate had a strong practice the next day, the first recipient of the hot seat passed it to her. Now, the little red stool moves from locker to locker as the previous recipient tries to identify the teammate who had the most impressive practice of the day. Such peer recognition goes a long way to build a team culture of encouragement, success, and positivity.
Player - Environment
Coaches can use video to provide important feedback in a way that builds motivation and confidence and increases effort. Many athletes are visual learners and benefit from seeing themselves perform. Technological advances have made access to video information very easy. We use an iPad app called BaM Video Delay to create a live delay on an iPad attached to a tripod. The delay is perfectly timed so that an athlete can perform a repetition in a drill, exit the drill, and watch her execution while a teammate performs the same drill on camera. The visual feedback allows players to see what they are doing correctly and incorrectly while also giving them the opportunity to experiment with a variety of techniques.
Videos of match play can also show players successful and problematic behaviors. Take advantage of available camera angles to focus on specific aspects of the game. For instance, if you can film only from the center line, focus on block penetration or the distance of the set off the net. When filming from behind the court, focus on blocking footwork and set distance. Be sure to focus on both positives and things to work on. Recently, as we were getting ready to watch a film of our serve-receive patterns from a match we had lost, I chose to show only the clips we had won. Seeing themselves succeed gave the players confidence in their ability to excel in their next match. Although this strategy worked in this situation, it shouldn't be the norm; it is important for teams to understand the reality of failure and to learn from those opportunities rather than disregard them.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Recruiting strategies for volleyball coaches
Phone calls and text messages are all allowed at certain times and may change. In 2015, a college coach can call an unlimited number of times during a contact period. The junior year is usually the heaviest recruiting time.
Phone calls and text messages are all allowed at certain times and may change. In 2015, a college coach can call an unlimited number of times during a contact period. The junior year is usually the heaviest recruiting time. It can get a little crazy with unlimited texting and people wanting to be texted back immediately. Top schools are the outliers because they recruit so young.
I have done only one home visit in the last eight years. In-person contact is allowed after July 1, but the rules may change each year. Sometimes I wish we could slow down recruiting by backing up home visits and official visits for a year so they would occur during their junior year instead of their senior year. Maybe the parents would be relieved not to have to pay to go to all of the universities on their own; they could simply wait for official visits during their junior year, which might slow things down a little bit.
Some athletes grow up wanting to go to a certain school. Perhaps it is nearby, or the whole family has gone there. If these athletes want to decide early, I think that is great. I worry about young players who haven't seen a lot of schools and are recruited by schools across the country where they have no real ties. These athletes seem to transfer more. De-commitments don't happen often, but they are most likely when athletes get to a school and find out it is not at all what they thought it would be.
Unofficial visits are very important now, but can be a challenge. Club volleyball is very time-consuming and expensive. Many parents can't afford to go to all the club tournaments, send their children to camps, and visit numerous college campuses. A lot of players regionalize; that is, they attend colleges they already know and feel comfortable with. However, they cannot make the most informed decision when they can't afford to visit all the schools that may be interested in them. Unfortunately, the official visit, which the university pays for, has become a formality during the senior year, after athletes have already made commitments. Families need to think about visiting college campuses as they vacation while their children are young. When they are driving around the country or flying to tournaments and cities, they can take time to stop by nearby campuses and get a feel for the schools. Athletes need to start early and see as many as colleges as they can.
Developing Trust
Once you have identified the athletes you are interested in, you should begin the relationship by making sure athletes, their parents, and their coaches trust you. They must believe that you are genuine in the recruiting process. I tell recruits to call me anytime, even if it is not about being recruited to the university I am working at. I tell them, essentially, that if they need help with anything about volleyball, playing on a summer USA Volleyball team, deciding which camp to attend, or anything at all, to call me.
As coaches, we need to open ourselves up as mentors to these young players. Parents will start to lean on us if they can tell that we care about their children as people. Every conversation isn't about a hard sell, but about getting to know recruits and their families. Witnessing the lack of honesty in some coaches is very frustrating. We need to know where these athletes are coming from. We need to put ourselves in their shoes and understand what they are looking for and what they need, and understand the stress involved in trying to make the best decision of where to go to school and play volleyball.
I learned to recruit from the head coaches I worked for. I was kind of a natural recruiter because I love to talk to and help people, and that's really what recruiting is. The communication part was easy for me. Great recruiters have magnetic personalities. People want to engage with them; they are trustworthy and honest, and they love to talk about volleyball. They love the game and sharing their passion for it. Most great recruiters don't have huge egos; generally speaking, they just love volleyball and are outstanding people you want to hang out with.Since recruiting is all about selling the university and the volleyball program, it is key to have someone who the players can relate to on your staff. If coaches don't have that type of personality themselves, they may be the ones who stay back in the office and take care of the tremendous paperwork with recruiting.
Offering Scholarships and Maintaining Commitments
Generally, we offer scholarships when we are 100 percent sure that an athlete can help us, which could be as early as 9th or 10th grade. Letting an athlete know that a scholarship is on the table is totally different from pressuring her to make a decision.
The head coaches I have worked with don't pressure anyone to make a decision or give them a deadline, and neither do I. The offer is theirs until the bitter end. Sometimes, during a junior or senior year when things are feeling a little tight with our second or third choices, we have to let an athlete know that we are under some pressure to make a decision. However, we want athletes who want to be here. We want to make sure they are coming because they want to, not because we forced them to make a decision.
After athletes commit to our school, we keep in touch with them. We do this for the sake of the relationship, but also because other schools may not honor that verbal commitment and continue to try to recruit them. We want to protect our prospective athletes from this pressure. We may communicate less frequently at this point and talk more about day-to-day things. We are getting to know them personally, letting them know that they can contact us anytime, and staying engaged with them. This helps athletes feels as though they have made the right decision and will be comfortable at our school. It shows we care. It is also very important to stay in touch with parents as well.
Tracking Recruits
It is critical that you identify a system for tracking all prospective recruits and where you are in the process with them. We use University Athlete (www.universityathlete.com) as a database to house most of our information. With this program you can look up any athletes and learn more about them. It allows you to also add notes under recruits' names and look up their schedules at tournaments, which is very helpful. A club that registers with University Athlete submits its schedules, which are uploaded so you can find times and the number of the courts athletes will be playing on. Every club gives its information to University Athlete, and university coaches pay an annual fee to access the service. This has made the data management side of recruiting much easier than it used to be.
International Recruits
I prefer to recruit domestically; I believe there is enough talent in the United States for a lot of teams to be good. However, international athletes can be good additions to your program if you are looking to move up quickly in the national rankings. The opportunity to have a great athlete with playing experience who is not afraid to compete because she has been there is hard to pass up. Most international athletes want to play volleyball and get an education. It is sometimes tough to determine whether an athlete is eligible to play on your program because of that athlete's professional experience. One recruiting service that can help identify international recruits is American Volleyball Scouting Report Global (www.avsrglobal.com/coaches).
Is an Athlete Being Recruited by a School?
The definition of a recruited athlete is defined in the 2014 NCAA rule book as follows: A prospect is considered a recruited athlete if the college takes one of the following actions:
- Provides the prospect with an official visit.
- Has off-campus contact with the prospect or the prospect's parents or legal guardians.
- Offers the prospect a national letter of intent or an athletic scholarship agreement.
- Initiates a telephone conversation with the prospect or the prospect's parents or legal guardians more than once.
Ironically, a college coach can have frequent communication (letters, e-mails, texts, phone calls if the athlete initiates the call) with a prospect without that person being considered a recruited athlete if the college coach does not take any of the preceding four actions.
Recruited Walk-Ons
We have a number of recruited walk-ons. Russ Rose, women's volleyball head coach at Penn State, loves to have a nice-size roster. Some athletes love the program and are super invested in what the school has and they are good enough to play and contribute, but at the time they applied, there was no scholarship for them. They are treated the same as athletes with scholarships in terms of academic services, equipment, and meals on the road. You would never know who is on scholarship by the way our athletes are treated. We have even had starters who were recruited as walk-ons.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Keeping stats and knowing how to use them
Coaches should be coaching; they need to spend as much time as possible in the moment and not with their heads down writing on paper. One of the greatest issues with keeping statistics is that the process of recording them can keep coaches from doing their primary job - coaching.
Issues With Using Statistics
Coaches should be coaching; they need to spend as much time as possible in the moment and not with their heads down writing on paper. One of the greatest issues with keeping statistics is that the process of recording them can keep coaches from doing their primary job - coaching. But if the coach isn't recording statistics, who should be? As the head coach on the bench, I have a sheet of paper on which I keep track of only the one or two statistics I believe are important to win the current match. These often change from opponent to opponent. Everything else is delegated to someone else who can quickly give me information as needed.
Statistics are only as valid and reliable as those recording them. It's often a challenge to find a reliable bench player, parent, or team manager who can keep accurate statistics. I love to have the backup setter keeping track of my team's passing and attacking statistics. It keeps her mind in the game, and it helps her understand what is working out there on the court. The same could be said for other players such as backup middles, outsides, and defensive players.
One of the greatest weaknesses of statistics is what many people call paralysis by analysis. A coach could easily make the mistake of taking numbers at face value and not using them to ask deeper questions. Some coaches spend too much time diving into the numbers and ultimately lose their coaching instincts. A coach who makes decisions completely based on numbers is just as susceptible to coaching mistakes as a coach who depends completely on instinct and subjective evaluation. The ideal situation is somewhere in the middle.
Statistical programs can be very expensive, or their complexity can make them very time-consuming. However, the recent development of tablet and iPad applications is making it very easy and inexpensive to track basic statistics. Several current programs include iVolleyStats, Volleyball Ace, and Rotate 123. The devices and applications will continue to change, so pay attention to new developments and use the right one for your program.
Tracking Statistics
It's really easy to say that detailed statistics should be taken during every practice and every competition. At the NCAA Division I level, a full staff and coaches are dedicated exclusively to the Data Volley statistical program. More often than not, recording statistics is the job of an assistant coach, bench player, or parent. I firmly believe that coaches should put coaching as their first priority. Coaches who have difficulty taking statistics and providing real-time feedback to their athletes should delegate the statistics to someone else. Those with limited options for statisticians are better off video-recording the match or practice and recording statistics from the video later.
The summer USA Volleyball High Performance teams often have a limited number of staff members. Obviously, the Olympic pipeline for USA Volleyball is extremely important, so recording quality statistics is as well. Following are some methods that can be used with a pen and paper and a limited staff.
Box Chart
Using a box chart, a coach can record multiple statistics at one time. The following box chart (table 17.1) shows who executed the serve receive, the rating of the pass, and what happened after the pass was set.
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We can gather a great deal of information from this chart. First, Jocelyn had 25 total passes for 43 total passing points. That means that her passing efficiency was 1.72 (43 passing points divided by 25 passes). We also know that 6 of her passes resulted in a first-ball kill, 10 passes resulted in a ball kept in play, 4 passes resulted in a first-ball error, and she was aced 5 times. We also can determine that 9 of her 25 passes were perfect (36 percent). This box chart can be used to track multiple stats for several players. The data can also be used to extrapolate areas of strength and weakness in a particular skill.
Stat Line
Using a stat line also works very well when a coach doesn't have enough time to chart events. With this method it's quite simple to keep track of many statistics at once. Following is a stat line chart for attacking, passing, and defense.
Luc: K 3 3 D 0 B A 3 2 D A B K E E
The translation of Luc's stat line would read like this from the first stat entry: kill, three pass, three pass, dig, zero pass, block, attack attempt, three pass, two pass, dig, attack attempt, block, kill, attack error, attack error. From this stat line we can determine the following about Luc's performance:
- 2 kills + 2 attack errors + 2 other attack attempts = 6 attempts
- 2 kills out of 6 attempts = 33% (kill percentage)
- 2 kills - 2 errors out of 6 attempts = .000 (kill efficiency)
- 5 serve-receive attempts for a total of 11 passing points = 2.20 (passing efficiency)
- 2 digs and 2 blocks
Most Important Statistics to Track
This subject is up for a great debate. The answer may lie in the type of team you have. If you have a team that scores at a very high level, then you are likely tracking the major offensive statistics. If your team depends on defensive skills to equalize matches, then you should be focusing more on serving, blocking, and defensive strategies. Let's have a quick refresher on the basic statistics in volleyball.
Basic Offensive Statistics
- Kill: When an attack attempt leads directly to a point
- Attack attempt: When an attack attempt results in neither a kill nor an error
- Error: When an attack attempt is blocked for a point, hit in the net, or hit out of bounds. Balls that are blocked are considered forced errors, whereas balls hit in the net or out of bounds are considered unforced errors.
Basic Defensive Statistics
- Block:A block is awarded to a player or players who score a point for their team by blocking an opponent attack. As many as three players may receive a block if they are all part of an attempt to block an attack.
- Block solo:When a player is the only one blocking a shot
- Block assist: When more than one player blocks an attack, all players receive a block assist regardless of whether they were the player who blocked the ball
- Block error: When a referee determines that a blocker has made illegal contact with the net
- Dig: When a player stops an opponent's attack attempt from being a kill
- Cover: When a player digs a teammate's attack after it has been blocked by an opponent
Basic Setting Statistics
- Set attempt: When a player attempts to set to a teammate for a kill
- Assist: When a player sets to a teammate and the attack is a kill
- Ball handling error: When a referee calls a player setting the ball for a lift or double contact
Basic Serving Statistics
- Serve attempt: When a player attempts a serve
- Ace: When a server's attempt is not passed and directly results in a point
- Serve error: When a player's attempt is served in the net or out of bounds, or a player commits a service line fault
Basic Serve-Receive Statistics
- Reception: When a player attempts a serve receive
- Reception error: When a player's poor serve receive leads to a direct point for the serving team
The following table 17.2 illustrates the two primary measurements of team system success, how those statistical measurements are determined, the best way to track the systems, and some goals your team might try to achieve.
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Serve-Receive Statistics
One of the most common ways to determine the success of your serve-receive game is to grade each serve reception.
Passing Average (3-Point Scale)
How to most accurately rate this statistic is up for great debate. Many coaches use a traditional 3-point scale ranging from 0 for an ace or overpass to 3 for a perfect pass. Figure 17.1 represents the value of each pass based on where the ball would have landed on the court.The team goal is to achieve a 2.30, or a 60 percent 3 pass.
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Passing average, 3-point scale.
Passing Average (4-Point Scale)
There is a statistical problem with the 3-point passing scale. Statisticians will tell you that anything with an odd number of data points is not statistically valid or reliable. Therefore, many higher-level programs use a 4-point scale ranging from 0 for an ace or overpass to 4 for a perfect-perfect pass (see figure 17.2). The team goal is to achieve 2.70, or a 60 percent 3 and 4 pass.
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Passing average, 4-point scale.
Passing Average (Weighted Scale)
Recently, I had a conversation with Jim Dietz, who is the very numbers-savvy head coach for Lincoln Land Community College in Illinois. He has been working with a passing scale that is weighted to include an expected success outcome based on the quality of a pass (see figure 17.3). It's fair to say that a 2 pass is twice as likely to yield a point as a 1 pass. A 5 pass is 5 times as likely to yield a point as a 1 pass. The team goal is to achieve 3.30, or a 60 percent 5 pass.
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Passing average, weighted scale.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Developing a positive team culture
Think back to a time when you worked hard, had fun, learned a lot, and achieved at a high level. What characterized that environment? What characterized the relationships you had with your peers? Your leader? Seldom do people look back and recall these times as easy, but they also don’t describe them as negative.
Think back to a time when you worked hard, had fun, learned a lot, and achieved at a high level. What characterized that environment? What characterized the relationships you had with your peers? Your leader? Seldom do people look back and recall these times as easy, but they also don't describe them as negative. A balance exists on teams that reach their potential - between challenge and skill, criticism and encouragement, trust and accountability, fun and focus, as well as between team and individual. How you, as a coach, facilitate the balance of these factors, both in your relationships with your athletes and in the way they relate to each other and the environment, is where the art of coaching is found.
The aspects of your program on which you have some influence are all based on relationships. The effectiveness of the drills you choose or the tactics you employ is based, in part, on the strength of your relationships with your players. The selflessness and team focus of your players are influenced, in part, by their relationships with each other. Their ability to be engaged in the moment and focus on the task at hand is facilitated, in part, by their relationships with their training and competitive environment. Although these relationships are sometimes difficult to control, they are certainly open to being influenced by the head coach.
Balance of Challenge and Skill
You may remember a time competing, as a player or as a coach, when you got lost in the moment. Time was transformed, your movement felt effortless, your focus was precise, and your performance was exemplary. In short, the experience was perfect, and somewhat elusive. We might remember these moments so clearly because they don't happen that often. Important research was conducted by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the late 20th century to investigate why these "flow" experiences happen and how they can happen more often. An important factor in their occurrence is the balance between the challenge presented by the context of the game or training environment and the skill level of the athletes involved. If the opponent or drill is too challenging for the participant based on skill level, frustration is likely to prevent a good performance. Likewise, if the contest or drill is too easy or simple for a team, boredom will prevent the athletes from having motivation to achieve optimal performance. The key is to manipulate the competitive and training environments to keep the balance of challenge and skill appropriate to maintain maximal motivation.
Coach - Player
As the coach, you have control over the drills you build into practice, the level of performance you demand, the way you structure groups and teams, and the level of competition in the nonleague portion of your schedule. The first task in an effort to achieve balance between challenge and skill is to evaluate your talent. At what skills do the players on your team demonstrate proficiency, and where are they weak? At what point do the skills at which they are proficient begin to break down? Evaluating these factors will help you find the sweet spot in training where athletes will experience enough challenge to feel pushed but also enough success to remain confident.
Another factor contributing to the balance of challenge and skill is the way athletes and coaches interpret failure. After all, the negativity that comes with frustration is rooted in the perception that failure is a bad thing. One of the common characteristics of training programs that elicit the most success from their performers is that failure is not something to be feared. In fact, failure is appreciated because it means that participants are willing to risk and to push themselves outside of their comfort zones to improve. People who fear failure attempt only the things they can already do. The player who fears failure and can attack very well crosscourt will focus only on her crosscourt attack, limiting the opportunity to develop her line shot. If you, as a coach, focus on failure (by either calling attention to it or punishing it), then you will end up fostering a mind-set that prevents risk taking and limits growth. Table 3.1 provides examples of how to manipulate the training and competitive environments to create a balance of challenge and skill to encourage peak performance.
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Player - Player
A positive team climate is not just dependent on the relationships between the players and coaches: it is one in which the players have a positive influence on each other. But how can players influence the balance between challenge and skill for each other? The answer comes in the way the team is grouped and how team members take responsibility for each other. At Hope College in Michigan, where I coach, I often structure scrimmage teams so that the top front-row players are attacking against the top back-row players. This makes it so that players who need more developmental work in the back row are digging balls against a front row that is also working on developing skills. Both groups are playing with and against teammates in ways that are developmentally appropriate.
On occasion, ignoring developmental level when grouping players can be incredibly positive. I worked with a volleyball club that would do position-specific practice with players from every age group on the same court by position. Experienced and talented 18-year-olds were grouped with 14-year-old novices. The challenge - skill balance was maintained because the experienced players were tasked with being good models of fundamental techniques for the younger players and with providing peer instruction. The younger players were encouraged to focus on the process (technique) rather than the result.
Player - Environment
Another way that we try to promote a balance of challenge and skill is to make sure that our players understand the big picture of our training. We use a whiteboard at practice to share our practice plan, the focus points and goals of each drill, and where our players are supposed to go. This helps players identify how the skills developed early in practice will prepare them for performance in the scrimmages later on. It identifies coaching cues and focus points that our staff will be verbalizing during the drills. The whiteboard also helps us track our performance in drills over time, which facilitates setting appropriate goals and standards. For instance, we do a crosscourt ball-control exchange drill in which players try to take a specific number of aggressive swings in five minutes. We keep the highest scores in that drill in the corner of our whiteboard as a reminder of the standard and players' past achievements.
Balance of Criticism and Encouragement
A positive team climate is one in which athletes improve their ability and learn more about their potential. The feedback they receive from their coaches, each other, and the environment contributes to both of these objectives. Telling players what they do well, although positive, does not help them maximize their skills. Focusing on the negative, for most athletes, results in frustration and decreased self-confidence. Again, the coach's task is to find a balance between the two as well as provide multiple sources of feedback.
Coach-Player
In my experience, athletes desire two types of feedback from their coaches:
- To be acknowledged when they do something well
- To be told specifically how to improve when they fail
At Hope College we want our coaches working hard to provide both types of feedback. We want to acknowledge and celebrate when our athletes succeed, both in result and process. I went through a phase in my coaching when I felt as though telling players "great pass" after getting the ball to target was redundant. They could see that the pass was perfect and didn't need me to tell them. I found that my athletes appreciated my praising their passes (or any other obvious demonstrations of skill) because pleasing me was important to them. This is further demonstrated in how often my players ask, "Coach, did you see that?" when they achieve success at something they have been working on. The athlete knows that she was successful, but she wants to share that success with me.
In addition to praising successful execution, we also want to praise successful process. Specific feedback on techniques that improve athletes' chances of success or attempts that are outside their comfort zones are worthy of encouragement. It helps to know exactly what your players are working to improve, so that you can give appropriate feedback when you see them make progress. Write down their goals or objectives, as well as the areas in which you would like to see them improve, and carry it with you during practice. Sharing those goals with your assistant coaches will keep them engaged and help them know where they can make a contribution.
When I realized that praising both success and progress toward goals was valued by my players, I also realized that I could be much more specific than just saying, "Great pass." We don't have a lot of time to convey a lot of information, so we use specific cues to convey exactly what led to the success. During one afternoon of our preseason, we spend a couple of hours in volley-school (an idea taken from the U.S. national team program), in which we explain all of the coaching cues our staff uses and exactly what each word means. This cuts down on needing to use whole sentences to explain the specifics of what the athlete did well or poorly; we need only one or two words that are well understood. We use words such as balance, square, plant, and press to convey specific aspects of skills quickly. You can use instructional feedback with motivational feedback to let your athletes know specifically what led to their positive results. Have a manager track the type of feedback you provide to see whether you are as positive, specific, and motivational as you can be.
The Positive Coaching Alliance (www.positivecoach.org) uses the phrase emotional gas tanks to convey athlete's emotional health. Praise, instruction, opportunity, and positive body language add to the emotional gas tank of an athlete. Criticism, punishment, and decreased opportunity result in emotional gas tank withdrawals. Keeping an eye on the emotional gas tank of each player on the team (how often you have made additions and how often you have made withdrawals) will help you predict how they will respond to the feedback. This is not to say that you should never make a withdrawal. Sometimes it is important to be critical, to uphold a standard, or to let athletes know that their behavior, attitude, or effort is unacceptable. However, in those situations, unless significant investments have been made, their motivation or self-confidence may diminish.
Player - Player
Players sometimes receive feedback from teammates more easily than from coaches. Such feedback can feel less threatening and also increase trust between teammates who are competing for the same position. We have developed a culture in which peer feedback is an important part of our program. The foundation is a lack of hierarchy within our team. For instance, we do not want our seniors to believe that they are any more important than our freshmen, or for sophomores to believe that they have any less value than juniors. We encourage our freshmen to give advice to seniors when they see an opportunity, and we ask our seniors to take the advice that they get from anyone with an outsider's perspective regardless of year.
In our program, the first 15 to 20 seconds of time-outs involve players getting into position groups so that the players on the bench can tell the players on the floor what they are seeing. This also gives the coaches a few seconds to meet and put together a cohesive, concise message for the entire team. For drill work in practice situations, we break up the team into smaller groups; while one group is performing the drill, another is positioned to give feedback. When we are working on blocking, one player says yes or no to communicate whether the middle closes the block, another player along the net says yes or no regarding the blocker's hands getting over the net, and another player identifies whether the block is timed correctly with the attack. The goal for the blockers, regardless of the result of the block, is to get three yeses from the players giving feedback. How can you strategically position your players who are not involved in drill so that they can provide valuable feedback to the players in the drill?
In a drill we call hot seat, which is a 6v6 scrimmage, one player is designated as the only one who can score a kill. One of our players did so well in that drill that a teammate bought a little red stool and wrote hot seat on it and put it in her teammate's locker to call attention to her great performance. When another teammate had a strong practice the next day, the first recipient of the hot seat passed it to her. Now, the little red stool moves from locker to locker as the previous recipient tries to identify the teammate who had the most impressive practice of the day. Such peer recognition goes a long way to build a team culture of encouragement, success, and positivity.
Player - Environment
Coaches can use video to provide important feedback in a way that builds motivation and confidence and increases effort. Many athletes are visual learners and benefit from seeing themselves perform. Technological advances have made access to video information very easy. We use an iPad app called BaM Video Delay to create a live delay on an iPad attached to a tripod. The delay is perfectly timed so that an athlete can perform a repetition in a drill, exit the drill, and watch her execution while a teammate performs the same drill on camera. The visual feedback allows players to see what they are doing correctly and incorrectly while also giving them the opportunity to experiment with a variety of techniques.
Videos of match play can also show players successful and problematic behaviors. Take advantage of available camera angles to focus on specific aspects of the game. For instance, if you can film only from the center line, focus on block penetration or the distance of the set off the net. When filming from behind the court, focus on blocking footwork and set distance. Be sure to focus on both positives and things to work on. Recently, as we were getting ready to watch a film of our serve-receive patterns from a match we had lost, I chose to show only the clips we had won. Seeing themselves succeed gave the players confidence in their ability to excel in their next match. Although this strategy worked in this situation, it shouldn't be the norm; it is important for teams to understand the reality of failure and to learn from those opportunities rather than disregard them.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Recruiting strategies for volleyball coaches
Phone calls and text messages are all allowed at certain times and may change. In 2015, a college coach can call an unlimited number of times during a contact period. The junior year is usually the heaviest recruiting time.
Phone calls and text messages are all allowed at certain times and may change. In 2015, a college coach can call an unlimited number of times during a contact period. The junior year is usually the heaviest recruiting time. It can get a little crazy with unlimited texting and people wanting to be texted back immediately. Top schools are the outliers because they recruit so young.
I have done only one home visit in the last eight years. In-person contact is allowed after July 1, but the rules may change each year. Sometimes I wish we could slow down recruiting by backing up home visits and official visits for a year so they would occur during their junior year instead of their senior year. Maybe the parents would be relieved not to have to pay to go to all of the universities on their own; they could simply wait for official visits during their junior year, which might slow things down a little bit.
Some athletes grow up wanting to go to a certain school. Perhaps it is nearby, or the whole family has gone there. If these athletes want to decide early, I think that is great. I worry about young players who haven't seen a lot of schools and are recruited by schools across the country where they have no real ties. These athletes seem to transfer more. De-commitments don't happen often, but they are most likely when athletes get to a school and find out it is not at all what they thought it would be.
Unofficial visits are very important now, but can be a challenge. Club volleyball is very time-consuming and expensive. Many parents can't afford to go to all the club tournaments, send their children to camps, and visit numerous college campuses. A lot of players regionalize; that is, they attend colleges they already know and feel comfortable with. However, they cannot make the most informed decision when they can't afford to visit all the schools that may be interested in them. Unfortunately, the official visit, which the university pays for, has become a formality during the senior year, after athletes have already made commitments. Families need to think about visiting college campuses as they vacation while their children are young. When they are driving around the country or flying to tournaments and cities, they can take time to stop by nearby campuses and get a feel for the schools. Athletes need to start early and see as many as colleges as they can.
Developing Trust
Once you have identified the athletes you are interested in, you should begin the relationship by making sure athletes, their parents, and their coaches trust you. They must believe that you are genuine in the recruiting process. I tell recruits to call me anytime, even if it is not about being recruited to the university I am working at. I tell them, essentially, that if they need help with anything about volleyball, playing on a summer USA Volleyball team, deciding which camp to attend, or anything at all, to call me.
As coaches, we need to open ourselves up as mentors to these young players. Parents will start to lean on us if they can tell that we care about their children as people. Every conversation isn't about a hard sell, but about getting to know recruits and their families. Witnessing the lack of honesty in some coaches is very frustrating. We need to know where these athletes are coming from. We need to put ourselves in their shoes and understand what they are looking for and what they need, and understand the stress involved in trying to make the best decision of where to go to school and play volleyball.
I learned to recruit from the head coaches I worked for. I was kind of a natural recruiter because I love to talk to and help people, and that's really what recruiting is. The communication part was easy for me. Great recruiters have magnetic personalities. People want to engage with them; they are trustworthy and honest, and they love to talk about volleyball. They love the game and sharing their passion for it. Most great recruiters don't have huge egos; generally speaking, they just love volleyball and are outstanding people you want to hang out with.Since recruiting is all about selling the university and the volleyball program, it is key to have someone who the players can relate to on your staff. If coaches don't have that type of personality themselves, they may be the ones who stay back in the office and take care of the tremendous paperwork with recruiting.
Offering Scholarships and Maintaining Commitments
Generally, we offer scholarships when we are 100 percent sure that an athlete can help us, which could be as early as 9th or 10th grade. Letting an athlete know that a scholarship is on the table is totally different from pressuring her to make a decision.
The head coaches I have worked with don't pressure anyone to make a decision or give them a deadline, and neither do I. The offer is theirs until the bitter end. Sometimes, during a junior or senior year when things are feeling a little tight with our second or third choices, we have to let an athlete know that we are under some pressure to make a decision. However, we want athletes who want to be here. We want to make sure they are coming because they want to, not because we forced them to make a decision.
After athletes commit to our school, we keep in touch with them. We do this for the sake of the relationship, but also because other schools may not honor that verbal commitment and continue to try to recruit them. We want to protect our prospective athletes from this pressure. We may communicate less frequently at this point and talk more about day-to-day things. We are getting to know them personally, letting them know that they can contact us anytime, and staying engaged with them. This helps athletes feels as though they have made the right decision and will be comfortable at our school. It shows we care. It is also very important to stay in touch with parents as well.
Tracking Recruits
It is critical that you identify a system for tracking all prospective recruits and where you are in the process with them. We use University Athlete (www.universityathlete.com) as a database to house most of our information. With this program you can look up any athletes and learn more about them. It allows you to also add notes under recruits' names and look up their schedules at tournaments, which is very helpful. A club that registers with University Athlete submits its schedules, which are uploaded so you can find times and the number of the courts athletes will be playing on. Every club gives its information to University Athlete, and university coaches pay an annual fee to access the service. This has made the data management side of recruiting much easier than it used to be.
International Recruits
I prefer to recruit domestically; I believe there is enough talent in the United States for a lot of teams to be good. However, international athletes can be good additions to your program if you are looking to move up quickly in the national rankings. The opportunity to have a great athlete with playing experience who is not afraid to compete because she has been there is hard to pass up. Most international athletes want to play volleyball and get an education. It is sometimes tough to determine whether an athlete is eligible to play on your program because of that athlete's professional experience. One recruiting service that can help identify international recruits is American Volleyball Scouting Report Global (www.avsrglobal.com/coaches).
Is an Athlete Being Recruited by a School?
The definition of a recruited athlete is defined in the 2014 NCAA rule book as follows: A prospect is considered a recruited athlete if the college takes one of the following actions:
- Provides the prospect with an official visit.
- Has off-campus contact with the prospect or the prospect's parents or legal guardians.
- Offers the prospect a national letter of intent or an athletic scholarship agreement.
- Initiates a telephone conversation with the prospect or the prospect's parents or legal guardians more than once.
Ironically, a college coach can have frequent communication (letters, e-mails, texts, phone calls if the athlete initiates the call) with a prospect without that person being considered a recruited athlete if the college coach does not take any of the preceding four actions.
Recruited Walk-Ons
We have a number of recruited walk-ons. Russ Rose, women's volleyball head coach at Penn State, loves to have a nice-size roster. Some athletes love the program and are super invested in what the school has and they are good enough to play and contribute, but at the time they applied, there was no scholarship for them. They are treated the same as athletes with scholarships in terms of academic services, equipment, and meals on the road. You would never know who is on scholarship by the way our athletes are treated. We have even had starters who were recruited as walk-ons.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Keeping stats and knowing how to use them
Coaches should be coaching; they need to spend as much time as possible in the moment and not with their heads down writing on paper. One of the greatest issues with keeping statistics is that the process of recording them can keep coaches from doing their primary job - coaching.
Issues With Using Statistics
Coaches should be coaching; they need to spend as much time as possible in the moment and not with their heads down writing on paper. One of the greatest issues with keeping statistics is that the process of recording them can keep coaches from doing their primary job - coaching. But if the coach isn't recording statistics, who should be? As the head coach on the bench, I have a sheet of paper on which I keep track of only the one or two statistics I believe are important to win the current match. These often change from opponent to opponent. Everything else is delegated to someone else who can quickly give me information as needed.
Statistics are only as valid and reliable as those recording them. It's often a challenge to find a reliable bench player, parent, or team manager who can keep accurate statistics. I love to have the backup setter keeping track of my team's passing and attacking statistics. It keeps her mind in the game, and it helps her understand what is working out there on the court. The same could be said for other players such as backup middles, outsides, and defensive players.
One of the greatest weaknesses of statistics is what many people call paralysis by analysis. A coach could easily make the mistake of taking numbers at face value and not using them to ask deeper questions. Some coaches spend too much time diving into the numbers and ultimately lose their coaching instincts. A coach who makes decisions completely based on numbers is just as susceptible to coaching mistakes as a coach who depends completely on instinct and subjective evaluation. The ideal situation is somewhere in the middle.
Statistical programs can be very expensive, or their complexity can make them very time-consuming. However, the recent development of tablet and iPad applications is making it very easy and inexpensive to track basic statistics. Several current programs include iVolleyStats, Volleyball Ace, and Rotate 123. The devices and applications will continue to change, so pay attention to new developments and use the right one for your program.
Tracking Statistics
It's really easy to say that detailed statistics should be taken during every practice and every competition. At the NCAA Division I level, a full staff and coaches are dedicated exclusively to the Data Volley statistical program. More often than not, recording statistics is the job of an assistant coach, bench player, or parent. I firmly believe that coaches should put coaching as their first priority. Coaches who have difficulty taking statistics and providing real-time feedback to their athletes should delegate the statistics to someone else. Those with limited options for statisticians are better off video-recording the match or practice and recording statistics from the video later.
The summer USA Volleyball High Performance teams often have a limited number of staff members. Obviously, the Olympic pipeline for USA Volleyball is extremely important, so recording quality statistics is as well. Following are some methods that can be used with a pen and paper and a limited staff.
Box Chart
Using a box chart, a coach can record multiple statistics at one time. The following box chart (table 17.1) shows who executed the serve receive, the rating of the pass, and what happened after the pass was set.
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We can gather a great deal of information from this chart. First, Jocelyn had 25 total passes for 43 total passing points. That means that her passing efficiency was 1.72 (43 passing points divided by 25 passes). We also know that 6 of her passes resulted in a first-ball kill, 10 passes resulted in a ball kept in play, 4 passes resulted in a first-ball error, and she was aced 5 times. We also can determine that 9 of her 25 passes were perfect (36 percent). This box chart can be used to track multiple stats for several players. The data can also be used to extrapolate areas of strength and weakness in a particular skill.
Stat Line
Using a stat line also works very well when a coach doesn't have enough time to chart events. With this method it's quite simple to keep track of many statistics at once. Following is a stat line chart for attacking, passing, and defense.
Luc: K 3 3 D 0 B A 3 2 D A B K E E
The translation of Luc's stat line would read like this from the first stat entry: kill, three pass, three pass, dig, zero pass, block, attack attempt, three pass, two pass, dig, attack attempt, block, kill, attack error, attack error. From this stat line we can determine the following about Luc's performance:
- 2 kills + 2 attack errors + 2 other attack attempts = 6 attempts
- 2 kills out of 6 attempts = 33% (kill percentage)
- 2 kills - 2 errors out of 6 attempts = .000 (kill efficiency)
- 5 serve-receive attempts for a total of 11 passing points = 2.20 (passing efficiency)
- 2 digs and 2 blocks
Most Important Statistics to Track
This subject is up for a great debate. The answer may lie in the type of team you have. If you have a team that scores at a very high level, then you are likely tracking the major offensive statistics. If your team depends on defensive skills to equalize matches, then you should be focusing more on serving, blocking, and defensive strategies. Let's have a quick refresher on the basic statistics in volleyball.
Basic Offensive Statistics
- Kill: When an attack attempt leads directly to a point
- Attack attempt: When an attack attempt results in neither a kill nor an error
- Error: When an attack attempt is blocked for a point, hit in the net, or hit out of bounds. Balls that are blocked are considered forced errors, whereas balls hit in the net or out of bounds are considered unforced errors.
Basic Defensive Statistics
- Block:A block is awarded to a player or players who score a point for their team by blocking an opponent attack. As many as three players may receive a block if they are all part of an attempt to block an attack.
- Block solo:When a player is the only one blocking a shot
- Block assist: When more than one player blocks an attack, all players receive a block assist regardless of whether they were the player who blocked the ball
- Block error: When a referee determines that a blocker has made illegal contact with the net
- Dig: When a player stops an opponent's attack attempt from being a kill
- Cover: When a player digs a teammate's attack after it has been blocked by an opponent
Basic Setting Statistics
- Set attempt: When a player attempts to set to a teammate for a kill
- Assist: When a player sets to a teammate and the attack is a kill
- Ball handling error: When a referee calls a player setting the ball for a lift or double contact
Basic Serving Statistics
- Serve attempt: When a player attempts a serve
- Ace: When a server's attempt is not passed and directly results in a point
- Serve error: When a player's attempt is served in the net or out of bounds, or a player commits a service line fault
Basic Serve-Receive Statistics
- Reception: When a player attempts a serve receive
- Reception error: When a player's poor serve receive leads to a direct point for the serving team
The following table 17.2 illustrates the two primary measurements of team system success, how those statistical measurements are determined, the best way to track the systems, and some goals your team might try to achieve.
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Serve-Receive Statistics
One of the most common ways to determine the success of your serve-receive game is to grade each serve reception.
Passing Average (3-Point Scale)
How to most accurately rate this statistic is up for great debate. Many coaches use a traditional 3-point scale ranging from 0 for an ace or overpass to 3 for a perfect pass. Figure 17.1 represents the value of each pass based on where the ball would have landed on the court.The team goal is to achieve a 2.30, or a 60 percent 3 pass.
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Passing average, 3-point scale.
Passing Average (4-Point Scale)
There is a statistical problem with the 3-point passing scale. Statisticians will tell you that anything with an odd number of data points is not statistically valid or reliable. Therefore, many higher-level programs use a 4-point scale ranging from 0 for an ace or overpass to 4 for a perfect-perfect pass (see figure 17.2). The team goal is to achieve 2.70, or a 60 percent 3 and 4 pass.
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Passing average, 4-point scale.
Passing Average (Weighted Scale)
Recently, I had a conversation with Jim Dietz, who is the very numbers-savvy head coach for Lincoln Land Community College in Illinois. He has been working with a passing scale that is weighted to include an expected success outcome based on the quality of a pass (see figure 17.3). It's fair to say that a 2 pass is twice as likely to yield a point as a 1 pass. A 5 pass is 5 times as likely to yield a point as a 1 pass. The team goal is to achieve 3.30, or a 60 percent 5 pass.
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Passing average, weighted scale.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Developing a positive team culture
Think back to a time when you worked hard, had fun, learned a lot, and achieved at a high level. What characterized that environment? What characterized the relationships you had with your peers? Your leader? Seldom do people look back and recall these times as easy, but they also don’t describe them as negative.
Think back to a time when you worked hard, had fun, learned a lot, and achieved at a high level. What characterized that environment? What characterized the relationships you had with your peers? Your leader? Seldom do people look back and recall these times as easy, but they also don't describe them as negative. A balance exists on teams that reach their potential - between challenge and skill, criticism and encouragement, trust and accountability, fun and focus, as well as between team and individual. How you, as a coach, facilitate the balance of these factors, both in your relationships with your athletes and in the way they relate to each other and the environment, is where the art of coaching is found.
The aspects of your program on which you have some influence are all based on relationships. The effectiveness of the drills you choose or the tactics you employ is based, in part, on the strength of your relationships with your players. The selflessness and team focus of your players are influenced, in part, by their relationships with each other. Their ability to be engaged in the moment and focus on the task at hand is facilitated, in part, by their relationships with their training and competitive environment. Although these relationships are sometimes difficult to control, they are certainly open to being influenced by the head coach.
Balance of Challenge and Skill
You may remember a time competing, as a player or as a coach, when you got lost in the moment. Time was transformed, your movement felt effortless, your focus was precise, and your performance was exemplary. In short, the experience was perfect, and somewhat elusive. We might remember these moments so clearly because they don't happen that often. Important research was conducted by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the late 20th century to investigate why these "flow" experiences happen and how they can happen more often. An important factor in their occurrence is the balance between the challenge presented by the context of the game or training environment and the skill level of the athletes involved. If the opponent or drill is too challenging for the participant based on skill level, frustration is likely to prevent a good performance. Likewise, if the contest or drill is too easy or simple for a team, boredom will prevent the athletes from having motivation to achieve optimal performance. The key is to manipulate the competitive and training environments to keep the balance of challenge and skill appropriate to maintain maximal motivation.
Coach - Player
As the coach, you have control over the drills you build into practice, the level of performance you demand, the way you structure groups and teams, and the level of competition in the nonleague portion of your schedule. The first task in an effort to achieve balance between challenge and skill is to evaluate your talent. At what skills do the players on your team demonstrate proficiency, and where are they weak? At what point do the skills at which they are proficient begin to break down? Evaluating these factors will help you find the sweet spot in training where athletes will experience enough challenge to feel pushed but also enough success to remain confident.
Another factor contributing to the balance of challenge and skill is the way athletes and coaches interpret failure. After all, the negativity that comes with frustration is rooted in the perception that failure is a bad thing. One of the common characteristics of training programs that elicit the most success from their performers is that failure is not something to be feared. In fact, failure is appreciated because it means that participants are willing to risk and to push themselves outside of their comfort zones to improve. People who fear failure attempt only the things they can already do. The player who fears failure and can attack very well crosscourt will focus only on her crosscourt attack, limiting the opportunity to develop her line shot. If you, as a coach, focus on failure (by either calling attention to it or punishing it), then you will end up fostering a mind-set that prevents risk taking and limits growth. Table 3.1 provides examples of how to manipulate the training and competitive environments to create a balance of challenge and skill to encourage peak performance.
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Player - Player
A positive team climate is not just dependent on the relationships between the players and coaches: it is one in which the players have a positive influence on each other. But how can players influence the balance between challenge and skill for each other? The answer comes in the way the team is grouped and how team members take responsibility for each other. At Hope College in Michigan, where I coach, I often structure scrimmage teams so that the top front-row players are attacking against the top back-row players. This makes it so that players who need more developmental work in the back row are digging balls against a front row that is also working on developing skills. Both groups are playing with and against teammates in ways that are developmentally appropriate.
On occasion, ignoring developmental level when grouping players can be incredibly positive. I worked with a volleyball club that would do position-specific practice with players from every age group on the same court by position. Experienced and talented 18-year-olds were grouped with 14-year-old novices. The challenge - skill balance was maintained because the experienced players were tasked with being good models of fundamental techniques for the younger players and with providing peer instruction. The younger players were encouraged to focus on the process (technique) rather than the result.
Player - Environment
Another way that we try to promote a balance of challenge and skill is to make sure that our players understand the big picture of our training. We use a whiteboard at practice to share our practice plan, the focus points and goals of each drill, and where our players are supposed to go. This helps players identify how the skills developed early in practice will prepare them for performance in the scrimmages later on. It identifies coaching cues and focus points that our staff will be verbalizing during the drills. The whiteboard also helps us track our performance in drills over time, which facilitates setting appropriate goals and standards. For instance, we do a crosscourt ball-control exchange drill in which players try to take a specific number of aggressive swings in five minutes. We keep the highest scores in that drill in the corner of our whiteboard as a reminder of the standard and players' past achievements.
Balance of Criticism and Encouragement
A positive team climate is one in which athletes improve their ability and learn more about their potential. The feedback they receive from their coaches, each other, and the environment contributes to both of these objectives. Telling players what they do well, although positive, does not help them maximize their skills. Focusing on the negative, for most athletes, results in frustration and decreased self-confidence. Again, the coach's task is to find a balance between the two as well as provide multiple sources of feedback.
Coach-Player
In my experience, athletes desire two types of feedback from their coaches:
- To be acknowledged when they do something well
- To be told specifically how to improve when they fail
At Hope College we want our coaches working hard to provide both types of feedback. We want to acknowledge and celebrate when our athletes succeed, both in result and process. I went through a phase in my coaching when I felt as though telling players "great pass" after getting the ball to target was redundant. They could see that the pass was perfect and didn't need me to tell them. I found that my athletes appreciated my praising their passes (or any other obvious demonstrations of skill) because pleasing me was important to them. This is further demonstrated in how often my players ask, "Coach, did you see that?" when they achieve success at something they have been working on. The athlete knows that she was successful, but she wants to share that success with me.
In addition to praising successful execution, we also want to praise successful process. Specific feedback on techniques that improve athletes' chances of success or attempts that are outside their comfort zones are worthy of encouragement. It helps to know exactly what your players are working to improve, so that you can give appropriate feedback when you see them make progress. Write down their goals or objectives, as well as the areas in which you would like to see them improve, and carry it with you during practice. Sharing those goals with your assistant coaches will keep them engaged and help them know where they can make a contribution.
When I realized that praising both success and progress toward goals was valued by my players, I also realized that I could be much more specific than just saying, "Great pass." We don't have a lot of time to convey a lot of information, so we use specific cues to convey exactly what led to the success. During one afternoon of our preseason, we spend a couple of hours in volley-school (an idea taken from the U.S. national team program), in which we explain all of the coaching cues our staff uses and exactly what each word means. This cuts down on needing to use whole sentences to explain the specifics of what the athlete did well or poorly; we need only one or two words that are well understood. We use words such as balance, square, plant, and press to convey specific aspects of skills quickly. You can use instructional feedback with motivational feedback to let your athletes know specifically what led to their positive results. Have a manager track the type of feedback you provide to see whether you are as positive, specific, and motivational as you can be.
The Positive Coaching Alliance (www.positivecoach.org) uses the phrase emotional gas tanks to convey athlete's emotional health. Praise, instruction, opportunity, and positive body language add to the emotional gas tank of an athlete. Criticism, punishment, and decreased opportunity result in emotional gas tank withdrawals. Keeping an eye on the emotional gas tank of each player on the team (how often you have made additions and how often you have made withdrawals) will help you predict how they will respond to the feedback. This is not to say that you should never make a withdrawal. Sometimes it is important to be critical, to uphold a standard, or to let athletes know that their behavior, attitude, or effort is unacceptable. However, in those situations, unless significant investments have been made, their motivation or self-confidence may diminish.
Player - Player
Players sometimes receive feedback from teammates more easily than from coaches. Such feedback can feel less threatening and also increase trust between teammates who are competing for the same position. We have developed a culture in which peer feedback is an important part of our program. The foundation is a lack of hierarchy within our team. For instance, we do not want our seniors to believe that they are any more important than our freshmen, or for sophomores to believe that they have any less value than juniors. We encourage our freshmen to give advice to seniors when they see an opportunity, and we ask our seniors to take the advice that they get from anyone with an outsider's perspective regardless of year.
In our program, the first 15 to 20 seconds of time-outs involve players getting into position groups so that the players on the bench can tell the players on the floor what they are seeing. This also gives the coaches a few seconds to meet and put together a cohesive, concise message for the entire team. For drill work in practice situations, we break up the team into smaller groups; while one group is performing the drill, another is positioned to give feedback. When we are working on blocking, one player says yes or no to communicate whether the middle closes the block, another player along the net says yes or no regarding the blocker's hands getting over the net, and another player identifies whether the block is timed correctly with the attack. The goal for the blockers, regardless of the result of the block, is to get three yeses from the players giving feedback. How can you strategically position your players who are not involved in drill so that they can provide valuable feedback to the players in the drill?
In a drill we call hot seat, which is a 6v6 scrimmage, one player is designated as the only one who can score a kill. One of our players did so well in that drill that a teammate bought a little red stool and wrote hot seat on it and put it in her teammate's locker to call attention to her great performance. When another teammate had a strong practice the next day, the first recipient of the hot seat passed it to her. Now, the little red stool moves from locker to locker as the previous recipient tries to identify the teammate who had the most impressive practice of the day. Such peer recognition goes a long way to build a team culture of encouragement, success, and positivity.
Player - Environment
Coaches can use video to provide important feedback in a way that builds motivation and confidence and increases effort. Many athletes are visual learners and benefit from seeing themselves perform. Technological advances have made access to video information very easy. We use an iPad app called BaM Video Delay to create a live delay on an iPad attached to a tripod. The delay is perfectly timed so that an athlete can perform a repetition in a drill, exit the drill, and watch her execution while a teammate performs the same drill on camera. The visual feedback allows players to see what they are doing correctly and incorrectly while also giving them the opportunity to experiment with a variety of techniques.
Videos of match play can also show players successful and problematic behaviors. Take advantage of available camera angles to focus on specific aspects of the game. For instance, if you can film only from the center line, focus on block penetration or the distance of the set off the net. When filming from behind the court, focus on blocking footwork and set distance. Be sure to focus on both positives and things to work on. Recently, as we were getting ready to watch a film of our serve-receive patterns from a match we had lost, I chose to show only the clips we had won. Seeing themselves succeed gave the players confidence in their ability to excel in their next match. Although this strategy worked in this situation, it shouldn't be the norm; it is important for teams to understand the reality of failure and to learn from those opportunities rather than disregard them.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Recruiting strategies for volleyball coaches
Phone calls and text messages are all allowed at certain times and may change. In 2015, a college coach can call an unlimited number of times during a contact period. The junior year is usually the heaviest recruiting time.
Phone calls and text messages are all allowed at certain times and may change. In 2015, a college coach can call an unlimited number of times during a contact period. The junior year is usually the heaviest recruiting time. It can get a little crazy with unlimited texting and people wanting to be texted back immediately. Top schools are the outliers because they recruit so young.
I have done only one home visit in the last eight years. In-person contact is allowed after July 1, but the rules may change each year. Sometimes I wish we could slow down recruiting by backing up home visits and official visits for a year so they would occur during their junior year instead of their senior year. Maybe the parents would be relieved not to have to pay to go to all of the universities on their own; they could simply wait for official visits during their junior year, which might slow things down a little bit.
Some athletes grow up wanting to go to a certain school. Perhaps it is nearby, or the whole family has gone there. If these athletes want to decide early, I think that is great. I worry about young players who haven't seen a lot of schools and are recruited by schools across the country where they have no real ties. These athletes seem to transfer more. De-commitments don't happen often, but they are most likely when athletes get to a school and find out it is not at all what they thought it would be.
Unofficial visits are very important now, but can be a challenge. Club volleyball is very time-consuming and expensive. Many parents can't afford to go to all the club tournaments, send their children to camps, and visit numerous college campuses. A lot of players regionalize; that is, they attend colleges they already know and feel comfortable with. However, they cannot make the most informed decision when they can't afford to visit all the schools that may be interested in them. Unfortunately, the official visit, which the university pays for, has become a formality during the senior year, after athletes have already made commitments. Families need to think about visiting college campuses as they vacation while their children are young. When they are driving around the country or flying to tournaments and cities, they can take time to stop by nearby campuses and get a feel for the schools. Athletes need to start early and see as many as colleges as they can.
Developing Trust
Once you have identified the athletes you are interested in, you should begin the relationship by making sure athletes, their parents, and their coaches trust you. They must believe that you are genuine in the recruiting process. I tell recruits to call me anytime, even if it is not about being recruited to the university I am working at. I tell them, essentially, that if they need help with anything about volleyball, playing on a summer USA Volleyball team, deciding which camp to attend, or anything at all, to call me.
As coaches, we need to open ourselves up as mentors to these young players. Parents will start to lean on us if they can tell that we care about their children as people. Every conversation isn't about a hard sell, but about getting to know recruits and their families. Witnessing the lack of honesty in some coaches is very frustrating. We need to know where these athletes are coming from. We need to put ourselves in their shoes and understand what they are looking for and what they need, and understand the stress involved in trying to make the best decision of where to go to school and play volleyball.
I learned to recruit from the head coaches I worked for. I was kind of a natural recruiter because I love to talk to and help people, and that's really what recruiting is. The communication part was easy for me. Great recruiters have magnetic personalities. People want to engage with them; they are trustworthy and honest, and they love to talk about volleyball. They love the game and sharing their passion for it. Most great recruiters don't have huge egos; generally speaking, they just love volleyball and are outstanding people you want to hang out with.Since recruiting is all about selling the university and the volleyball program, it is key to have someone who the players can relate to on your staff. If coaches don't have that type of personality themselves, they may be the ones who stay back in the office and take care of the tremendous paperwork with recruiting.
Offering Scholarships and Maintaining Commitments
Generally, we offer scholarships when we are 100 percent sure that an athlete can help us, which could be as early as 9th or 10th grade. Letting an athlete know that a scholarship is on the table is totally different from pressuring her to make a decision.
The head coaches I have worked with don't pressure anyone to make a decision or give them a deadline, and neither do I. The offer is theirs until the bitter end. Sometimes, during a junior or senior year when things are feeling a little tight with our second or third choices, we have to let an athlete know that we are under some pressure to make a decision. However, we want athletes who want to be here. We want to make sure they are coming because they want to, not because we forced them to make a decision.
After athletes commit to our school, we keep in touch with them. We do this for the sake of the relationship, but also because other schools may not honor that verbal commitment and continue to try to recruit them. We want to protect our prospective athletes from this pressure. We may communicate less frequently at this point and talk more about day-to-day things. We are getting to know them personally, letting them know that they can contact us anytime, and staying engaged with them. This helps athletes feels as though they have made the right decision and will be comfortable at our school. It shows we care. It is also very important to stay in touch with parents as well.
Tracking Recruits
It is critical that you identify a system for tracking all prospective recruits and where you are in the process with them. We use University Athlete (www.universityathlete.com) as a database to house most of our information. With this program you can look up any athletes and learn more about them. It allows you to also add notes under recruits' names and look up their schedules at tournaments, which is very helpful. A club that registers with University Athlete submits its schedules, which are uploaded so you can find times and the number of the courts athletes will be playing on. Every club gives its information to University Athlete, and university coaches pay an annual fee to access the service. This has made the data management side of recruiting much easier than it used to be.
International Recruits
I prefer to recruit domestically; I believe there is enough talent in the United States for a lot of teams to be good. However, international athletes can be good additions to your program if you are looking to move up quickly in the national rankings. The opportunity to have a great athlete with playing experience who is not afraid to compete because she has been there is hard to pass up. Most international athletes want to play volleyball and get an education. It is sometimes tough to determine whether an athlete is eligible to play on your program because of that athlete's professional experience. One recruiting service that can help identify international recruits is American Volleyball Scouting Report Global (www.avsrglobal.com/coaches).
Is an Athlete Being Recruited by a School?
The definition of a recruited athlete is defined in the 2014 NCAA rule book as follows: A prospect is considered a recruited athlete if the college takes one of the following actions:
- Provides the prospect with an official visit.
- Has off-campus contact with the prospect or the prospect's parents or legal guardians.
- Offers the prospect a national letter of intent or an athletic scholarship agreement.
- Initiates a telephone conversation with the prospect or the prospect's parents or legal guardians more than once.
Ironically, a college coach can have frequent communication (letters, e-mails, texts, phone calls if the athlete initiates the call) with a prospect without that person being considered a recruited athlete if the college coach does not take any of the preceding four actions.
Recruited Walk-Ons
We have a number of recruited walk-ons. Russ Rose, women's volleyball head coach at Penn State, loves to have a nice-size roster. Some athletes love the program and are super invested in what the school has and they are good enough to play and contribute, but at the time they applied, there was no scholarship for them. They are treated the same as athletes with scholarships in terms of academic services, equipment, and meals on the road. You would never know who is on scholarship by the way our athletes are treated. We have even had starters who were recruited as walk-ons.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Keeping stats and knowing how to use them
Coaches should be coaching; they need to spend as much time as possible in the moment and not with their heads down writing on paper. One of the greatest issues with keeping statistics is that the process of recording them can keep coaches from doing their primary job - coaching.
Issues With Using Statistics
Coaches should be coaching; they need to spend as much time as possible in the moment and not with their heads down writing on paper. One of the greatest issues with keeping statistics is that the process of recording them can keep coaches from doing their primary job - coaching. But if the coach isn't recording statistics, who should be? As the head coach on the bench, I have a sheet of paper on which I keep track of only the one or two statistics I believe are important to win the current match. These often change from opponent to opponent. Everything else is delegated to someone else who can quickly give me information as needed.
Statistics are only as valid and reliable as those recording them. It's often a challenge to find a reliable bench player, parent, or team manager who can keep accurate statistics. I love to have the backup setter keeping track of my team's passing and attacking statistics. It keeps her mind in the game, and it helps her understand what is working out there on the court. The same could be said for other players such as backup middles, outsides, and defensive players.
One of the greatest weaknesses of statistics is what many people call paralysis by analysis. A coach could easily make the mistake of taking numbers at face value and not using them to ask deeper questions. Some coaches spend too much time diving into the numbers and ultimately lose their coaching instincts. A coach who makes decisions completely based on numbers is just as susceptible to coaching mistakes as a coach who depends completely on instinct and subjective evaluation. The ideal situation is somewhere in the middle.
Statistical programs can be very expensive, or their complexity can make them very time-consuming. However, the recent development of tablet and iPad applications is making it very easy and inexpensive to track basic statistics. Several current programs include iVolleyStats, Volleyball Ace, and Rotate 123. The devices and applications will continue to change, so pay attention to new developments and use the right one for your program.
Tracking Statistics
It's really easy to say that detailed statistics should be taken during every practice and every competition. At the NCAA Division I level, a full staff and coaches are dedicated exclusively to the Data Volley statistical program. More often than not, recording statistics is the job of an assistant coach, bench player, or parent. I firmly believe that coaches should put coaching as their first priority. Coaches who have difficulty taking statistics and providing real-time feedback to their athletes should delegate the statistics to someone else. Those with limited options for statisticians are better off video-recording the match or practice and recording statistics from the video later.
The summer USA Volleyball High Performance teams often have a limited number of staff members. Obviously, the Olympic pipeline for USA Volleyball is extremely important, so recording quality statistics is as well. Following are some methods that can be used with a pen and paper and a limited staff.
Box Chart
Using a box chart, a coach can record multiple statistics at one time. The following box chart (table 17.1) shows who executed the serve receive, the rating of the pass, and what happened after the pass was set.
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We can gather a great deal of information from this chart. First, Jocelyn had 25 total passes for 43 total passing points. That means that her passing efficiency was 1.72 (43 passing points divided by 25 passes). We also know that 6 of her passes resulted in a first-ball kill, 10 passes resulted in a ball kept in play, 4 passes resulted in a first-ball error, and she was aced 5 times. We also can determine that 9 of her 25 passes were perfect (36 percent). This box chart can be used to track multiple stats for several players. The data can also be used to extrapolate areas of strength and weakness in a particular skill.
Stat Line
Using a stat line also works very well when a coach doesn't have enough time to chart events. With this method it's quite simple to keep track of many statistics at once. Following is a stat line chart for attacking, passing, and defense.
Luc: K 3 3 D 0 B A 3 2 D A B K E E
The translation of Luc's stat line would read like this from the first stat entry: kill, three pass, three pass, dig, zero pass, block, attack attempt, three pass, two pass, dig, attack attempt, block, kill, attack error, attack error. From this stat line we can determine the following about Luc's performance:
- 2 kills + 2 attack errors + 2 other attack attempts = 6 attempts
- 2 kills out of 6 attempts = 33% (kill percentage)
- 2 kills - 2 errors out of 6 attempts = .000 (kill efficiency)
- 5 serve-receive attempts for a total of 11 passing points = 2.20 (passing efficiency)
- 2 digs and 2 blocks
Most Important Statistics to Track
This subject is up for a great debate. The answer may lie in the type of team you have. If you have a team that scores at a very high level, then you are likely tracking the major offensive statistics. If your team depends on defensive skills to equalize matches, then you should be focusing more on serving, blocking, and defensive strategies. Let's have a quick refresher on the basic statistics in volleyball.
Basic Offensive Statistics
- Kill: When an attack attempt leads directly to a point
- Attack attempt: When an attack attempt results in neither a kill nor an error
- Error: When an attack attempt is blocked for a point, hit in the net, or hit out of bounds. Balls that are blocked are considered forced errors, whereas balls hit in the net or out of bounds are considered unforced errors.
Basic Defensive Statistics
- Block:A block is awarded to a player or players who score a point for their team by blocking an opponent attack. As many as three players may receive a block if they are all part of an attempt to block an attack.
- Block solo:When a player is the only one blocking a shot
- Block assist: When more than one player blocks an attack, all players receive a block assist regardless of whether they were the player who blocked the ball
- Block error: When a referee determines that a blocker has made illegal contact with the net
- Dig: When a player stops an opponent's attack attempt from being a kill
- Cover: When a player digs a teammate's attack after it has been blocked by an opponent
Basic Setting Statistics
- Set attempt: When a player attempts to set to a teammate for a kill
- Assist: When a player sets to a teammate and the attack is a kill
- Ball handling error: When a referee calls a player setting the ball for a lift or double contact
Basic Serving Statistics
- Serve attempt: When a player attempts a serve
- Ace: When a server's attempt is not passed and directly results in a point
- Serve error: When a player's attempt is served in the net or out of bounds, or a player commits a service line fault
Basic Serve-Receive Statistics
- Reception: When a player attempts a serve receive
- Reception error: When a player's poor serve receive leads to a direct point for the serving team
The following table 17.2 illustrates the two primary measurements of team system success, how those statistical measurements are determined, the best way to track the systems, and some goals your team might try to achieve.
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Serve-Receive Statistics
One of the most common ways to determine the success of your serve-receive game is to grade each serve reception.
Passing Average (3-Point Scale)
How to most accurately rate this statistic is up for great debate. Many coaches use a traditional 3-point scale ranging from 0 for an ace or overpass to 3 for a perfect pass. Figure 17.1 represents the value of each pass based on where the ball would have landed on the court.The team goal is to achieve a 2.30, or a 60 percent 3 pass.
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Passing average, 3-point scale.
Passing Average (4-Point Scale)
There is a statistical problem with the 3-point passing scale. Statisticians will tell you that anything with an odd number of data points is not statistically valid or reliable. Therefore, many higher-level programs use a 4-point scale ranging from 0 for an ace or overpass to 4 for a perfect-perfect pass (see figure 17.2). The team goal is to achieve 2.70, or a 60 percent 3 and 4 pass.
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Passing average, 4-point scale.
Passing Average (Weighted Scale)
Recently, I had a conversation with Jim Dietz, who is the very numbers-savvy head coach for Lincoln Land Community College in Illinois. He has been working with a passing scale that is weighted to include an expected success outcome based on the quality of a pass (see figure 17.3). It's fair to say that a 2 pass is twice as likely to yield a point as a 1 pass. A 5 pass is 5 times as likely to yield a point as a 1 pass. The team goal is to achieve 3.30, or a 60 percent 5 pass.
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Passing average, weighted scale.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Developing a positive team culture
Think back to a time when you worked hard, had fun, learned a lot, and achieved at a high level. What characterized that environment? What characterized the relationships you had with your peers? Your leader? Seldom do people look back and recall these times as easy, but they also don’t describe them as negative.
Think back to a time when you worked hard, had fun, learned a lot, and achieved at a high level. What characterized that environment? What characterized the relationships you had with your peers? Your leader? Seldom do people look back and recall these times as easy, but they also don't describe them as negative. A balance exists on teams that reach their potential - between challenge and skill, criticism and encouragement, trust and accountability, fun and focus, as well as between team and individual. How you, as a coach, facilitate the balance of these factors, both in your relationships with your athletes and in the way they relate to each other and the environment, is where the art of coaching is found.
The aspects of your program on which you have some influence are all based on relationships. The effectiveness of the drills you choose or the tactics you employ is based, in part, on the strength of your relationships with your players. The selflessness and team focus of your players are influenced, in part, by their relationships with each other. Their ability to be engaged in the moment and focus on the task at hand is facilitated, in part, by their relationships with their training and competitive environment. Although these relationships are sometimes difficult to control, they are certainly open to being influenced by the head coach.
Balance of Challenge and Skill
You may remember a time competing, as a player or as a coach, when you got lost in the moment. Time was transformed, your movement felt effortless, your focus was precise, and your performance was exemplary. In short, the experience was perfect, and somewhat elusive. We might remember these moments so clearly because they don't happen that often. Important research was conducted by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the late 20th century to investigate why these "flow" experiences happen and how they can happen more often. An important factor in their occurrence is the balance between the challenge presented by the context of the game or training environment and the skill level of the athletes involved. If the opponent or drill is too challenging for the participant based on skill level, frustration is likely to prevent a good performance. Likewise, if the contest or drill is too easy or simple for a team, boredom will prevent the athletes from having motivation to achieve optimal performance. The key is to manipulate the competitive and training environments to keep the balance of challenge and skill appropriate to maintain maximal motivation.
Coach - Player
As the coach, you have control over the drills you build into practice, the level of performance you demand, the way you structure groups and teams, and the level of competition in the nonleague portion of your schedule. The first task in an effort to achieve balance between challenge and skill is to evaluate your talent. At what skills do the players on your team demonstrate proficiency, and where are they weak? At what point do the skills at which they are proficient begin to break down? Evaluating these factors will help you find the sweet spot in training where athletes will experience enough challenge to feel pushed but also enough success to remain confident.
Another factor contributing to the balance of challenge and skill is the way athletes and coaches interpret failure. After all, the negativity that comes with frustration is rooted in the perception that failure is a bad thing. One of the common characteristics of training programs that elicit the most success from their performers is that failure is not something to be feared. In fact, failure is appreciated because it means that participants are willing to risk and to push themselves outside of their comfort zones to improve. People who fear failure attempt only the things they can already do. The player who fears failure and can attack very well crosscourt will focus only on her crosscourt attack, limiting the opportunity to develop her line shot. If you, as a coach, focus on failure (by either calling attention to it or punishing it), then you will end up fostering a mind-set that prevents risk taking and limits growth. Table 3.1 provides examples of how to manipulate the training and competitive environments to create a balance of challenge and skill to encourage peak performance.
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Player - Player
A positive team climate is not just dependent on the relationships between the players and coaches: it is one in which the players have a positive influence on each other. But how can players influence the balance between challenge and skill for each other? The answer comes in the way the team is grouped and how team members take responsibility for each other. At Hope College in Michigan, where I coach, I often structure scrimmage teams so that the top front-row players are attacking against the top back-row players. This makes it so that players who need more developmental work in the back row are digging balls against a front row that is also working on developing skills. Both groups are playing with and against teammates in ways that are developmentally appropriate.
On occasion, ignoring developmental level when grouping players can be incredibly positive. I worked with a volleyball club that would do position-specific practice with players from every age group on the same court by position. Experienced and talented 18-year-olds were grouped with 14-year-old novices. The challenge - skill balance was maintained because the experienced players were tasked with being good models of fundamental techniques for the younger players and with providing peer instruction. The younger players were encouraged to focus on the process (technique) rather than the result.
Player - Environment
Another way that we try to promote a balance of challenge and skill is to make sure that our players understand the big picture of our training. We use a whiteboard at practice to share our practice plan, the focus points and goals of each drill, and where our players are supposed to go. This helps players identify how the skills developed early in practice will prepare them for performance in the scrimmages later on. It identifies coaching cues and focus points that our staff will be verbalizing during the drills. The whiteboard also helps us track our performance in drills over time, which facilitates setting appropriate goals and standards. For instance, we do a crosscourt ball-control exchange drill in which players try to take a specific number of aggressive swings in five minutes. We keep the highest scores in that drill in the corner of our whiteboard as a reminder of the standard and players' past achievements.
Balance of Criticism and Encouragement
A positive team climate is one in which athletes improve their ability and learn more about their potential. The feedback they receive from their coaches, each other, and the environment contributes to both of these objectives. Telling players what they do well, although positive, does not help them maximize their skills. Focusing on the negative, for most athletes, results in frustration and decreased self-confidence. Again, the coach's task is to find a balance between the two as well as provide multiple sources of feedback.
Coach-Player
In my experience, athletes desire two types of feedback from their coaches:
- To be acknowledged when they do something well
- To be told specifically how to improve when they fail
At Hope College we want our coaches working hard to provide both types of feedback. We want to acknowledge and celebrate when our athletes succeed, both in result and process. I went through a phase in my coaching when I felt as though telling players "great pass" after getting the ball to target was redundant. They could see that the pass was perfect and didn't need me to tell them. I found that my athletes appreciated my praising their passes (or any other obvious demonstrations of skill) because pleasing me was important to them. This is further demonstrated in how often my players ask, "Coach, did you see that?" when they achieve success at something they have been working on. The athlete knows that she was successful, but she wants to share that success with me.
In addition to praising successful execution, we also want to praise successful process. Specific feedback on techniques that improve athletes' chances of success or attempts that are outside their comfort zones are worthy of encouragement. It helps to know exactly what your players are working to improve, so that you can give appropriate feedback when you see them make progress. Write down their goals or objectives, as well as the areas in which you would like to see them improve, and carry it with you during practice. Sharing those goals with your assistant coaches will keep them engaged and help them know where they can make a contribution.
When I realized that praising both success and progress toward goals was valued by my players, I also realized that I could be much more specific than just saying, "Great pass." We don't have a lot of time to convey a lot of information, so we use specific cues to convey exactly what led to the success. During one afternoon of our preseason, we spend a couple of hours in volley-school (an idea taken from the U.S. national team program), in which we explain all of the coaching cues our staff uses and exactly what each word means. This cuts down on needing to use whole sentences to explain the specifics of what the athlete did well or poorly; we need only one or two words that are well understood. We use words such as balance, square, plant, and press to convey specific aspects of skills quickly. You can use instructional feedback with motivational feedback to let your athletes know specifically what led to their positive results. Have a manager track the type of feedback you provide to see whether you are as positive, specific, and motivational as you can be.
The Positive Coaching Alliance (www.positivecoach.org) uses the phrase emotional gas tanks to convey athlete's emotional health. Praise, instruction, opportunity, and positive body language add to the emotional gas tank of an athlete. Criticism, punishment, and decreased opportunity result in emotional gas tank withdrawals. Keeping an eye on the emotional gas tank of each player on the team (how often you have made additions and how often you have made withdrawals) will help you predict how they will respond to the feedback. This is not to say that you should never make a withdrawal. Sometimes it is important to be critical, to uphold a standard, or to let athletes know that their behavior, attitude, or effort is unacceptable. However, in those situations, unless significant investments have been made, their motivation or self-confidence may diminish.
Player - Player
Players sometimes receive feedback from teammates more easily than from coaches. Such feedback can feel less threatening and also increase trust between teammates who are competing for the same position. We have developed a culture in which peer feedback is an important part of our program. The foundation is a lack of hierarchy within our team. For instance, we do not want our seniors to believe that they are any more important than our freshmen, or for sophomores to believe that they have any less value than juniors. We encourage our freshmen to give advice to seniors when they see an opportunity, and we ask our seniors to take the advice that they get from anyone with an outsider's perspective regardless of year.
In our program, the first 15 to 20 seconds of time-outs involve players getting into position groups so that the players on the bench can tell the players on the floor what they are seeing. This also gives the coaches a few seconds to meet and put together a cohesive, concise message for the entire team. For drill work in practice situations, we break up the team into smaller groups; while one group is performing the drill, another is positioned to give feedback. When we are working on blocking, one player says yes or no to communicate whether the middle closes the block, another player along the net says yes or no regarding the blocker's hands getting over the net, and another player identifies whether the block is timed correctly with the attack. The goal for the blockers, regardless of the result of the block, is to get three yeses from the players giving feedback. How can you strategically position your players who are not involved in drill so that they can provide valuable feedback to the players in the drill?
In a drill we call hot seat, which is a 6v6 scrimmage, one player is designated as the only one who can score a kill. One of our players did so well in that drill that a teammate bought a little red stool and wrote hot seat on it and put it in her teammate's locker to call attention to her great performance. When another teammate had a strong practice the next day, the first recipient of the hot seat passed it to her. Now, the little red stool moves from locker to locker as the previous recipient tries to identify the teammate who had the most impressive practice of the day. Such peer recognition goes a long way to build a team culture of encouragement, success, and positivity.
Player - Environment
Coaches can use video to provide important feedback in a way that builds motivation and confidence and increases effort. Many athletes are visual learners and benefit from seeing themselves perform. Technological advances have made access to video information very easy. We use an iPad app called BaM Video Delay to create a live delay on an iPad attached to a tripod. The delay is perfectly timed so that an athlete can perform a repetition in a drill, exit the drill, and watch her execution while a teammate performs the same drill on camera. The visual feedback allows players to see what they are doing correctly and incorrectly while also giving them the opportunity to experiment with a variety of techniques.
Videos of match play can also show players successful and problematic behaviors. Take advantage of available camera angles to focus on specific aspects of the game. For instance, if you can film only from the center line, focus on block penetration or the distance of the set off the net. When filming from behind the court, focus on blocking footwork and set distance. Be sure to focus on both positives and things to work on. Recently, as we were getting ready to watch a film of our serve-receive patterns from a match we had lost, I chose to show only the clips we had won. Seeing themselves succeed gave the players confidence in their ability to excel in their next match. Although this strategy worked in this situation, it shouldn't be the norm; it is important for teams to understand the reality of failure and to learn from those opportunities rather than disregard them.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Recruiting strategies for volleyball coaches
Phone calls and text messages are all allowed at certain times and may change. In 2015, a college coach can call an unlimited number of times during a contact period. The junior year is usually the heaviest recruiting time.
Phone calls and text messages are all allowed at certain times and may change. In 2015, a college coach can call an unlimited number of times during a contact period. The junior year is usually the heaviest recruiting time. It can get a little crazy with unlimited texting and people wanting to be texted back immediately. Top schools are the outliers because they recruit so young.
I have done only one home visit in the last eight years. In-person contact is allowed after July 1, but the rules may change each year. Sometimes I wish we could slow down recruiting by backing up home visits and official visits for a year so they would occur during their junior year instead of their senior year. Maybe the parents would be relieved not to have to pay to go to all of the universities on their own; they could simply wait for official visits during their junior year, which might slow things down a little bit.
Some athletes grow up wanting to go to a certain school. Perhaps it is nearby, or the whole family has gone there. If these athletes want to decide early, I think that is great. I worry about young players who haven't seen a lot of schools and are recruited by schools across the country where they have no real ties. These athletes seem to transfer more. De-commitments don't happen often, but they are most likely when athletes get to a school and find out it is not at all what they thought it would be.
Unofficial visits are very important now, but can be a challenge. Club volleyball is very time-consuming and expensive. Many parents can't afford to go to all the club tournaments, send their children to camps, and visit numerous college campuses. A lot of players regionalize; that is, they attend colleges they already know and feel comfortable with. However, they cannot make the most informed decision when they can't afford to visit all the schools that may be interested in them. Unfortunately, the official visit, which the university pays for, has become a formality during the senior year, after athletes have already made commitments. Families need to think about visiting college campuses as they vacation while their children are young. When they are driving around the country or flying to tournaments and cities, they can take time to stop by nearby campuses and get a feel for the schools. Athletes need to start early and see as many as colleges as they can.
Developing Trust
Once you have identified the athletes you are interested in, you should begin the relationship by making sure athletes, their parents, and their coaches trust you. They must believe that you are genuine in the recruiting process. I tell recruits to call me anytime, even if it is not about being recruited to the university I am working at. I tell them, essentially, that if they need help with anything about volleyball, playing on a summer USA Volleyball team, deciding which camp to attend, or anything at all, to call me.
As coaches, we need to open ourselves up as mentors to these young players. Parents will start to lean on us if they can tell that we care about their children as people. Every conversation isn't about a hard sell, but about getting to know recruits and their families. Witnessing the lack of honesty in some coaches is very frustrating. We need to know where these athletes are coming from. We need to put ourselves in their shoes and understand what they are looking for and what they need, and understand the stress involved in trying to make the best decision of where to go to school and play volleyball.
I learned to recruit from the head coaches I worked for. I was kind of a natural recruiter because I love to talk to and help people, and that's really what recruiting is. The communication part was easy for me. Great recruiters have magnetic personalities. People want to engage with them; they are trustworthy and honest, and they love to talk about volleyball. They love the game and sharing their passion for it. Most great recruiters don't have huge egos; generally speaking, they just love volleyball and are outstanding people you want to hang out with.Since recruiting is all about selling the university and the volleyball program, it is key to have someone who the players can relate to on your staff. If coaches don't have that type of personality themselves, they may be the ones who stay back in the office and take care of the tremendous paperwork with recruiting.
Offering Scholarships and Maintaining Commitments
Generally, we offer scholarships when we are 100 percent sure that an athlete can help us, which could be as early as 9th or 10th grade. Letting an athlete know that a scholarship is on the table is totally different from pressuring her to make a decision.
The head coaches I have worked with don't pressure anyone to make a decision or give them a deadline, and neither do I. The offer is theirs until the bitter end. Sometimes, during a junior or senior year when things are feeling a little tight with our second or third choices, we have to let an athlete know that we are under some pressure to make a decision. However, we want athletes who want to be here. We want to make sure they are coming because they want to, not because we forced them to make a decision.
After athletes commit to our school, we keep in touch with them. We do this for the sake of the relationship, but also because other schools may not honor that verbal commitment and continue to try to recruit them. We want to protect our prospective athletes from this pressure. We may communicate less frequently at this point and talk more about day-to-day things. We are getting to know them personally, letting them know that they can contact us anytime, and staying engaged with them. This helps athletes feels as though they have made the right decision and will be comfortable at our school. It shows we care. It is also very important to stay in touch with parents as well.
Tracking Recruits
It is critical that you identify a system for tracking all prospective recruits and where you are in the process with them. We use University Athlete (www.universityathlete.com) as a database to house most of our information. With this program you can look up any athletes and learn more about them. It allows you to also add notes under recruits' names and look up their schedules at tournaments, which is very helpful. A club that registers with University Athlete submits its schedules, which are uploaded so you can find times and the number of the courts athletes will be playing on. Every club gives its information to University Athlete, and university coaches pay an annual fee to access the service. This has made the data management side of recruiting much easier than it used to be.
International Recruits
I prefer to recruit domestically; I believe there is enough talent in the United States for a lot of teams to be good. However, international athletes can be good additions to your program if you are looking to move up quickly in the national rankings. The opportunity to have a great athlete with playing experience who is not afraid to compete because she has been there is hard to pass up. Most international athletes want to play volleyball and get an education. It is sometimes tough to determine whether an athlete is eligible to play on your program because of that athlete's professional experience. One recruiting service that can help identify international recruits is American Volleyball Scouting Report Global (www.avsrglobal.com/coaches).
Is an Athlete Being Recruited by a School?
The definition of a recruited athlete is defined in the 2014 NCAA rule book as follows: A prospect is considered a recruited athlete if the college takes one of the following actions:
- Provides the prospect with an official visit.
- Has off-campus contact with the prospect or the prospect's parents or legal guardians.
- Offers the prospect a national letter of intent or an athletic scholarship agreement.
- Initiates a telephone conversation with the prospect or the prospect's parents or legal guardians more than once.
Ironically, a college coach can have frequent communication (letters, e-mails, texts, phone calls if the athlete initiates the call) with a prospect without that person being considered a recruited athlete if the college coach does not take any of the preceding four actions.
Recruited Walk-Ons
We have a number of recruited walk-ons. Russ Rose, women's volleyball head coach at Penn State, loves to have a nice-size roster. Some athletes love the program and are super invested in what the school has and they are good enough to play and contribute, but at the time they applied, there was no scholarship for them. They are treated the same as athletes with scholarships in terms of academic services, equipment, and meals on the road. You would never know who is on scholarship by the way our athletes are treated. We have even had starters who were recruited as walk-ons.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Keeping stats and knowing how to use them
Coaches should be coaching; they need to spend as much time as possible in the moment and not with their heads down writing on paper. One of the greatest issues with keeping statistics is that the process of recording them can keep coaches from doing their primary job - coaching.
Issues With Using Statistics
Coaches should be coaching; they need to spend as much time as possible in the moment and not with their heads down writing on paper. One of the greatest issues with keeping statistics is that the process of recording them can keep coaches from doing their primary job - coaching. But if the coach isn't recording statistics, who should be? As the head coach on the bench, I have a sheet of paper on which I keep track of only the one or two statistics I believe are important to win the current match. These often change from opponent to opponent. Everything else is delegated to someone else who can quickly give me information as needed.
Statistics are only as valid and reliable as those recording them. It's often a challenge to find a reliable bench player, parent, or team manager who can keep accurate statistics. I love to have the backup setter keeping track of my team's passing and attacking statistics. It keeps her mind in the game, and it helps her understand what is working out there on the court. The same could be said for other players such as backup middles, outsides, and defensive players.
One of the greatest weaknesses of statistics is what many people call paralysis by analysis. A coach could easily make the mistake of taking numbers at face value and not using them to ask deeper questions. Some coaches spend too much time diving into the numbers and ultimately lose their coaching instincts. A coach who makes decisions completely based on numbers is just as susceptible to coaching mistakes as a coach who depends completely on instinct and subjective evaluation. The ideal situation is somewhere in the middle.
Statistical programs can be very expensive, or their complexity can make them very time-consuming. However, the recent development of tablet and iPad applications is making it very easy and inexpensive to track basic statistics. Several current programs include iVolleyStats, Volleyball Ace, and Rotate 123. The devices and applications will continue to change, so pay attention to new developments and use the right one for your program.
Tracking Statistics
It's really easy to say that detailed statistics should be taken during every practice and every competition. At the NCAA Division I level, a full staff and coaches are dedicated exclusively to the Data Volley statistical program. More often than not, recording statistics is the job of an assistant coach, bench player, or parent. I firmly believe that coaches should put coaching as their first priority. Coaches who have difficulty taking statistics and providing real-time feedback to their athletes should delegate the statistics to someone else. Those with limited options for statisticians are better off video-recording the match or practice and recording statistics from the video later.
The summer USA Volleyball High Performance teams often have a limited number of staff members. Obviously, the Olympic pipeline for USA Volleyball is extremely important, so recording quality statistics is as well. Following are some methods that can be used with a pen and paper and a limited staff.
Box Chart
Using a box chart, a coach can record multiple statistics at one time. The following box chart (table 17.1) shows who executed the serve receive, the rating of the pass, and what happened after the pass was set.
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We can gather a great deal of information from this chart. First, Jocelyn had 25 total passes for 43 total passing points. That means that her passing efficiency was 1.72 (43 passing points divided by 25 passes). We also know that 6 of her passes resulted in a first-ball kill, 10 passes resulted in a ball kept in play, 4 passes resulted in a first-ball error, and she was aced 5 times. We also can determine that 9 of her 25 passes were perfect (36 percent). This box chart can be used to track multiple stats for several players. The data can also be used to extrapolate areas of strength and weakness in a particular skill.
Stat Line
Using a stat line also works very well when a coach doesn't have enough time to chart events. With this method it's quite simple to keep track of many statistics at once. Following is a stat line chart for attacking, passing, and defense.
Luc: K 3 3 D 0 B A 3 2 D A B K E E
The translation of Luc's stat line would read like this from the first stat entry: kill, three pass, three pass, dig, zero pass, block, attack attempt, three pass, two pass, dig, attack attempt, block, kill, attack error, attack error. From this stat line we can determine the following about Luc's performance:
- 2 kills + 2 attack errors + 2 other attack attempts = 6 attempts
- 2 kills out of 6 attempts = 33% (kill percentage)
- 2 kills - 2 errors out of 6 attempts = .000 (kill efficiency)
- 5 serve-receive attempts for a total of 11 passing points = 2.20 (passing efficiency)
- 2 digs and 2 blocks
Most Important Statistics to Track
This subject is up for a great debate. The answer may lie in the type of team you have. If you have a team that scores at a very high level, then you are likely tracking the major offensive statistics. If your team depends on defensive skills to equalize matches, then you should be focusing more on serving, blocking, and defensive strategies. Let's have a quick refresher on the basic statistics in volleyball.
Basic Offensive Statistics
- Kill: When an attack attempt leads directly to a point
- Attack attempt: When an attack attempt results in neither a kill nor an error
- Error: When an attack attempt is blocked for a point, hit in the net, or hit out of bounds. Balls that are blocked are considered forced errors, whereas balls hit in the net or out of bounds are considered unforced errors.
Basic Defensive Statistics
- Block:A block is awarded to a player or players who score a point for their team by blocking an opponent attack. As many as three players may receive a block if they are all part of an attempt to block an attack.
- Block solo:When a player is the only one blocking a shot
- Block assist: When more than one player blocks an attack, all players receive a block assist regardless of whether they were the player who blocked the ball
- Block error: When a referee determines that a blocker has made illegal contact with the net
- Dig: When a player stops an opponent's attack attempt from being a kill
- Cover: When a player digs a teammate's attack after it has been blocked by an opponent
Basic Setting Statistics
- Set attempt: When a player attempts to set to a teammate for a kill
- Assist: When a player sets to a teammate and the attack is a kill
- Ball handling error: When a referee calls a player setting the ball for a lift or double contact
Basic Serving Statistics
- Serve attempt: When a player attempts a serve
- Ace: When a server's attempt is not passed and directly results in a point
- Serve error: When a player's attempt is served in the net or out of bounds, or a player commits a service line fault
Basic Serve-Receive Statistics
- Reception: When a player attempts a serve receive
- Reception error: When a player's poor serve receive leads to a direct point for the serving team
The following table 17.2 illustrates the two primary measurements of team system success, how those statistical measurements are determined, the best way to track the systems, and some goals your team might try to achieve.
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Serve-Receive Statistics
One of the most common ways to determine the success of your serve-receive game is to grade each serve reception.
Passing Average (3-Point Scale)
How to most accurately rate this statistic is up for great debate. Many coaches use a traditional 3-point scale ranging from 0 for an ace or overpass to 3 for a perfect pass. Figure 17.1 represents the value of each pass based on where the ball would have landed on the court.The team goal is to achieve a 2.30, or a 60 percent 3 pass.
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Passing average, 3-point scale.
Passing Average (4-Point Scale)
There is a statistical problem with the 3-point passing scale. Statisticians will tell you that anything with an odd number of data points is not statistically valid or reliable. Therefore, many higher-level programs use a 4-point scale ranging from 0 for an ace or overpass to 4 for a perfect-perfect pass (see figure 17.2). The team goal is to achieve 2.70, or a 60 percent 3 and 4 pass.
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Passing average, 4-point scale.
Passing Average (Weighted Scale)
Recently, I had a conversation with Jim Dietz, who is the very numbers-savvy head coach for Lincoln Land Community College in Illinois. He has been working with a passing scale that is weighted to include an expected success outcome based on the quality of a pass (see figure 17.3). It's fair to say that a 2 pass is twice as likely to yield a point as a 1 pass. A 5 pass is 5 times as likely to yield a point as a 1 pass. The team goal is to achieve 3.30, or a 60 percent 5 pass.
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Passing average, weighted scale.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Developing a positive team culture
Think back to a time when you worked hard, had fun, learned a lot, and achieved at a high level. What characterized that environment? What characterized the relationships you had with your peers? Your leader? Seldom do people look back and recall these times as easy, but they also don’t describe them as negative.
Think back to a time when you worked hard, had fun, learned a lot, and achieved at a high level. What characterized that environment? What characterized the relationships you had with your peers? Your leader? Seldom do people look back and recall these times as easy, but they also don't describe them as negative. A balance exists on teams that reach their potential - between challenge and skill, criticism and encouragement, trust and accountability, fun and focus, as well as between team and individual. How you, as a coach, facilitate the balance of these factors, both in your relationships with your athletes and in the way they relate to each other and the environment, is where the art of coaching is found.
The aspects of your program on which you have some influence are all based on relationships. The effectiveness of the drills you choose or the tactics you employ is based, in part, on the strength of your relationships with your players. The selflessness and team focus of your players are influenced, in part, by their relationships with each other. Their ability to be engaged in the moment and focus on the task at hand is facilitated, in part, by their relationships with their training and competitive environment. Although these relationships are sometimes difficult to control, they are certainly open to being influenced by the head coach.
Balance of Challenge and Skill
You may remember a time competing, as a player or as a coach, when you got lost in the moment. Time was transformed, your movement felt effortless, your focus was precise, and your performance was exemplary. In short, the experience was perfect, and somewhat elusive. We might remember these moments so clearly because they don't happen that often. Important research was conducted by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the late 20th century to investigate why these "flow" experiences happen and how they can happen more often. An important factor in their occurrence is the balance between the challenge presented by the context of the game or training environment and the skill level of the athletes involved. If the opponent or drill is too challenging for the participant based on skill level, frustration is likely to prevent a good performance. Likewise, if the contest or drill is too easy or simple for a team, boredom will prevent the athletes from having motivation to achieve optimal performance. The key is to manipulate the competitive and training environments to keep the balance of challenge and skill appropriate to maintain maximal motivation.
Coach - Player
As the coach, you have control over the drills you build into practice, the level of performance you demand, the way you structure groups and teams, and the level of competition in the nonleague portion of your schedule. The first task in an effort to achieve balance between challenge and skill is to evaluate your talent. At what skills do the players on your team demonstrate proficiency, and where are they weak? At what point do the skills at which they are proficient begin to break down? Evaluating these factors will help you find the sweet spot in training where athletes will experience enough challenge to feel pushed but also enough success to remain confident.
Another factor contributing to the balance of challenge and skill is the way athletes and coaches interpret failure. After all, the negativity that comes with frustration is rooted in the perception that failure is a bad thing. One of the common characteristics of training programs that elicit the most success from their performers is that failure is not something to be feared. In fact, failure is appreciated because it means that participants are willing to risk and to push themselves outside of their comfort zones to improve. People who fear failure attempt only the things they can already do. The player who fears failure and can attack very well crosscourt will focus only on her crosscourt attack, limiting the opportunity to develop her line shot. If you, as a coach, focus on failure (by either calling attention to it or punishing it), then you will end up fostering a mind-set that prevents risk taking and limits growth. Table 3.1 provides examples of how to manipulate the training and competitive environments to create a balance of challenge and skill to encourage peak performance.
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Player - Player
A positive team climate is not just dependent on the relationships between the players and coaches: it is one in which the players have a positive influence on each other. But how can players influence the balance between challenge and skill for each other? The answer comes in the way the team is grouped and how team members take responsibility for each other. At Hope College in Michigan, where I coach, I often structure scrimmage teams so that the top front-row players are attacking against the top back-row players. This makes it so that players who need more developmental work in the back row are digging balls against a front row that is also working on developing skills. Both groups are playing with and against teammates in ways that are developmentally appropriate.
On occasion, ignoring developmental level when grouping players can be incredibly positive. I worked with a volleyball club that would do position-specific practice with players from every age group on the same court by position. Experienced and talented 18-year-olds were grouped with 14-year-old novices. The challenge - skill balance was maintained because the experienced players were tasked with being good models of fundamental techniques for the younger players and with providing peer instruction. The younger players were encouraged to focus on the process (technique) rather than the result.
Player - Environment
Another way that we try to promote a balance of challenge and skill is to make sure that our players understand the big picture of our training. We use a whiteboard at practice to share our practice plan, the focus points and goals of each drill, and where our players are supposed to go. This helps players identify how the skills developed early in practice will prepare them for performance in the scrimmages later on. It identifies coaching cues and focus points that our staff will be verbalizing during the drills. The whiteboard also helps us track our performance in drills over time, which facilitates setting appropriate goals and standards. For instance, we do a crosscourt ball-control exchange drill in which players try to take a specific number of aggressive swings in five minutes. We keep the highest scores in that drill in the corner of our whiteboard as a reminder of the standard and players' past achievements.
Balance of Criticism and Encouragement
A positive team climate is one in which athletes improve their ability and learn more about their potential. The feedback they receive from their coaches, each other, and the environment contributes to both of these objectives. Telling players what they do well, although positive, does not help them maximize their skills. Focusing on the negative, for most athletes, results in frustration and decreased self-confidence. Again, the coach's task is to find a balance between the two as well as provide multiple sources of feedback.
Coach-Player
In my experience, athletes desire two types of feedback from their coaches:
- To be acknowledged when they do something well
- To be told specifically how to improve when they fail
At Hope College we want our coaches working hard to provide both types of feedback. We want to acknowledge and celebrate when our athletes succeed, both in result and process. I went through a phase in my coaching when I felt as though telling players "great pass" after getting the ball to target was redundant. They could see that the pass was perfect and didn't need me to tell them. I found that my athletes appreciated my praising their passes (or any other obvious demonstrations of skill) because pleasing me was important to them. This is further demonstrated in how often my players ask, "Coach, did you see that?" when they achieve success at something they have been working on. The athlete knows that she was successful, but she wants to share that success with me.
In addition to praising successful execution, we also want to praise successful process. Specific feedback on techniques that improve athletes' chances of success or attempts that are outside their comfort zones are worthy of encouragement. It helps to know exactly what your players are working to improve, so that you can give appropriate feedback when you see them make progress. Write down their goals or objectives, as well as the areas in which you would like to see them improve, and carry it with you during practice. Sharing those goals with your assistant coaches will keep them engaged and help them know where they can make a contribution.
When I realized that praising both success and progress toward goals was valued by my players, I also realized that I could be much more specific than just saying, "Great pass." We don't have a lot of time to convey a lot of information, so we use specific cues to convey exactly what led to the success. During one afternoon of our preseason, we spend a couple of hours in volley-school (an idea taken from the U.S. national team program), in which we explain all of the coaching cues our staff uses and exactly what each word means. This cuts down on needing to use whole sentences to explain the specifics of what the athlete did well or poorly; we need only one or two words that are well understood. We use words such as balance, square, plant, and press to convey specific aspects of skills quickly. You can use instructional feedback with motivational feedback to let your athletes know specifically what led to their positive results. Have a manager track the type of feedback you provide to see whether you are as positive, specific, and motivational as you can be.
The Positive Coaching Alliance (www.positivecoach.org) uses the phrase emotional gas tanks to convey athlete's emotional health. Praise, instruction, opportunity, and positive body language add to the emotional gas tank of an athlete. Criticism, punishment, and decreased opportunity result in emotional gas tank withdrawals. Keeping an eye on the emotional gas tank of each player on the team (how often you have made additions and how often you have made withdrawals) will help you predict how they will respond to the feedback. This is not to say that you should never make a withdrawal. Sometimes it is important to be critical, to uphold a standard, or to let athletes know that their behavior, attitude, or effort is unacceptable. However, in those situations, unless significant investments have been made, their motivation or self-confidence may diminish.
Player - Player
Players sometimes receive feedback from teammates more easily than from coaches. Such feedback can feel less threatening and also increase trust between teammates who are competing for the same position. We have developed a culture in which peer feedback is an important part of our program. The foundation is a lack of hierarchy within our team. For instance, we do not want our seniors to believe that they are any more important than our freshmen, or for sophomores to believe that they have any less value than juniors. We encourage our freshmen to give advice to seniors when they see an opportunity, and we ask our seniors to take the advice that they get from anyone with an outsider's perspective regardless of year.
In our program, the first 15 to 20 seconds of time-outs involve players getting into position groups so that the players on the bench can tell the players on the floor what they are seeing. This also gives the coaches a few seconds to meet and put together a cohesive, concise message for the entire team. For drill work in practice situations, we break up the team into smaller groups; while one group is performing the drill, another is positioned to give feedback. When we are working on blocking, one player says yes or no to communicate whether the middle closes the block, another player along the net says yes or no regarding the blocker's hands getting over the net, and another player identifies whether the block is timed correctly with the attack. The goal for the blockers, regardless of the result of the block, is to get three yeses from the players giving feedback. How can you strategically position your players who are not involved in drill so that they can provide valuable feedback to the players in the drill?
In a drill we call hot seat, which is a 6v6 scrimmage, one player is designated as the only one who can score a kill. One of our players did so well in that drill that a teammate bought a little red stool and wrote hot seat on it and put it in her teammate's locker to call attention to her great performance. When another teammate had a strong practice the next day, the first recipient of the hot seat passed it to her. Now, the little red stool moves from locker to locker as the previous recipient tries to identify the teammate who had the most impressive practice of the day. Such peer recognition goes a long way to build a team culture of encouragement, success, and positivity.
Player - Environment
Coaches can use video to provide important feedback in a way that builds motivation and confidence and increases effort. Many athletes are visual learners and benefit from seeing themselves perform. Technological advances have made access to video information very easy. We use an iPad app called BaM Video Delay to create a live delay on an iPad attached to a tripod. The delay is perfectly timed so that an athlete can perform a repetition in a drill, exit the drill, and watch her execution while a teammate performs the same drill on camera. The visual feedback allows players to see what they are doing correctly and incorrectly while also giving them the opportunity to experiment with a variety of techniques.
Videos of match play can also show players successful and problematic behaviors. Take advantage of available camera angles to focus on specific aspects of the game. For instance, if you can film only from the center line, focus on block penetration or the distance of the set off the net. When filming from behind the court, focus on blocking footwork and set distance. Be sure to focus on both positives and things to work on. Recently, as we were getting ready to watch a film of our serve-receive patterns from a match we had lost, I chose to show only the clips we had won. Seeing themselves succeed gave the players confidence in their ability to excel in their next match. Although this strategy worked in this situation, it shouldn't be the norm; it is important for teams to understand the reality of failure and to learn from those opportunities rather than disregard them.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Recruiting strategies for volleyball coaches
Phone calls and text messages are all allowed at certain times and may change. In 2015, a college coach can call an unlimited number of times during a contact period. The junior year is usually the heaviest recruiting time.
Phone calls and text messages are all allowed at certain times and may change. In 2015, a college coach can call an unlimited number of times during a contact period. The junior year is usually the heaviest recruiting time. It can get a little crazy with unlimited texting and people wanting to be texted back immediately. Top schools are the outliers because they recruit so young.
I have done only one home visit in the last eight years. In-person contact is allowed after July 1, but the rules may change each year. Sometimes I wish we could slow down recruiting by backing up home visits and official visits for a year so they would occur during their junior year instead of their senior year. Maybe the parents would be relieved not to have to pay to go to all of the universities on their own; they could simply wait for official visits during their junior year, which might slow things down a little bit.
Some athletes grow up wanting to go to a certain school. Perhaps it is nearby, or the whole family has gone there. If these athletes want to decide early, I think that is great. I worry about young players who haven't seen a lot of schools and are recruited by schools across the country where they have no real ties. These athletes seem to transfer more. De-commitments don't happen often, but they are most likely when athletes get to a school and find out it is not at all what they thought it would be.
Unofficial visits are very important now, but can be a challenge. Club volleyball is very time-consuming and expensive. Many parents can't afford to go to all the club tournaments, send their children to camps, and visit numerous college campuses. A lot of players regionalize; that is, they attend colleges they already know and feel comfortable with. However, they cannot make the most informed decision when they can't afford to visit all the schools that may be interested in them. Unfortunately, the official visit, which the university pays for, has become a formality during the senior year, after athletes have already made commitments. Families need to think about visiting college campuses as they vacation while their children are young. When they are driving around the country or flying to tournaments and cities, they can take time to stop by nearby campuses and get a feel for the schools. Athletes need to start early and see as many as colleges as they can.
Developing Trust
Once you have identified the athletes you are interested in, you should begin the relationship by making sure athletes, their parents, and their coaches trust you. They must believe that you are genuine in the recruiting process. I tell recruits to call me anytime, even if it is not about being recruited to the university I am working at. I tell them, essentially, that if they need help with anything about volleyball, playing on a summer USA Volleyball team, deciding which camp to attend, or anything at all, to call me.
As coaches, we need to open ourselves up as mentors to these young players. Parents will start to lean on us if they can tell that we care about their children as people. Every conversation isn't about a hard sell, but about getting to know recruits and their families. Witnessing the lack of honesty in some coaches is very frustrating. We need to know where these athletes are coming from. We need to put ourselves in their shoes and understand what they are looking for and what they need, and understand the stress involved in trying to make the best decision of where to go to school and play volleyball.
I learned to recruit from the head coaches I worked for. I was kind of a natural recruiter because I love to talk to and help people, and that's really what recruiting is. The communication part was easy for me. Great recruiters have magnetic personalities. People want to engage with them; they are trustworthy and honest, and they love to talk about volleyball. They love the game and sharing their passion for it. Most great recruiters don't have huge egos; generally speaking, they just love volleyball and are outstanding people you want to hang out with.Since recruiting is all about selling the university and the volleyball program, it is key to have someone who the players can relate to on your staff. If coaches don't have that type of personality themselves, they may be the ones who stay back in the office and take care of the tremendous paperwork with recruiting.
Offering Scholarships and Maintaining Commitments
Generally, we offer scholarships when we are 100 percent sure that an athlete can help us, which could be as early as 9th or 10th grade. Letting an athlete know that a scholarship is on the table is totally different from pressuring her to make a decision.
The head coaches I have worked with don't pressure anyone to make a decision or give them a deadline, and neither do I. The offer is theirs until the bitter end. Sometimes, during a junior or senior year when things are feeling a little tight with our second or third choices, we have to let an athlete know that we are under some pressure to make a decision. However, we want athletes who want to be here. We want to make sure they are coming because they want to, not because we forced them to make a decision.
After athletes commit to our school, we keep in touch with them. We do this for the sake of the relationship, but also because other schools may not honor that verbal commitment and continue to try to recruit them. We want to protect our prospective athletes from this pressure. We may communicate less frequently at this point and talk more about day-to-day things. We are getting to know them personally, letting them know that they can contact us anytime, and staying engaged with them. This helps athletes feels as though they have made the right decision and will be comfortable at our school. It shows we care. It is also very important to stay in touch with parents as well.
Tracking Recruits
It is critical that you identify a system for tracking all prospective recruits and where you are in the process with them. We use University Athlete (www.universityathlete.com) as a database to house most of our information. With this program you can look up any athletes and learn more about them. It allows you to also add notes under recruits' names and look up their schedules at tournaments, which is very helpful. A club that registers with University Athlete submits its schedules, which are uploaded so you can find times and the number of the courts athletes will be playing on. Every club gives its information to University Athlete, and university coaches pay an annual fee to access the service. This has made the data management side of recruiting much easier than it used to be.
International Recruits
I prefer to recruit domestically; I believe there is enough talent in the United States for a lot of teams to be good. However, international athletes can be good additions to your program if you are looking to move up quickly in the national rankings. The opportunity to have a great athlete with playing experience who is not afraid to compete because she has been there is hard to pass up. Most international athletes want to play volleyball and get an education. It is sometimes tough to determine whether an athlete is eligible to play on your program because of that athlete's professional experience. One recruiting service that can help identify international recruits is American Volleyball Scouting Report Global (www.avsrglobal.com/coaches).
Is an Athlete Being Recruited by a School?
The definition of a recruited athlete is defined in the 2014 NCAA rule book as follows: A prospect is considered a recruited athlete if the college takes one of the following actions:
- Provides the prospect with an official visit.
- Has off-campus contact with the prospect or the prospect's parents or legal guardians.
- Offers the prospect a national letter of intent or an athletic scholarship agreement.
- Initiates a telephone conversation with the prospect or the prospect's parents or legal guardians more than once.
Ironically, a college coach can have frequent communication (letters, e-mails, texts, phone calls if the athlete initiates the call) with a prospect without that person being considered a recruited athlete if the college coach does not take any of the preceding four actions.
Recruited Walk-Ons
We have a number of recruited walk-ons. Russ Rose, women's volleyball head coach at Penn State, loves to have a nice-size roster. Some athletes love the program and are super invested in what the school has and they are good enough to play and contribute, but at the time they applied, there was no scholarship for them. They are treated the same as athletes with scholarships in terms of academic services, equipment, and meals on the road. You would never know who is on scholarship by the way our athletes are treated. We have even had starters who were recruited as walk-ons.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Keeping stats and knowing how to use them
Coaches should be coaching; they need to spend as much time as possible in the moment and not with their heads down writing on paper. One of the greatest issues with keeping statistics is that the process of recording them can keep coaches from doing their primary job - coaching.
Issues With Using Statistics
Coaches should be coaching; they need to spend as much time as possible in the moment and not with their heads down writing on paper. One of the greatest issues with keeping statistics is that the process of recording them can keep coaches from doing their primary job - coaching. But if the coach isn't recording statistics, who should be? As the head coach on the bench, I have a sheet of paper on which I keep track of only the one or two statistics I believe are important to win the current match. These often change from opponent to opponent. Everything else is delegated to someone else who can quickly give me information as needed.
Statistics are only as valid and reliable as those recording them. It's often a challenge to find a reliable bench player, parent, or team manager who can keep accurate statistics. I love to have the backup setter keeping track of my team's passing and attacking statistics. It keeps her mind in the game, and it helps her understand what is working out there on the court. The same could be said for other players such as backup middles, outsides, and defensive players.
One of the greatest weaknesses of statistics is what many people call paralysis by analysis. A coach could easily make the mistake of taking numbers at face value and not using them to ask deeper questions. Some coaches spend too much time diving into the numbers and ultimately lose their coaching instincts. A coach who makes decisions completely based on numbers is just as susceptible to coaching mistakes as a coach who depends completely on instinct and subjective evaluation. The ideal situation is somewhere in the middle.
Statistical programs can be very expensive, or their complexity can make them very time-consuming. However, the recent development of tablet and iPad applications is making it very easy and inexpensive to track basic statistics. Several current programs include iVolleyStats, Volleyball Ace, and Rotate 123. The devices and applications will continue to change, so pay attention to new developments and use the right one for your program.
Tracking Statistics
It's really easy to say that detailed statistics should be taken during every practice and every competition. At the NCAA Division I level, a full staff and coaches are dedicated exclusively to the Data Volley statistical program. More often than not, recording statistics is the job of an assistant coach, bench player, or parent. I firmly believe that coaches should put coaching as their first priority. Coaches who have difficulty taking statistics and providing real-time feedback to their athletes should delegate the statistics to someone else. Those with limited options for statisticians are better off video-recording the match or practice and recording statistics from the video later.
The summer USA Volleyball High Performance teams often have a limited number of staff members. Obviously, the Olympic pipeline for USA Volleyball is extremely important, so recording quality statistics is as well. Following are some methods that can be used with a pen and paper and a limited staff.
Box Chart
Using a box chart, a coach can record multiple statistics at one time. The following box chart (table 17.1) shows who executed the serve receive, the rating of the pass, and what happened after the pass was set.
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We can gather a great deal of information from this chart. First, Jocelyn had 25 total passes for 43 total passing points. That means that her passing efficiency was 1.72 (43 passing points divided by 25 passes). We also know that 6 of her passes resulted in a first-ball kill, 10 passes resulted in a ball kept in play, 4 passes resulted in a first-ball error, and she was aced 5 times. We also can determine that 9 of her 25 passes were perfect (36 percent). This box chart can be used to track multiple stats for several players. The data can also be used to extrapolate areas of strength and weakness in a particular skill.
Stat Line
Using a stat line also works very well when a coach doesn't have enough time to chart events. With this method it's quite simple to keep track of many statistics at once. Following is a stat line chart for attacking, passing, and defense.
Luc: K 3 3 D 0 B A 3 2 D A B K E E
The translation of Luc's stat line would read like this from the first stat entry: kill, three pass, three pass, dig, zero pass, block, attack attempt, three pass, two pass, dig, attack attempt, block, kill, attack error, attack error. From this stat line we can determine the following about Luc's performance:
- 2 kills + 2 attack errors + 2 other attack attempts = 6 attempts
- 2 kills out of 6 attempts = 33% (kill percentage)
- 2 kills - 2 errors out of 6 attempts = .000 (kill efficiency)
- 5 serve-receive attempts for a total of 11 passing points = 2.20 (passing efficiency)
- 2 digs and 2 blocks
Most Important Statistics to Track
This subject is up for a great debate. The answer may lie in the type of team you have. If you have a team that scores at a very high level, then you are likely tracking the major offensive statistics. If your team depends on defensive skills to equalize matches, then you should be focusing more on serving, blocking, and defensive strategies. Let's have a quick refresher on the basic statistics in volleyball.
Basic Offensive Statistics
- Kill: When an attack attempt leads directly to a point
- Attack attempt: When an attack attempt results in neither a kill nor an error
- Error: When an attack attempt is blocked for a point, hit in the net, or hit out of bounds. Balls that are blocked are considered forced errors, whereas balls hit in the net or out of bounds are considered unforced errors.
Basic Defensive Statistics
- Block:A block is awarded to a player or players who score a point for their team by blocking an opponent attack. As many as three players may receive a block if they are all part of an attempt to block an attack.
- Block solo:When a player is the only one blocking a shot
- Block assist: When more than one player blocks an attack, all players receive a block assist regardless of whether they were the player who blocked the ball
- Block error: When a referee determines that a blocker has made illegal contact with the net
- Dig: When a player stops an opponent's attack attempt from being a kill
- Cover: When a player digs a teammate's attack after it has been blocked by an opponent
Basic Setting Statistics
- Set attempt: When a player attempts to set to a teammate for a kill
- Assist: When a player sets to a teammate and the attack is a kill
- Ball handling error: When a referee calls a player setting the ball for a lift or double contact
Basic Serving Statistics
- Serve attempt: When a player attempts a serve
- Ace: When a server's attempt is not passed and directly results in a point
- Serve error: When a player's attempt is served in the net or out of bounds, or a player commits a service line fault
Basic Serve-Receive Statistics
- Reception: When a player attempts a serve receive
- Reception error: When a player's poor serve receive leads to a direct point for the serving team
The following table 17.2 illustrates the two primary measurements of team system success, how those statistical measurements are determined, the best way to track the systems, and some goals your team might try to achieve.
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Serve-Receive Statistics
One of the most common ways to determine the success of your serve-receive game is to grade each serve reception.
Passing Average (3-Point Scale)
How to most accurately rate this statistic is up for great debate. Many coaches use a traditional 3-point scale ranging from 0 for an ace or overpass to 3 for a perfect pass. Figure 17.1 represents the value of each pass based on where the ball would have landed on the court.The team goal is to achieve a 2.30, or a 60 percent 3 pass.
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Passing average, 3-point scale.
Passing Average (4-Point Scale)
There is a statistical problem with the 3-point passing scale. Statisticians will tell you that anything with an odd number of data points is not statistically valid or reliable. Therefore, many higher-level programs use a 4-point scale ranging from 0 for an ace or overpass to 4 for a perfect-perfect pass (see figure 17.2). The team goal is to achieve 2.70, or a 60 percent 3 and 4 pass.
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Passing average, 4-point scale.
Passing Average (Weighted Scale)
Recently, I had a conversation with Jim Dietz, who is the very numbers-savvy head coach for Lincoln Land Community College in Illinois. He has been working with a passing scale that is weighted to include an expected success outcome based on the quality of a pass (see figure 17.3). It's fair to say that a 2 pass is twice as likely to yield a point as a 1 pass. A 5 pass is 5 times as likely to yield a point as a 1 pass. The team goal is to achieve 3.30, or a 60 percent 5 pass.
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Passing average, weighted scale.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Developing a positive team culture
Think back to a time when you worked hard, had fun, learned a lot, and achieved at a high level. What characterized that environment? What characterized the relationships you had with your peers? Your leader? Seldom do people look back and recall these times as easy, but they also don’t describe them as negative.
Think back to a time when you worked hard, had fun, learned a lot, and achieved at a high level. What characterized that environment? What characterized the relationships you had with your peers? Your leader? Seldom do people look back and recall these times as easy, but they also don't describe them as negative. A balance exists on teams that reach their potential - between challenge and skill, criticism and encouragement, trust and accountability, fun and focus, as well as between team and individual. How you, as a coach, facilitate the balance of these factors, both in your relationships with your athletes and in the way they relate to each other and the environment, is where the art of coaching is found.
The aspects of your program on which you have some influence are all based on relationships. The effectiveness of the drills you choose or the tactics you employ is based, in part, on the strength of your relationships with your players. The selflessness and team focus of your players are influenced, in part, by their relationships with each other. Their ability to be engaged in the moment and focus on the task at hand is facilitated, in part, by their relationships with their training and competitive environment. Although these relationships are sometimes difficult to control, they are certainly open to being influenced by the head coach.
Balance of Challenge and Skill
You may remember a time competing, as a player or as a coach, when you got lost in the moment. Time was transformed, your movement felt effortless, your focus was precise, and your performance was exemplary. In short, the experience was perfect, and somewhat elusive. We might remember these moments so clearly because they don't happen that often. Important research was conducted by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the late 20th century to investigate why these "flow" experiences happen and how they can happen more often. An important factor in their occurrence is the balance between the challenge presented by the context of the game or training environment and the skill level of the athletes involved. If the opponent or drill is too challenging for the participant based on skill level, frustration is likely to prevent a good performance. Likewise, if the contest or drill is too easy or simple for a team, boredom will prevent the athletes from having motivation to achieve optimal performance. The key is to manipulate the competitive and training environments to keep the balance of challenge and skill appropriate to maintain maximal motivation.
Coach - Player
As the coach, you have control over the drills you build into practice, the level of performance you demand, the way you structure groups and teams, and the level of competition in the nonleague portion of your schedule. The first task in an effort to achieve balance between challenge and skill is to evaluate your talent. At what skills do the players on your team demonstrate proficiency, and where are they weak? At what point do the skills at which they are proficient begin to break down? Evaluating these factors will help you find the sweet spot in training where athletes will experience enough challenge to feel pushed but also enough success to remain confident.
Another factor contributing to the balance of challenge and skill is the way athletes and coaches interpret failure. After all, the negativity that comes with frustration is rooted in the perception that failure is a bad thing. One of the common characteristics of training programs that elicit the most success from their performers is that failure is not something to be feared. In fact, failure is appreciated because it means that participants are willing to risk and to push themselves outside of their comfort zones to improve. People who fear failure attempt only the things they can already do. The player who fears failure and can attack very well crosscourt will focus only on her crosscourt attack, limiting the opportunity to develop her line shot. If you, as a coach, focus on failure (by either calling attention to it or punishing it), then you will end up fostering a mind-set that prevents risk taking and limits growth. Table 3.1 provides examples of how to manipulate the training and competitive environments to create a balance of challenge and skill to encourage peak performance.
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Player - Player
A positive team climate is not just dependent on the relationships between the players and coaches: it is one in which the players have a positive influence on each other. But how can players influence the balance between challenge and skill for each other? The answer comes in the way the team is grouped and how team members take responsibility for each other. At Hope College in Michigan, where I coach, I often structure scrimmage teams so that the top front-row players are attacking against the top back-row players. This makes it so that players who need more developmental work in the back row are digging balls against a front row that is also working on developing skills. Both groups are playing with and against teammates in ways that are developmentally appropriate.
On occasion, ignoring developmental level when grouping players can be incredibly positive. I worked with a volleyball club that would do position-specific practice with players from every age group on the same court by position. Experienced and talented 18-year-olds were grouped with 14-year-old novices. The challenge - skill balance was maintained because the experienced players were tasked with being good models of fundamental techniques for the younger players and with providing peer instruction. The younger players were encouraged to focus on the process (technique) rather than the result.
Player - Environment
Another way that we try to promote a balance of challenge and skill is to make sure that our players understand the big picture of our training. We use a whiteboard at practice to share our practice plan, the focus points and goals of each drill, and where our players are supposed to go. This helps players identify how the skills developed early in practice will prepare them for performance in the scrimmages later on. It identifies coaching cues and focus points that our staff will be verbalizing during the drills. The whiteboard also helps us track our performance in drills over time, which facilitates setting appropriate goals and standards. For instance, we do a crosscourt ball-control exchange drill in which players try to take a specific number of aggressive swings in five minutes. We keep the highest scores in that drill in the corner of our whiteboard as a reminder of the standard and players' past achievements.
Balance of Criticism and Encouragement
A positive team climate is one in which athletes improve their ability and learn more about their potential. The feedback they receive from their coaches, each other, and the environment contributes to both of these objectives. Telling players what they do well, although positive, does not help them maximize their skills. Focusing on the negative, for most athletes, results in frustration and decreased self-confidence. Again, the coach's task is to find a balance between the two as well as provide multiple sources of feedback.
Coach-Player
In my experience, athletes desire two types of feedback from their coaches:
- To be acknowledged when they do something well
- To be told specifically how to improve when they fail
At Hope College we want our coaches working hard to provide both types of feedback. We want to acknowledge and celebrate when our athletes succeed, both in result and process. I went through a phase in my coaching when I felt as though telling players "great pass" after getting the ball to target was redundant. They could see that the pass was perfect and didn't need me to tell them. I found that my athletes appreciated my praising their passes (or any other obvious demonstrations of skill) because pleasing me was important to them. This is further demonstrated in how often my players ask, "Coach, did you see that?" when they achieve success at something they have been working on. The athlete knows that she was successful, but she wants to share that success with me.
In addition to praising successful execution, we also want to praise successful process. Specific feedback on techniques that improve athletes' chances of success or attempts that are outside their comfort zones are worthy of encouragement. It helps to know exactly what your players are working to improve, so that you can give appropriate feedback when you see them make progress. Write down their goals or objectives, as well as the areas in which you would like to see them improve, and carry it with you during practice. Sharing those goals with your assistant coaches will keep them engaged and help them know where they can make a contribution.
When I realized that praising both success and progress toward goals was valued by my players, I also realized that I could be much more specific than just saying, "Great pass." We don't have a lot of time to convey a lot of information, so we use specific cues to convey exactly what led to the success. During one afternoon of our preseason, we spend a couple of hours in volley-school (an idea taken from the U.S. national team program), in which we explain all of the coaching cues our staff uses and exactly what each word means. This cuts down on needing to use whole sentences to explain the specifics of what the athlete did well or poorly; we need only one or two words that are well understood. We use words such as balance, square, plant, and press to convey specific aspects of skills quickly. You can use instructional feedback with motivational feedback to let your athletes know specifically what led to their positive results. Have a manager track the type of feedback you provide to see whether you are as positive, specific, and motivational as you can be.
The Positive Coaching Alliance (www.positivecoach.org) uses the phrase emotional gas tanks to convey athlete's emotional health. Praise, instruction, opportunity, and positive body language add to the emotional gas tank of an athlete. Criticism, punishment, and decreased opportunity result in emotional gas tank withdrawals. Keeping an eye on the emotional gas tank of each player on the team (how often you have made additions and how often you have made withdrawals) will help you predict how they will respond to the feedback. This is not to say that you should never make a withdrawal. Sometimes it is important to be critical, to uphold a standard, or to let athletes know that their behavior, attitude, or effort is unacceptable. However, in those situations, unless significant investments have been made, their motivation or self-confidence may diminish.
Player - Player
Players sometimes receive feedback from teammates more easily than from coaches. Such feedback can feel less threatening and also increase trust between teammates who are competing for the same position. We have developed a culture in which peer feedback is an important part of our program. The foundation is a lack of hierarchy within our team. For instance, we do not want our seniors to believe that they are any more important than our freshmen, or for sophomores to believe that they have any less value than juniors. We encourage our freshmen to give advice to seniors when they see an opportunity, and we ask our seniors to take the advice that they get from anyone with an outsider's perspective regardless of year.
In our program, the first 15 to 20 seconds of time-outs involve players getting into position groups so that the players on the bench can tell the players on the floor what they are seeing. This also gives the coaches a few seconds to meet and put together a cohesive, concise message for the entire team. For drill work in practice situations, we break up the team into smaller groups; while one group is performing the drill, another is positioned to give feedback. When we are working on blocking, one player says yes or no to communicate whether the middle closes the block, another player along the net says yes or no regarding the blocker's hands getting over the net, and another player identifies whether the block is timed correctly with the attack. The goal for the blockers, regardless of the result of the block, is to get three yeses from the players giving feedback. How can you strategically position your players who are not involved in drill so that they can provide valuable feedback to the players in the drill?
In a drill we call hot seat, which is a 6v6 scrimmage, one player is designated as the only one who can score a kill. One of our players did so well in that drill that a teammate bought a little red stool and wrote hot seat on it and put it in her teammate's locker to call attention to her great performance. When another teammate had a strong practice the next day, the first recipient of the hot seat passed it to her. Now, the little red stool moves from locker to locker as the previous recipient tries to identify the teammate who had the most impressive practice of the day. Such peer recognition goes a long way to build a team culture of encouragement, success, and positivity.
Player - Environment
Coaches can use video to provide important feedback in a way that builds motivation and confidence and increases effort. Many athletes are visual learners and benefit from seeing themselves perform. Technological advances have made access to video information very easy. We use an iPad app called BaM Video Delay to create a live delay on an iPad attached to a tripod. The delay is perfectly timed so that an athlete can perform a repetition in a drill, exit the drill, and watch her execution while a teammate performs the same drill on camera. The visual feedback allows players to see what they are doing correctly and incorrectly while also giving them the opportunity to experiment with a variety of techniques.
Videos of match play can also show players successful and problematic behaviors. Take advantage of available camera angles to focus on specific aspects of the game. For instance, if you can film only from the center line, focus on block penetration or the distance of the set off the net. When filming from behind the court, focus on blocking footwork and set distance. Be sure to focus on both positives and things to work on. Recently, as we were getting ready to watch a film of our serve-receive patterns from a match we had lost, I chose to show only the clips we had won. Seeing themselves succeed gave the players confidence in their ability to excel in their next match. Although this strategy worked in this situation, it shouldn't be the norm; it is important for teams to understand the reality of failure and to learn from those opportunities rather than disregard them.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Recruiting strategies for volleyball coaches
Phone calls and text messages are all allowed at certain times and may change. In 2015, a college coach can call an unlimited number of times during a contact period. The junior year is usually the heaviest recruiting time.
Phone calls and text messages are all allowed at certain times and may change. In 2015, a college coach can call an unlimited number of times during a contact period. The junior year is usually the heaviest recruiting time. It can get a little crazy with unlimited texting and people wanting to be texted back immediately. Top schools are the outliers because they recruit so young.
I have done only one home visit in the last eight years. In-person contact is allowed after July 1, but the rules may change each year. Sometimes I wish we could slow down recruiting by backing up home visits and official visits for a year so they would occur during their junior year instead of their senior year. Maybe the parents would be relieved not to have to pay to go to all of the universities on their own; they could simply wait for official visits during their junior year, which might slow things down a little bit.
Some athletes grow up wanting to go to a certain school. Perhaps it is nearby, or the whole family has gone there. If these athletes want to decide early, I think that is great. I worry about young players who haven't seen a lot of schools and are recruited by schools across the country where they have no real ties. These athletes seem to transfer more. De-commitments don't happen often, but they are most likely when athletes get to a school and find out it is not at all what they thought it would be.
Unofficial visits are very important now, but can be a challenge. Club volleyball is very time-consuming and expensive. Many parents can't afford to go to all the club tournaments, send their children to camps, and visit numerous college campuses. A lot of players regionalize; that is, they attend colleges they already know and feel comfortable with. However, they cannot make the most informed decision when they can't afford to visit all the schools that may be interested in them. Unfortunately, the official visit, which the university pays for, has become a formality during the senior year, after athletes have already made commitments. Families need to think about visiting college campuses as they vacation while their children are young. When they are driving around the country or flying to tournaments and cities, they can take time to stop by nearby campuses and get a feel for the schools. Athletes need to start early and see as many as colleges as they can.
Developing Trust
Once you have identified the athletes you are interested in, you should begin the relationship by making sure athletes, their parents, and their coaches trust you. They must believe that you are genuine in the recruiting process. I tell recruits to call me anytime, even if it is not about being recruited to the university I am working at. I tell them, essentially, that if they need help with anything about volleyball, playing on a summer USA Volleyball team, deciding which camp to attend, or anything at all, to call me.
As coaches, we need to open ourselves up as mentors to these young players. Parents will start to lean on us if they can tell that we care about their children as people. Every conversation isn't about a hard sell, but about getting to know recruits and their families. Witnessing the lack of honesty in some coaches is very frustrating. We need to know where these athletes are coming from. We need to put ourselves in their shoes and understand what they are looking for and what they need, and understand the stress involved in trying to make the best decision of where to go to school and play volleyball.
I learned to recruit from the head coaches I worked for. I was kind of a natural recruiter because I love to talk to and help people, and that's really what recruiting is. The communication part was easy for me. Great recruiters have magnetic personalities. People want to engage with them; they are trustworthy and honest, and they love to talk about volleyball. They love the game and sharing their passion for it. Most great recruiters don't have huge egos; generally speaking, they just love volleyball and are outstanding people you want to hang out with.Since recruiting is all about selling the university and the volleyball program, it is key to have someone who the players can relate to on your staff. If coaches don't have that type of personality themselves, they may be the ones who stay back in the office and take care of the tremendous paperwork with recruiting.
Offering Scholarships and Maintaining Commitments
Generally, we offer scholarships when we are 100 percent sure that an athlete can help us, which could be as early as 9th or 10th grade. Letting an athlete know that a scholarship is on the table is totally different from pressuring her to make a decision.
The head coaches I have worked with don't pressure anyone to make a decision or give them a deadline, and neither do I. The offer is theirs until the bitter end. Sometimes, during a junior or senior year when things are feeling a little tight with our second or third choices, we have to let an athlete know that we are under some pressure to make a decision. However, we want athletes who want to be here. We want to make sure they are coming because they want to, not because we forced them to make a decision.
After athletes commit to our school, we keep in touch with them. We do this for the sake of the relationship, but also because other schools may not honor that verbal commitment and continue to try to recruit them. We want to protect our prospective athletes from this pressure. We may communicate less frequently at this point and talk more about day-to-day things. We are getting to know them personally, letting them know that they can contact us anytime, and staying engaged with them. This helps athletes feels as though they have made the right decision and will be comfortable at our school. It shows we care. It is also very important to stay in touch with parents as well.
Tracking Recruits
It is critical that you identify a system for tracking all prospective recruits and where you are in the process with them. We use University Athlete (www.universityathlete.com) as a database to house most of our information. With this program you can look up any athletes and learn more about them. It allows you to also add notes under recruits' names and look up their schedules at tournaments, which is very helpful. A club that registers with University Athlete submits its schedules, which are uploaded so you can find times and the number of the courts athletes will be playing on. Every club gives its information to University Athlete, and university coaches pay an annual fee to access the service. This has made the data management side of recruiting much easier than it used to be.
International Recruits
I prefer to recruit domestically; I believe there is enough talent in the United States for a lot of teams to be good. However, international athletes can be good additions to your program if you are looking to move up quickly in the national rankings. The opportunity to have a great athlete with playing experience who is not afraid to compete because she has been there is hard to pass up. Most international athletes want to play volleyball and get an education. It is sometimes tough to determine whether an athlete is eligible to play on your program because of that athlete's professional experience. One recruiting service that can help identify international recruits is American Volleyball Scouting Report Global (www.avsrglobal.com/coaches).
Is an Athlete Being Recruited by a School?
The definition of a recruited athlete is defined in the 2014 NCAA rule book as follows: A prospect is considered a recruited athlete if the college takes one of the following actions:
- Provides the prospect with an official visit.
- Has off-campus contact with the prospect or the prospect's parents or legal guardians.
- Offers the prospect a national letter of intent or an athletic scholarship agreement.
- Initiates a telephone conversation with the prospect or the prospect's parents or legal guardians more than once.
Ironically, a college coach can have frequent communication (letters, e-mails, texts, phone calls if the athlete initiates the call) with a prospect without that person being considered a recruited athlete if the college coach does not take any of the preceding four actions.
Recruited Walk-Ons
We have a number of recruited walk-ons. Russ Rose, women's volleyball head coach at Penn State, loves to have a nice-size roster. Some athletes love the program and are super invested in what the school has and they are good enough to play and contribute, but at the time they applied, there was no scholarship for them. They are treated the same as athletes with scholarships in terms of academic services, equipment, and meals on the road. You would never know who is on scholarship by the way our athletes are treated. We have even had starters who were recruited as walk-ons.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Keeping stats and knowing how to use them
Coaches should be coaching; they need to spend as much time as possible in the moment and not with their heads down writing on paper. One of the greatest issues with keeping statistics is that the process of recording them can keep coaches from doing their primary job - coaching.
Issues With Using Statistics
Coaches should be coaching; they need to spend as much time as possible in the moment and not with their heads down writing on paper. One of the greatest issues with keeping statistics is that the process of recording them can keep coaches from doing their primary job - coaching. But if the coach isn't recording statistics, who should be? As the head coach on the bench, I have a sheet of paper on which I keep track of only the one or two statistics I believe are important to win the current match. These often change from opponent to opponent. Everything else is delegated to someone else who can quickly give me information as needed.
Statistics are only as valid and reliable as those recording them. It's often a challenge to find a reliable bench player, parent, or team manager who can keep accurate statistics. I love to have the backup setter keeping track of my team's passing and attacking statistics. It keeps her mind in the game, and it helps her understand what is working out there on the court. The same could be said for other players such as backup middles, outsides, and defensive players.
One of the greatest weaknesses of statistics is what many people call paralysis by analysis. A coach could easily make the mistake of taking numbers at face value and not using them to ask deeper questions. Some coaches spend too much time diving into the numbers and ultimately lose their coaching instincts. A coach who makes decisions completely based on numbers is just as susceptible to coaching mistakes as a coach who depends completely on instinct and subjective evaluation. The ideal situation is somewhere in the middle.
Statistical programs can be very expensive, or their complexity can make them very time-consuming. However, the recent development of tablet and iPad applications is making it very easy and inexpensive to track basic statistics. Several current programs include iVolleyStats, Volleyball Ace, and Rotate 123. The devices and applications will continue to change, so pay attention to new developments and use the right one for your program.
Tracking Statistics
It's really easy to say that detailed statistics should be taken during every practice and every competition. At the NCAA Division I level, a full staff and coaches are dedicated exclusively to the Data Volley statistical program. More often than not, recording statistics is the job of an assistant coach, bench player, or parent. I firmly believe that coaches should put coaching as their first priority. Coaches who have difficulty taking statistics and providing real-time feedback to their athletes should delegate the statistics to someone else. Those with limited options for statisticians are better off video-recording the match or practice and recording statistics from the video later.
The summer USA Volleyball High Performance teams often have a limited number of staff members. Obviously, the Olympic pipeline for USA Volleyball is extremely important, so recording quality statistics is as well. Following are some methods that can be used with a pen and paper and a limited staff.
Box Chart
Using a box chart, a coach can record multiple statistics at one time. The following box chart (table 17.1) shows who executed the serve receive, the rating of the pass, and what happened after the pass was set.
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We can gather a great deal of information from this chart. First, Jocelyn had 25 total passes for 43 total passing points. That means that her passing efficiency was 1.72 (43 passing points divided by 25 passes). We also know that 6 of her passes resulted in a first-ball kill, 10 passes resulted in a ball kept in play, 4 passes resulted in a first-ball error, and she was aced 5 times. We also can determine that 9 of her 25 passes were perfect (36 percent). This box chart can be used to track multiple stats for several players. The data can also be used to extrapolate areas of strength and weakness in a particular skill.
Stat Line
Using a stat line also works very well when a coach doesn't have enough time to chart events. With this method it's quite simple to keep track of many statistics at once. Following is a stat line chart for attacking, passing, and defense.
Luc: K 3 3 D 0 B A 3 2 D A B K E E
The translation of Luc's stat line would read like this from the first stat entry: kill, three pass, three pass, dig, zero pass, block, attack attempt, three pass, two pass, dig, attack attempt, block, kill, attack error, attack error. From this stat line we can determine the following about Luc's performance:
- 2 kills + 2 attack errors + 2 other attack attempts = 6 attempts
- 2 kills out of 6 attempts = 33% (kill percentage)
- 2 kills - 2 errors out of 6 attempts = .000 (kill efficiency)
- 5 serve-receive attempts for a total of 11 passing points = 2.20 (passing efficiency)
- 2 digs and 2 blocks
Most Important Statistics to Track
This subject is up for a great debate. The answer may lie in the type of team you have. If you have a team that scores at a very high level, then you are likely tracking the major offensive statistics. If your team depends on defensive skills to equalize matches, then you should be focusing more on serving, blocking, and defensive strategies. Let's have a quick refresher on the basic statistics in volleyball.
Basic Offensive Statistics
- Kill: When an attack attempt leads directly to a point
- Attack attempt: When an attack attempt results in neither a kill nor an error
- Error: When an attack attempt is blocked for a point, hit in the net, or hit out of bounds. Balls that are blocked are considered forced errors, whereas balls hit in the net or out of bounds are considered unforced errors.
Basic Defensive Statistics
- Block:A block is awarded to a player or players who score a point for their team by blocking an opponent attack. As many as three players may receive a block if they are all part of an attempt to block an attack.
- Block solo:When a player is the only one blocking a shot
- Block assist: When more than one player blocks an attack, all players receive a block assist regardless of whether they were the player who blocked the ball
- Block error: When a referee determines that a blocker has made illegal contact with the net
- Dig: When a player stops an opponent's attack attempt from being a kill
- Cover: When a player digs a teammate's attack after it has been blocked by an opponent
Basic Setting Statistics
- Set attempt: When a player attempts to set to a teammate for a kill
- Assist: When a player sets to a teammate and the attack is a kill
- Ball handling error: When a referee calls a player setting the ball for a lift or double contact
Basic Serving Statistics
- Serve attempt: When a player attempts a serve
- Ace: When a server's attempt is not passed and directly results in a point
- Serve error: When a player's attempt is served in the net or out of bounds, or a player commits a service line fault
Basic Serve-Receive Statistics
- Reception: When a player attempts a serve receive
- Reception error: When a player's poor serve receive leads to a direct point for the serving team
The following table 17.2 illustrates the two primary measurements of team system success, how those statistical measurements are determined, the best way to track the systems, and some goals your team might try to achieve.
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Serve-Receive Statistics
One of the most common ways to determine the success of your serve-receive game is to grade each serve reception.
Passing Average (3-Point Scale)
How to most accurately rate this statistic is up for great debate. Many coaches use a traditional 3-point scale ranging from 0 for an ace or overpass to 3 for a perfect pass. Figure 17.1 represents the value of each pass based on where the ball would have landed on the court.The team goal is to achieve a 2.30, or a 60 percent 3 pass.
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Passing average, 3-point scale.
Passing Average (4-Point Scale)
There is a statistical problem with the 3-point passing scale. Statisticians will tell you that anything with an odd number of data points is not statistically valid or reliable. Therefore, many higher-level programs use a 4-point scale ranging from 0 for an ace or overpass to 4 for a perfect-perfect pass (see figure 17.2). The team goal is to achieve 2.70, or a 60 percent 3 and 4 pass.
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Passing average, 4-point scale.
Passing Average (Weighted Scale)
Recently, I had a conversation with Jim Dietz, who is the very numbers-savvy head coach for Lincoln Land Community College in Illinois. He has been working with a passing scale that is weighted to include an expected success outcome based on the quality of a pass (see figure 17.3). It's fair to say that a 2 pass is twice as likely to yield a point as a 1 pass. A 5 pass is 5 times as likely to yield a point as a 1 pass. The team goal is to achieve 3.30, or a 60 percent 5 pass.
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Passing average, weighted scale.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Developing a positive team culture
Think back to a time when you worked hard, had fun, learned a lot, and achieved at a high level. What characterized that environment? What characterized the relationships you had with your peers? Your leader? Seldom do people look back and recall these times as easy, but they also don’t describe them as negative.
Think back to a time when you worked hard, had fun, learned a lot, and achieved at a high level. What characterized that environment? What characterized the relationships you had with your peers? Your leader? Seldom do people look back and recall these times as easy, but they also don't describe them as negative. A balance exists on teams that reach their potential - between challenge and skill, criticism and encouragement, trust and accountability, fun and focus, as well as between team and individual. How you, as a coach, facilitate the balance of these factors, both in your relationships with your athletes and in the way they relate to each other and the environment, is where the art of coaching is found.
The aspects of your program on which you have some influence are all based on relationships. The effectiveness of the drills you choose or the tactics you employ is based, in part, on the strength of your relationships with your players. The selflessness and team focus of your players are influenced, in part, by their relationships with each other. Their ability to be engaged in the moment and focus on the task at hand is facilitated, in part, by their relationships with their training and competitive environment. Although these relationships are sometimes difficult to control, they are certainly open to being influenced by the head coach.
Balance of Challenge and Skill
You may remember a time competing, as a player or as a coach, when you got lost in the moment. Time was transformed, your movement felt effortless, your focus was precise, and your performance was exemplary. In short, the experience was perfect, and somewhat elusive. We might remember these moments so clearly because they don't happen that often. Important research was conducted by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the late 20th century to investigate why these "flow" experiences happen and how they can happen more often. An important factor in their occurrence is the balance between the challenge presented by the context of the game or training environment and the skill level of the athletes involved. If the opponent or drill is too challenging for the participant based on skill level, frustration is likely to prevent a good performance. Likewise, if the contest or drill is too easy or simple for a team, boredom will prevent the athletes from having motivation to achieve optimal performance. The key is to manipulate the competitive and training environments to keep the balance of challenge and skill appropriate to maintain maximal motivation.
Coach - Player
As the coach, you have control over the drills you build into practice, the level of performance you demand, the way you structure groups and teams, and the level of competition in the nonleague portion of your schedule. The first task in an effort to achieve balance between challenge and skill is to evaluate your talent. At what skills do the players on your team demonstrate proficiency, and where are they weak? At what point do the skills at which they are proficient begin to break down? Evaluating these factors will help you find the sweet spot in training where athletes will experience enough challenge to feel pushed but also enough success to remain confident.
Another factor contributing to the balance of challenge and skill is the way athletes and coaches interpret failure. After all, the negativity that comes with frustration is rooted in the perception that failure is a bad thing. One of the common characteristics of training programs that elicit the most success from their performers is that failure is not something to be feared. In fact, failure is appreciated because it means that participants are willing to risk and to push themselves outside of their comfort zones to improve. People who fear failure attempt only the things they can already do. The player who fears failure and can attack very well crosscourt will focus only on her crosscourt attack, limiting the opportunity to develop her line shot. If you, as a coach, focus on failure (by either calling attention to it or punishing it), then you will end up fostering a mind-set that prevents risk taking and limits growth. Table 3.1 provides examples of how to manipulate the training and competitive environments to create a balance of challenge and skill to encourage peak performance.
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Player - Player
A positive team climate is not just dependent on the relationships between the players and coaches: it is one in which the players have a positive influence on each other. But how can players influence the balance between challenge and skill for each other? The answer comes in the way the team is grouped and how team members take responsibility for each other. At Hope College in Michigan, where I coach, I often structure scrimmage teams so that the top front-row players are attacking against the top back-row players. This makes it so that players who need more developmental work in the back row are digging balls against a front row that is also working on developing skills. Both groups are playing with and against teammates in ways that are developmentally appropriate.
On occasion, ignoring developmental level when grouping players can be incredibly positive. I worked with a volleyball club that would do position-specific practice with players from every age group on the same court by position. Experienced and talented 18-year-olds were grouped with 14-year-old novices. The challenge - skill balance was maintained because the experienced players were tasked with being good models of fundamental techniques for the younger players and with providing peer instruction. The younger players were encouraged to focus on the process (technique) rather than the result.
Player - Environment
Another way that we try to promote a balance of challenge and skill is to make sure that our players understand the big picture of our training. We use a whiteboard at practice to share our practice plan, the focus points and goals of each drill, and where our players are supposed to go. This helps players identify how the skills developed early in practice will prepare them for performance in the scrimmages later on. It identifies coaching cues and focus points that our staff will be verbalizing during the drills. The whiteboard also helps us track our performance in drills over time, which facilitates setting appropriate goals and standards. For instance, we do a crosscourt ball-control exchange drill in which players try to take a specific number of aggressive swings in five minutes. We keep the highest scores in that drill in the corner of our whiteboard as a reminder of the standard and players' past achievements.
Balance of Criticism and Encouragement
A positive team climate is one in which athletes improve their ability and learn more about their potential. The feedback they receive from their coaches, each other, and the environment contributes to both of these objectives. Telling players what they do well, although positive, does not help them maximize their skills. Focusing on the negative, for most athletes, results in frustration and decreased self-confidence. Again, the coach's task is to find a balance between the two as well as provide multiple sources of feedback.
Coach-Player
In my experience, athletes desire two types of feedback from their coaches:
- To be acknowledged when they do something well
- To be told specifically how to improve when they fail
At Hope College we want our coaches working hard to provide both types of feedback. We want to acknowledge and celebrate when our athletes succeed, both in result and process. I went through a phase in my coaching when I felt as though telling players "great pass" after getting the ball to target was redundant. They could see that the pass was perfect and didn't need me to tell them. I found that my athletes appreciated my praising their passes (or any other obvious demonstrations of skill) because pleasing me was important to them. This is further demonstrated in how often my players ask, "Coach, did you see that?" when they achieve success at something they have been working on. The athlete knows that she was successful, but she wants to share that success with me.
In addition to praising successful execution, we also want to praise successful process. Specific feedback on techniques that improve athletes' chances of success or attempts that are outside their comfort zones are worthy of encouragement. It helps to know exactly what your players are working to improve, so that you can give appropriate feedback when you see them make progress. Write down their goals or objectives, as well as the areas in which you would like to see them improve, and carry it with you during practice. Sharing those goals with your assistant coaches will keep them engaged and help them know where they can make a contribution.
When I realized that praising both success and progress toward goals was valued by my players, I also realized that I could be much more specific than just saying, "Great pass." We don't have a lot of time to convey a lot of information, so we use specific cues to convey exactly what led to the success. During one afternoon of our preseason, we spend a couple of hours in volley-school (an idea taken from the U.S. national team program), in which we explain all of the coaching cues our staff uses and exactly what each word means. This cuts down on needing to use whole sentences to explain the specifics of what the athlete did well or poorly; we need only one or two words that are well understood. We use words such as balance, square, plant, and press to convey specific aspects of skills quickly. You can use instructional feedback with motivational feedback to let your athletes know specifically what led to their positive results. Have a manager track the type of feedback you provide to see whether you are as positive, specific, and motivational as you can be.
The Positive Coaching Alliance (www.positivecoach.org) uses the phrase emotional gas tanks to convey athlete's emotional health. Praise, instruction, opportunity, and positive body language add to the emotional gas tank of an athlete. Criticism, punishment, and decreased opportunity result in emotional gas tank withdrawals. Keeping an eye on the emotional gas tank of each player on the team (how often you have made additions and how often you have made withdrawals) will help you predict how they will respond to the feedback. This is not to say that you should never make a withdrawal. Sometimes it is important to be critical, to uphold a standard, or to let athletes know that their behavior, attitude, or effort is unacceptable. However, in those situations, unless significant investments have been made, their motivation or self-confidence may diminish.
Player - Player
Players sometimes receive feedback from teammates more easily than from coaches. Such feedback can feel less threatening and also increase trust between teammates who are competing for the same position. We have developed a culture in which peer feedback is an important part of our program. The foundation is a lack of hierarchy within our team. For instance, we do not want our seniors to believe that they are any more important than our freshmen, or for sophomores to believe that they have any less value than juniors. We encourage our freshmen to give advice to seniors when they see an opportunity, and we ask our seniors to take the advice that they get from anyone with an outsider's perspective regardless of year.
In our program, the first 15 to 20 seconds of time-outs involve players getting into position groups so that the players on the bench can tell the players on the floor what they are seeing. This also gives the coaches a few seconds to meet and put together a cohesive, concise message for the entire team. For drill work in practice situations, we break up the team into smaller groups; while one group is performing the drill, another is positioned to give feedback. When we are working on blocking, one player says yes or no to communicate whether the middle closes the block, another player along the net says yes or no regarding the blocker's hands getting over the net, and another player identifies whether the block is timed correctly with the attack. The goal for the blockers, regardless of the result of the block, is to get three yeses from the players giving feedback. How can you strategically position your players who are not involved in drill so that they can provide valuable feedback to the players in the drill?
In a drill we call hot seat, which is a 6v6 scrimmage, one player is designated as the only one who can score a kill. One of our players did so well in that drill that a teammate bought a little red stool and wrote hot seat on it and put it in her teammate's locker to call attention to her great performance. When another teammate had a strong practice the next day, the first recipient of the hot seat passed it to her. Now, the little red stool moves from locker to locker as the previous recipient tries to identify the teammate who had the most impressive practice of the day. Such peer recognition goes a long way to build a team culture of encouragement, success, and positivity.
Player - Environment
Coaches can use video to provide important feedback in a way that builds motivation and confidence and increases effort. Many athletes are visual learners and benefit from seeing themselves perform. Technological advances have made access to video information very easy. We use an iPad app called BaM Video Delay to create a live delay on an iPad attached to a tripod. The delay is perfectly timed so that an athlete can perform a repetition in a drill, exit the drill, and watch her execution while a teammate performs the same drill on camera. The visual feedback allows players to see what they are doing correctly and incorrectly while also giving them the opportunity to experiment with a variety of techniques.
Videos of match play can also show players successful and problematic behaviors. Take advantage of available camera angles to focus on specific aspects of the game. For instance, if you can film only from the center line, focus on block penetration or the distance of the set off the net. When filming from behind the court, focus on blocking footwork and set distance. Be sure to focus on both positives and things to work on. Recently, as we were getting ready to watch a film of our serve-receive patterns from a match we had lost, I chose to show only the clips we had won. Seeing themselves succeed gave the players confidence in their ability to excel in their next match. Although this strategy worked in this situation, it shouldn't be the norm; it is important for teams to understand the reality of failure and to learn from those opportunities rather than disregard them.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Recruiting strategies for volleyball coaches
Phone calls and text messages are all allowed at certain times and may change. In 2015, a college coach can call an unlimited number of times during a contact period. The junior year is usually the heaviest recruiting time.
Phone calls and text messages are all allowed at certain times and may change. In 2015, a college coach can call an unlimited number of times during a contact period. The junior year is usually the heaviest recruiting time. It can get a little crazy with unlimited texting and people wanting to be texted back immediately. Top schools are the outliers because they recruit so young.
I have done only one home visit in the last eight years. In-person contact is allowed after July 1, but the rules may change each year. Sometimes I wish we could slow down recruiting by backing up home visits and official visits for a year so they would occur during their junior year instead of their senior year. Maybe the parents would be relieved not to have to pay to go to all of the universities on their own; they could simply wait for official visits during their junior year, which might slow things down a little bit.
Some athletes grow up wanting to go to a certain school. Perhaps it is nearby, or the whole family has gone there. If these athletes want to decide early, I think that is great. I worry about young players who haven't seen a lot of schools and are recruited by schools across the country where they have no real ties. These athletes seem to transfer more. De-commitments don't happen often, but they are most likely when athletes get to a school and find out it is not at all what they thought it would be.
Unofficial visits are very important now, but can be a challenge. Club volleyball is very time-consuming and expensive. Many parents can't afford to go to all the club tournaments, send their children to camps, and visit numerous college campuses. A lot of players regionalize; that is, they attend colleges they already know and feel comfortable with. However, they cannot make the most informed decision when they can't afford to visit all the schools that may be interested in them. Unfortunately, the official visit, which the university pays for, has become a formality during the senior year, after athletes have already made commitments. Families need to think about visiting college campuses as they vacation while their children are young. When they are driving around the country or flying to tournaments and cities, they can take time to stop by nearby campuses and get a feel for the schools. Athletes need to start early and see as many as colleges as they can.
Developing Trust
Once you have identified the athletes you are interested in, you should begin the relationship by making sure athletes, their parents, and their coaches trust you. They must believe that you are genuine in the recruiting process. I tell recruits to call me anytime, even if it is not about being recruited to the university I am working at. I tell them, essentially, that if they need help with anything about volleyball, playing on a summer USA Volleyball team, deciding which camp to attend, or anything at all, to call me.
As coaches, we need to open ourselves up as mentors to these young players. Parents will start to lean on us if they can tell that we care about their children as people. Every conversation isn't about a hard sell, but about getting to know recruits and their families. Witnessing the lack of honesty in some coaches is very frustrating. We need to know where these athletes are coming from. We need to put ourselves in their shoes and understand what they are looking for and what they need, and understand the stress involved in trying to make the best decision of where to go to school and play volleyball.
I learned to recruit from the head coaches I worked for. I was kind of a natural recruiter because I love to talk to and help people, and that's really what recruiting is. The communication part was easy for me. Great recruiters have magnetic personalities. People want to engage with them; they are trustworthy and honest, and they love to talk about volleyball. They love the game and sharing their passion for it. Most great recruiters don't have huge egos; generally speaking, they just love volleyball and are outstanding people you want to hang out with.Since recruiting is all about selling the university and the volleyball program, it is key to have someone who the players can relate to on your staff. If coaches don't have that type of personality themselves, they may be the ones who stay back in the office and take care of the tremendous paperwork with recruiting.
Offering Scholarships and Maintaining Commitments
Generally, we offer scholarships when we are 100 percent sure that an athlete can help us, which could be as early as 9th or 10th grade. Letting an athlete know that a scholarship is on the table is totally different from pressuring her to make a decision.
The head coaches I have worked with don't pressure anyone to make a decision or give them a deadline, and neither do I. The offer is theirs until the bitter end. Sometimes, during a junior or senior year when things are feeling a little tight with our second or third choices, we have to let an athlete know that we are under some pressure to make a decision. However, we want athletes who want to be here. We want to make sure they are coming because they want to, not because we forced them to make a decision.
After athletes commit to our school, we keep in touch with them. We do this for the sake of the relationship, but also because other schools may not honor that verbal commitment and continue to try to recruit them. We want to protect our prospective athletes from this pressure. We may communicate less frequently at this point and talk more about day-to-day things. We are getting to know them personally, letting them know that they can contact us anytime, and staying engaged with them. This helps athletes feels as though they have made the right decision and will be comfortable at our school. It shows we care. It is also very important to stay in touch with parents as well.
Tracking Recruits
It is critical that you identify a system for tracking all prospective recruits and where you are in the process with them. We use University Athlete (www.universityathlete.com) as a database to house most of our information. With this program you can look up any athletes and learn more about them. It allows you to also add notes under recruits' names and look up their schedules at tournaments, which is very helpful. A club that registers with University Athlete submits its schedules, which are uploaded so you can find times and the number of the courts athletes will be playing on. Every club gives its information to University Athlete, and university coaches pay an annual fee to access the service. This has made the data management side of recruiting much easier than it used to be.
International Recruits
I prefer to recruit domestically; I believe there is enough talent in the United States for a lot of teams to be good. However, international athletes can be good additions to your program if you are looking to move up quickly in the national rankings. The opportunity to have a great athlete with playing experience who is not afraid to compete because she has been there is hard to pass up. Most international athletes want to play volleyball and get an education. It is sometimes tough to determine whether an athlete is eligible to play on your program because of that athlete's professional experience. One recruiting service that can help identify international recruits is American Volleyball Scouting Report Global (www.avsrglobal.com/coaches).
Is an Athlete Being Recruited by a School?
The definition of a recruited athlete is defined in the 2014 NCAA rule book as follows: A prospect is considered a recruited athlete if the college takes one of the following actions:
- Provides the prospect with an official visit.
- Has off-campus contact with the prospect or the prospect's parents or legal guardians.
- Offers the prospect a national letter of intent or an athletic scholarship agreement.
- Initiates a telephone conversation with the prospect or the prospect's parents or legal guardians more than once.
Ironically, a college coach can have frequent communication (letters, e-mails, texts, phone calls if the athlete initiates the call) with a prospect without that person being considered a recruited athlete if the college coach does not take any of the preceding four actions.
Recruited Walk-Ons
We have a number of recruited walk-ons. Russ Rose, women's volleyball head coach at Penn State, loves to have a nice-size roster. Some athletes love the program and are super invested in what the school has and they are good enough to play and contribute, but at the time they applied, there was no scholarship for them. They are treated the same as athletes with scholarships in terms of academic services, equipment, and meals on the road. You would never know who is on scholarship by the way our athletes are treated. We have even had starters who were recruited as walk-ons.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Keeping stats and knowing how to use them
Coaches should be coaching; they need to spend as much time as possible in the moment and not with their heads down writing on paper. One of the greatest issues with keeping statistics is that the process of recording them can keep coaches from doing their primary job - coaching.
Issues With Using Statistics
Coaches should be coaching; they need to spend as much time as possible in the moment and not with their heads down writing on paper. One of the greatest issues with keeping statistics is that the process of recording them can keep coaches from doing their primary job - coaching. But if the coach isn't recording statistics, who should be? As the head coach on the bench, I have a sheet of paper on which I keep track of only the one or two statistics I believe are important to win the current match. These often change from opponent to opponent. Everything else is delegated to someone else who can quickly give me information as needed.
Statistics are only as valid and reliable as those recording them. It's often a challenge to find a reliable bench player, parent, or team manager who can keep accurate statistics. I love to have the backup setter keeping track of my team's passing and attacking statistics. It keeps her mind in the game, and it helps her understand what is working out there on the court. The same could be said for other players such as backup middles, outsides, and defensive players.
One of the greatest weaknesses of statistics is what many people call paralysis by analysis. A coach could easily make the mistake of taking numbers at face value and not using them to ask deeper questions. Some coaches spend too much time diving into the numbers and ultimately lose their coaching instincts. A coach who makes decisions completely based on numbers is just as susceptible to coaching mistakes as a coach who depends completely on instinct and subjective evaluation. The ideal situation is somewhere in the middle.
Statistical programs can be very expensive, or their complexity can make them very time-consuming. However, the recent development of tablet and iPad applications is making it very easy and inexpensive to track basic statistics. Several current programs include iVolleyStats, Volleyball Ace, and Rotate 123. The devices and applications will continue to change, so pay attention to new developments and use the right one for your program.
Tracking Statistics
It's really easy to say that detailed statistics should be taken during every practice and every competition. At the NCAA Division I level, a full staff and coaches are dedicated exclusively to the Data Volley statistical program. More often than not, recording statistics is the job of an assistant coach, bench player, or parent. I firmly believe that coaches should put coaching as their first priority. Coaches who have difficulty taking statistics and providing real-time feedback to their athletes should delegate the statistics to someone else. Those with limited options for statisticians are better off video-recording the match or practice and recording statistics from the video later.
The summer USA Volleyball High Performance teams often have a limited number of staff members. Obviously, the Olympic pipeline for USA Volleyball is extremely important, so recording quality statistics is as well. Following are some methods that can be used with a pen and paper and a limited staff.
Box Chart
Using a box chart, a coach can record multiple statistics at one time. The following box chart (table 17.1) shows who executed the serve receive, the rating of the pass, and what happened after the pass was set.
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We can gather a great deal of information from this chart. First, Jocelyn had 25 total passes for 43 total passing points. That means that her passing efficiency was 1.72 (43 passing points divided by 25 passes). We also know that 6 of her passes resulted in a first-ball kill, 10 passes resulted in a ball kept in play, 4 passes resulted in a first-ball error, and she was aced 5 times. We also can determine that 9 of her 25 passes were perfect (36 percent). This box chart can be used to track multiple stats for several players. The data can also be used to extrapolate areas of strength and weakness in a particular skill.
Stat Line
Using a stat line also works very well when a coach doesn't have enough time to chart events. With this method it's quite simple to keep track of many statistics at once. Following is a stat line chart for attacking, passing, and defense.
Luc: K 3 3 D 0 B A 3 2 D A B K E E
The translation of Luc's stat line would read like this from the first stat entry: kill, three pass, three pass, dig, zero pass, block, attack attempt, three pass, two pass, dig, attack attempt, block, kill, attack error, attack error. From this stat line we can determine the following about Luc's performance:
- 2 kills + 2 attack errors + 2 other attack attempts = 6 attempts
- 2 kills out of 6 attempts = 33% (kill percentage)
- 2 kills - 2 errors out of 6 attempts = .000 (kill efficiency)
- 5 serve-receive attempts for a total of 11 passing points = 2.20 (passing efficiency)
- 2 digs and 2 blocks
Most Important Statistics to Track
This subject is up for a great debate. The answer may lie in the type of team you have. If you have a team that scores at a very high level, then you are likely tracking the major offensive statistics. If your team depends on defensive skills to equalize matches, then you should be focusing more on serving, blocking, and defensive strategies. Let's have a quick refresher on the basic statistics in volleyball.
Basic Offensive Statistics
- Kill: When an attack attempt leads directly to a point
- Attack attempt: When an attack attempt results in neither a kill nor an error
- Error: When an attack attempt is blocked for a point, hit in the net, or hit out of bounds. Balls that are blocked are considered forced errors, whereas balls hit in the net or out of bounds are considered unforced errors.
Basic Defensive Statistics
- Block:A block is awarded to a player or players who score a point for their team by blocking an opponent attack. As many as three players may receive a block if they are all part of an attempt to block an attack.
- Block solo:When a player is the only one blocking a shot
- Block assist: When more than one player blocks an attack, all players receive a block assist regardless of whether they were the player who blocked the ball
- Block error: When a referee determines that a blocker has made illegal contact with the net
- Dig: When a player stops an opponent's attack attempt from being a kill
- Cover: When a player digs a teammate's attack after it has been blocked by an opponent
Basic Setting Statistics
- Set attempt: When a player attempts to set to a teammate for a kill
- Assist: When a player sets to a teammate and the attack is a kill
- Ball handling error: When a referee calls a player setting the ball for a lift or double contact
Basic Serving Statistics
- Serve attempt: When a player attempts a serve
- Ace: When a server's attempt is not passed and directly results in a point
- Serve error: When a player's attempt is served in the net or out of bounds, or a player commits a service line fault
Basic Serve-Receive Statistics
- Reception: When a player attempts a serve receive
- Reception error: When a player's poor serve receive leads to a direct point for the serving team
The following table 17.2 illustrates the two primary measurements of team system success, how those statistical measurements are determined, the best way to track the systems, and some goals your team might try to achieve.
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Serve-Receive Statistics
One of the most common ways to determine the success of your serve-receive game is to grade each serve reception.
Passing Average (3-Point Scale)
How to most accurately rate this statistic is up for great debate. Many coaches use a traditional 3-point scale ranging from 0 for an ace or overpass to 3 for a perfect pass. Figure 17.1 represents the value of each pass based on where the ball would have landed on the court.The team goal is to achieve a 2.30, or a 60 percent 3 pass.
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Passing average, 3-point scale.
Passing Average (4-Point Scale)
There is a statistical problem with the 3-point passing scale. Statisticians will tell you that anything with an odd number of data points is not statistically valid or reliable. Therefore, many higher-level programs use a 4-point scale ranging from 0 for an ace or overpass to 4 for a perfect-perfect pass (see figure 17.2). The team goal is to achieve 2.70, or a 60 percent 3 and 4 pass.
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Passing average, 4-point scale.
Passing Average (Weighted Scale)
Recently, I had a conversation with Jim Dietz, who is the very numbers-savvy head coach for Lincoln Land Community College in Illinois. He has been working with a passing scale that is weighted to include an expected success outcome based on the quality of a pass (see figure 17.3). It's fair to say that a 2 pass is twice as likely to yield a point as a 1 pass. A 5 pass is 5 times as likely to yield a point as a 1 pass. The team goal is to achieve 3.30, or a 60 percent 5 pass.
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Passing average, weighted scale.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Developing a positive team culture
Think back to a time when you worked hard, had fun, learned a lot, and achieved at a high level. What characterized that environment? What characterized the relationships you had with your peers? Your leader? Seldom do people look back and recall these times as easy, but they also don’t describe them as negative.
Think back to a time when you worked hard, had fun, learned a lot, and achieved at a high level. What characterized that environment? What characterized the relationships you had with your peers? Your leader? Seldom do people look back and recall these times as easy, but they also don't describe them as negative. A balance exists on teams that reach their potential - between challenge and skill, criticism and encouragement, trust and accountability, fun and focus, as well as between team and individual. How you, as a coach, facilitate the balance of these factors, both in your relationships with your athletes and in the way they relate to each other and the environment, is where the art of coaching is found.
The aspects of your program on which you have some influence are all based on relationships. The effectiveness of the drills you choose or the tactics you employ is based, in part, on the strength of your relationships with your players. The selflessness and team focus of your players are influenced, in part, by their relationships with each other. Their ability to be engaged in the moment and focus on the task at hand is facilitated, in part, by their relationships with their training and competitive environment. Although these relationships are sometimes difficult to control, they are certainly open to being influenced by the head coach.
Balance of Challenge and Skill
You may remember a time competing, as a player or as a coach, when you got lost in the moment. Time was transformed, your movement felt effortless, your focus was precise, and your performance was exemplary. In short, the experience was perfect, and somewhat elusive. We might remember these moments so clearly because they don't happen that often. Important research was conducted by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the late 20th century to investigate why these "flow" experiences happen and how they can happen more often. An important factor in their occurrence is the balance between the challenge presented by the context of the game or training environment and the skill level of the athletes involved. If the opponent or drill is too challenging for the participant based on skill level, frustration is likely to prevent a good performance. Likewise, if the contest or drill is too easy or simple for a team, boredom will prevent the athletes from having motivation to achieve optimal performance. The key is to manipulate the competitive and training environments to keep the balance of challenge and skill appropriate to maintain maximal motivation.
Coach - Player
As the coach, you have control over the drills you build into practice, the level of performance you demand, the way you structure groups and teams, and the level of competition in the nonleague portion of your schedule. The first task in an effort to achieve balance between challenge and skill is to evaluate your talent. At what skills do the players on your team demonstrate proficiency, and where are they weak? At what point do the skills at which they are proficient begin to break down? Evaluating these factors will help you find the sweet spot in training where athletes will experience enough challenge to feel pushed but also enough success to remain confident.
Another factor contributing to the balance of challenge and skill is the way athletes and coaches interpret failure. After all, the negativity that comes with frustration is rooted in the perception that failure is a bad thing. One of the common characteristics of training programs that elicit the most success from their performers is that failure is not something to be feared. In fact, failure is appreciated because it means that participants are willing to risk and to push themselves outside of their comfort zones to improve. People who fear failure attempt only the things they can already do. The player who fears failure and can attack very well crosscourt will focus only on her crosscourt attack, limiting the opportunity to develop her line shot. If you, as a coach, focus on failure (by either calling attention to it or punishing it), then you will end up fostering a mind-set that prevents risk taking and limits growth. Table 3.1 provides examples of how to manipulate the training and competitive environments to create a balance of challenge and skill to encourage peak performance.
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Player - Player
A positive team climate is not just dependent on the relationships between the players and coaches: it is one in which the players have a positive influence on each other. But how can players influence the balance between challenge and skill for each other? The answer comes in the way the team is grouped and how team members take responsibility for each other. At Hope College in Michigan, where I coach, I often structure scrimmage teams so that the top front-row players are attacking against the top back-row players. This makes it so that players who need more developmental work in the back row are digging balls against a front row that is also working on developing skills. Both groups are playing with and against teammates in ways that are developmentally appropriate.
On occasion, ignoring developmental level when grouping players can be incredibly positive. I worked with a volleyball club that would do position-specific practice with players from every age group on the same court by position. Experienced and talented 18-year-olds were grouped with 14-year-old novices. The challenge - skill balance was maintained because the experienced players were tasked with being good models of fundamental techniques for the younger players and with providing peer instruction. The younger players were encouraged to focus on the process (technique) rather than the result.
Player - Environment
Another way that we try to promote a balance of challenge and skill is to make sure that our players understand the big picture of our training. We use a whiteboard at practice to share our practice plan, the focus points and goals of each drill, and where our players are supposed to go. This helps players identify how the skills developed early in practice will prepare them for performance in the scrimmages later on. It identifies coaching cues and focus points that our staff will be verbalizing during the drills. The whiteboard also helps us track our performance in drills over time, which facilitates setting appropriate goals and standards. For instance, we do a crosscourt ball-control exchange drill in which players try to take a specific number of aggressive swings in five minutes. We keep the highest scores in that drill in the corner of our whiteboard as a reminder of the standard and players' past achievements.
Balance of Criticism and Encouragement
A positive team climate is one in which athletes improve their ability and learn more about their potential. The feedback they receive from their coaches, each other, and the environment contributes to both of these objectives. Telling players what they do well, although positive, does not help them maximize their skills. Focusing on the negative, for most athletes, results in frustration and decreased self-confidence. Again, the coach's task is to find a balance between the two as well as provide multiple sources of feedback.
Coach-Player
In my experience, athletes desire two types of feedback from their coaches:
- To be acknowledged when they do something well
- To be told specifically how to improve when they fail
At Hope College we want our coaches working hard to provide both types of feedback. We want to acknowledge and celebrate when our athletes succeed, both in result and process. I went through a phase in my coaching when I felt as though telling players "great pass" after getting the ball to target was redundant. They could see that the pass was perfect and didn't need me to tell them. I found that my athletes appreciated my praising their passes (or any other obvious demonstrations of skill) because pleasing me was important to them. This is further demonstrated in how often my players ask, "Coach, did you see that?" when they achieve success at something they have been working on. The athlete knows that she was successful, but she wants to share that success with me.
In addition to praising successful execution, we also want to praise successful process. Specific feedback on techniques that improve athletes' chances of success or attempts that are outside their comfort zones are worthy of encouragement. It helps to know exactly what your players are working to improve, so that you can give appropriate feedback when you see them make progress. Write down their goals or objectives, as well as the areas in which you would like to see them improve, and carry it with you during practice. Sharing those goals with your assistant coaches will keep them engaged and help them know where they can make a contribution.
When I realized that praising both success and progress toward goals was valued by my players, I also realized that I could be much more specific than just saying, "Great pass." We don't have a lot of time to convey a lot of information, so we use specific cues to convey exactly what led to the success. During one afternoon of our preseason, we spend a couple of hours in volley-school (an idea taken from the U.S. national team program), in which we explain all of the coaching cues our staff uses and exactly what each word means. This cuts down on needing to use whole sentences to explain the specifics of what the athlete did well or poorly; we need only one or two words that are well understood. We use words such as balance, square, plant, and press to convey specific aspects of skills quickly. You can use instructional feedback with motivational feedback to let your athletes know specifically what led to their positive results. Have a manager track the type of feedback you provide to see whether you are as positive, specific, and motivational as you can be.
The Positive Coaching Alliance (www.positivecoach.org) uses the phrase emotional gas tanks to convey athlete's emotional health. Praise, instruction, opportunity, and positive body language add to the emotional gas tank of an athlete. Criticism, punishment, and decreased opportunity result in emotional gas tank withdrawals. Keeping an eye on the emotional gas tank of each player on the team (how often you have made additions and how often you have made withdrawals) will help you predict how they will respond to the feedback. This is not to say that you should never make a withdrawal. Sometimes it is important to be critical, to uphold a standard, or to let athletes know that their behavior, attitude, or effort is unacceptable. However, in those situations, unless significant investments have been made, their motivation or self-confidence may diminish.
Player - Player
Players sometimes receive feedback from teammates more easily than from coaches. Such feedback can feel less threatening and also increase trust between teammates who are competing for the same position. We have developed a culture in which peer feedback is an important part of our program. The foundation is a lack of hierarchy within our team. For instance, we do not want our seniors to believe that they are any more important than our freshmen, or for sophomores to believe that they have any less value than juniors. We encourage our freshmen to give advice to seniors when they see an opportunity, and we ask our seniors to take the advice that they get from anyone with an outsider's perspective regardless of year.
In our program, the first 15 to 20 seconds of time-outs involve players getting into position groups so that the players on the bench can tell the players on the floor what they are seeing. This also gives the coaches a few seconds to meet and put together a cohesive, concise message for the entire team. For drill work in practice situations, we break up the team into smaller groups; while one group is performing the drill, another is positioned to give feedback. When we are working on blocking, one player says yes or no to communicate whether the middle closes the block, another player along the net says yes or no regarding the blocker's hands getting over the net, and another player identifies whether the block is timed correctly with the attack. The goal for the blockers, regardless of the result of the block, is to get three yeses from the players giving feedback. How can you strategically position your players who are not involved in drill so that they can provide valuable feedback to the players in the drill?
In a drill we call hot seat, which is a 6v6 scrimmage, one player is designated as the only one who can score a kill. One of our players did so well in that drill that a teammate bought a little red stool and wrote hot seat on it and put it in her teammate's locker to call attention to her great performance. When another teammate had a strong practice the next day, the first recipient of the hot seat passed it to her. Now, the little red stool moves from locker to locker as the previous recipient tries to identify the teammate who had the most impressive practice of the day. Such peer recognition goes a long way to build a team culture of encouragement, success, and positivity.
Player - Environment
Coaches can use video to provide important feedback in a way that builds motivation and confidence and increases effort. Many athletes are visual learners and benefit from seeing themselves perform. Technological advances have made access to video information very easy. We use an iPad app called BaM Video Delay to create a live delay on an iPad attached to a tripod. The delay is perfectly timed so that an athlete can perform a repetition in a drill, exit the drill, and watch her execution while a teammate performs the same drill on camera. The visual feedback allows players to see what they are doing correctly and incorrectly while also giving them the opportunity to experiment with a variety of techniques.
Videos of match play can also show players successful and problematic behaviors. Take advantage of available camera angles to focus on specific aspects of the game. For instance, if you can film only from the center line, focus on block penetration or the distance of the set off the net. When filming from behind the court, focus on blocking footwork and set distance. Be sure to focus on both positives and things to work on. Recently, as we were getting ready to watch a film of our serve-receive patterns from a match we had lost, I chose to show only the clips we had won. Seeing themselves succeed gave the players confidence in their ability to excel in their next match. Although this strategy worked in this situation, it shouldn't be the norm; it is important for teams to understand the reality of failure and to learn from those opportunities rather than disregard them.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Recruiting strategies for volleyball coaches
Phone calls and text messages are all allowed at certain times and may change. In 2015, a college coach can call an unlimited number of times during a contact period. The junior year is usually the heaviest recruiting time.
Phone calls and text messages are all allowed at certain times and may change. In 2015, a college coach can call an unlimited number of times during a contact period. The junior year is usually the heaviest recruiting time. It can get a little crazy with unlimited texting and people wanting to be texted back immediately. Top schools are the outliers because they recruit so young.
I have done only one home visit in the last eight years. In-person contact is allowed after July 1, but the rules may change each year. Sometimes I wish we could slow down recruiting by backing up home visits and official visits for a year so they would occur during their junior year instead of their senior year. Maybe the parents would be relieved not to have to pay to go to all of the universities on their own; they could simply wait for official visits during their junior year, which might slow things down a little bit.
Some athletes grow up wanting to go to a certain school. Perhaps it is nearby, or the whole family has gone there. If these athletes want to decide early, I think that is great. I worry about young players who haven't seen a lot of schools and are recruited by schools across the country where they have no real ties. These athletes seem to transfer more. De-commitments don't happen often, but they are most likely when athletes get to a school and find out it is not at all what they thought it would be.
Unofficial visits are very important now, but can be a challenge. Club volleyball is very time-consuming and expensive. Many parents can't afford to go to all the club tournaments, send their children to camps, and visit numerous college campuses. A lot of players regionalize; that is, they attend colleges they already know and feel comfortable with. However, they cannot make the most informed decision when they can't afford to visit all the schools that may be interested in them. Unfortunately, the official visit, which the university pays for, has become a formality during the senior year, after athletes have already made commitments. Families need to think about visiting college campuses as they vacation while their children are young. When they are driving around the country or flying to tournaments and cities, they can take time to stop by nearby campuses and get a feel for the schools. Athletes need to start early and see as many as colleges as they can.
Developing Trust
Once you have identified the athletes you are interested in, you should begin the relationship by making sure athletes, their parents, and their coaches trust you. They must believe that you are genuine in the recruiting process. I tell recruits to call me anytime, even if it is not about being recruited to the university I am working at. I tell them, essentially, that if they need help with anything about volleyball, playing on a summer USA Volleyball team, deciding which camp to attend, or anything at all, to call me.
As coaches, we need to open ourselves up as mentors to these young players. Parents will start to lean on us if they can tell that we care about their children as people. Every conversation isn't about a hard sell, but about getting to know recruits and their families. Witnessing the lack of honesty in some coaches is very frustrating. We need to know where these athletes are coming from. We need to put ourselves in their shoes and understand what they are looking for and what they need, and understand the stress involved in trying to make the best decision of where to go to school and play volleyball.
I learned to recruit from the head coaches I worked for. I was kind of a natural recruiter because I love to talk to and help people, and that's really what recruiting is. The communication part was easy for me. Great recruiters have magnetic personalities. People want to engage with them; they are trustworthy and honest, and they love to talk about volleyball. They love the game and sharing their passion for it. Most great recruiters don't have huge egos; generally speaking, they just love volleyball and are outstanding people you want to hang out with.Since recruiting is all about selling the university and the volleyball program, it is key to have someone who the players can relate to on your staff. If coaches don't have that type of personality themselves, they may be the ones who stay back in the office and take care of the tremendous paperwork with recruiting.
Offering Scholarships and Maintaining Commitments
Generally, we offer scholarships when we are 100 percent sure that an athlete can help us, which could be as early as 9th or 10th grade. Letting an athlete know that a scholarship is on the table is totally different from pressuring her to make a decision.
The head coaches I have worked with don't pressure anyone to make a decision or give them a deadline, and neither do I. The offer is theirs until the bitter end. Sometimes, during a junior or senior year when things are feeling a little tight with our second or third choices, we have to let an athlete know that we are under some pressure to make a decision. However, we want athletes who want to be here. We want to make sure they are coming because they want to, not because we forced them to make a decision.
After athletes commit to our school, we keep in touch with them. We do this for the sake of the relationship, but also because other schools may not honor that verbal commitment and continue to try to recruit them. We want to protect our prospective athletes from this pressure. We may communicate less frequently at this point and talk more about day-to-day things. We are getting to know them personally, letting them know that they can contact us anytime, and staying engaged with them. This helps athletes feels as though they have made the right decision and will be comfortable at our school. It shows we care. It is also very important to stay in touch with parents as well.
Tracking Recruits
It is critical that you identify a system for tracking all prospective recruits and where you are in the process with them. We use University Athlete (www.universityathlete.com) as a database to house most of our information. With this program you can look up any athletes and learn more about them. It allows you to also add notes under recruits' names and look up their schedules at tournaments, which is very helpful. A club that registers with University Athlete submits its schedules, which are uploaded so you can find times and the number of the courts athletes will be playing on. Every club gives its information to University Athlete, and university coaches pay an annual fee to access the service. This has made the data management side of recruiting much easier than it used to be.
International Recruits
I prefer to recruit domestically; I believe there is enough talent in the United States for a lot of teams to be good. However, international athletes can be good additions to your program if you are looking to move up quickly in the national rankings. The opportunity to have a great athlete with playing experience who is not afraid to compete because she has been there is hard to pass up. Most international athletes want to play volleyball and get an education. It is sometimes tough to determine whether an athlete is eligible to play on your program because of that athlete's professional experience. One recruiting service that can help identify international recruits is American Volleyball Scouting Report Global (www.avsrglobal.com/coaches).
Is an Athlete Being Recruited by a School?
The definition of a recruited athlete is defined in the 2014 NCAA rule book as follows: A prospect is considered a recruited athlete if the college takes one of the following actions:
- Provides the prospect with an official visit.
- Has off-campus contact with the prospect or the prospect's parents or legal guardians.
- Offers the prospect a national letter of intent or an athletic scholarship agreement.
- Initiates a telephone conversation with the prospect or the prospect's parents or legal guardians more than once.
Ironically, a college coach can have frequent communication (letters, e-mails, texts, phone calls if the athlete initiates the call) with a prospect without that person being considered a recruited athlete if the college coach does not take any of the preceding four actions.
Recruited Walk-Ons
We have a number of recruited walk-ons. Russ Rose, women's volleyball head coach at Penn State, loves to have a nice-size roster. Some athletes love the program and are super invested in what the school has and they are good enough to play and contribute, but at the time they applied, there was no scholarship for them. They are treated the same as athletes with scholarships in terms of academic services, equipment, and meals on the road. You would never know who is on scholarship by the way our athletes are treated. We have even had starters who were recruited as walk-ons.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Keeping stats and knowing how to use them
Coaches should be coaching; they need to spend as much time as possible in the moment and not with their heads down writing on paper. One of the greatest issues with keeping statistics is that the process of recording them can keep coaches from doing their primary job - coaching.
Issues With Using Statistics
Coaches should be coaching; they need to spend as much time as possible in the moment and not with their heads down writing on paper. One of the greatest issues with keeping statistics is that the process of recording them can keep coaches from doing their primary job - coaching. But if the coach isn't recording statistics, who should be? As the head coach on the bench, I have a sheet of paper on which I keep track of only the one or two statistics I believe are important to win the current match. These often change from opponent to opponent. Everything else is delegated to someone else who can quickly give me information as needed.
Statistics are only as valid and reliable as those recording them. It's often a challenge to find a reliable bench player, parent, or team manager who can keep accurate statistics. I love to have the backup setter keeping track of my team's passing and attacking statistics. It keeps her mind in the game, and it helps her understand what is working out there on the court. The same could be said for other players such as backup middles, outsides, and defensive players.
One of the greatest weaknesses of statistics is what many people call paralysis by analysis. A coach could easily make the mistake of taking numbers at face value and not using them to ask deeper questions. Some coaches spend too much time diving into the numbers and ultimately lose their coaching instincts. A coach who makes decisions completely based on numbers is just as susceptible to coaching mistakes as a coach who depends completely on instinct and subjective evaluation. The ideal situation is somewhere in the middle.
Statistical programs can be very expensive, or their complexity can make them very time-consuming. However, the recent development of tablet and iPad applications is making it very easy and inexpensive to track basic statistics. Several current programs include iVolleyStats, Volleyball Ace, and Rotate 123. The devices and applications will continue to change, so pay attention to new developments and use the right one for your program.
Tracking Statistics
It's really easy to say that detailed statistics should be taken during every practice and every competition. At the NCAA Division I level, a full staff and coaches are dedicated exclusively to the Data Volley statistical program. More often than not, recording statistics is the job of an assistant coach, bench player, or parent. I firmly believe that coaches should put coaching as their first priority. Coaches who have difficulty taking statistics and providing real-time feedback to their athletes should delegate the statistics to someone else. Those with limited options for statisticians are better off video-recording the match or practice and recording statistics from the video later.
The summer USA Volleyball High Performance teams often have a limited number of staff members. Obviously, the Olympic pipeline for USA Volleyball is extremely important, so recording quality statistics is as well. Following are some methods that can be used with a pen and paper and a limited staff.
Box Chart
Using a box chart, a coach can record multiple statistics at one time. The following box chart (table 17.1) shows who executed the serve receive, the rating of the pass, and what happened after the pass was set.
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We can gather a great deal of information from this chart. First, Jocelyn had 25 total passes for 43 total passing points. That means that her passing efficiency was 1.72 (43 passing points divided by 25 passes). We also know that 6 of her passes resulted in a first-ball kill, 10 passes resulted in a ball kept in play, 4 passes resulted in a first-ball error, and she was aced 5 times. We also can determine that 9 of her 25 passes were perfect (36 percent). This box chart can be used to track multiple stats for several players. The data can also be used to extrapolate areas of strength and weakness in a particular skill.
Stat Line
Using a stat line also works very well when a coach doesn't have enough time to chart events. With this method it's quite simple to keep track of many statistics at once. Following is a stat line chart for attacking, passing, and defense.
Luc: K 3 3 D 0 B A 3 2 D A B K E E
The translation of Luc's stat line would read like this from the first stat entry: kill, three pass, three pass, dig, zero pass, block, attack attempt, three pass, two pass, dig, attack attempt, block, kill, attack error, attack error. From this stat line we can determine the following about Luc's performance:
- 2 kills + 2 attack errors + 2 other attack attempts = 6 attempts
- 2 kills out of 6 attempts = 33% (kill percentage)
- 2 kills - 2 errors out of 6 attempts = .000 (kill efficiency)
- 5 serve-receive attempts for a total of 11 passing points = 2.20 (passing efficiency)
- 2 digs and 2 blocks
Most Important Statistics to Track
This subject is up for a great debate. The answer may lie in the type of team you have. If you have a team that scores at a very high level, then you are likely tracking the major offensive statistics. If your team depends on defensive skills to equalize matches, then you should be focusing more on serving, blocking, and defensive strategies. Let's have a quick refresher on the basic statistics in volleyball.
Basic Offensive Statistics
- Kill: When an attack attempt leads directly to a point
- Attack attempt: When an attack attempt results in neither a kill nor an error
- Error: When an attack attempt is blocked for a point, hit in the net, or hit out of bounds. Balls that are blocked are considered forced errors, whereas balls hit in the net or out of bounds are considered unforced errors.
Basic Defensive Statistics
- Block:A block is awarded to a player or players who score a point for their team by blocking an opponent attack. As many as three players may receive a block if they are all part of an attempt to block an attack.
- Block solo:When a player is the only one blocking a shot
- Block assist: When more than one player blocks an attack, all players receive a block assist regardless of whether they were the player who blocked the ball
- Block error: When a referee determines that a blocker has made illegal contact with the net
- Dig: When a player stops an opponent's attack attempt from being a kill
- Cover: When a player digs a teammate's attack after it has been blocked by an opponent
Basic Setting Statistics
- Set attempt: When a player attempts to set to a teammate for a kill
- Assist: When a player sets to a teammate and the attack is a kill
- Ball handling error: When a referee calls a player setting the ball for a lift or double contact
Basic Serving Statistics
- Serve attempt: When a player attempts a serve
- Ace: When a server's attempt is not passed and directly results in a point
- Serve error: When a player's attempt is served in the net or out of bounds, or a player commits a service line fault
Basic Serve-Receive Statistics
- Reception: When a player attempts a serve receive
- Reception error: When a player's poor serve receive leads to a direct point for the serving team
The following table 17.2 illustrates the two primary measurements of team system success, how those statistical measurements are determined, the best way to track the systems, and some goals your team might try to achieve.
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Serve-Receive Statistics
One of the most common ways to determine the success of your serve-receive game is to grade each serve reception.
Passing Average (3-Point Scale)
How to most accurately rate this statistic is up for great debate. Many coaches use a traditional 3-point scale ranging from 0 for an ace or overpass to 3 for a perfect pass. Figure 17.1 represents the value of each pass based on where the ball would have landed on the court.The team goal is to achieve a 2.30, or a 60 percent 3 pass.
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Passing average, 3-point scale.
Passing Average (4-Point Scale)
There is a statistical problem with the 3-point passing scale. Statisticians will tell you that anything with an odd number of data points is not statistically valid or reliable. Therefore, many higher-level programs use a 4-point scale ranging from 0 for an ace or overpass to 4 for a perfect-perfect pass (see figure 17.2). The team goal is to achieve 2.70, or a 60 percent 3 and 4 pass.
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Passing average, 4-point scale.
Passing Average (Weighted Scale)
Recently, I had a conversation with Jim Dietz, who is the very numbers-savvy head coach for Lincoln Land Community College in Illinois. He has been working with a passing scale that is weighted to include an expected success outcome based on the quality of a pass (see figure 17.3). It's fair to say that a 2 pass is twice as likely to yield a point as a 1 pass. A 5 pass is 5 times as likely to yield a point as a 1 pass. The team goal is to achieve 3.30, or a 60 percent 5 pass.
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Passing average, weighted scale.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Developing a positive team culture
Think back to a time when you worked hard, had fun, learned a lot, and achieved at a high level. What characterized that environment? What characterized the relationships you had with your peers? Your leader? Seldom do people look back and recall these times as easy, but they also don’t describe them as negative.
Think back to a time when you worked hard, had fun, learned a lot, and achieved at a high level. What characterized that environment? What characterized the relationships you had with your peers? Your leader? Seldom do people look back and recall these times as easy, but they also don't describe them as negative. A balance exists on teams that reach their potential - between challenge and skill, criticism and encouragement, trust and accountability, fun and focus, as well as between team and individual. How you, as a coach, facilitate the balance of these factors, both in your relationships with your athletes and in the way they relate to each other and the environment, is where the art of coaching is found.
The aspects of your program on which you have some influence are all based on relationships. The effectiveness of the drills you choose or the tactics you employ is based, in part, on the strength of your relationships with your players. The selflessness and team focus of your players are influenced, in part, by their relationships with each other. Their ability to be engaged in the moment and focus on the task at hand is facilitated, in part, by their relationships with their training and competitive environment. Although these relationships are sometimes difficult to control, they are certainly open to being influenced by the head coach.
Balance of Challenge and Skill
You may remember a time competing, as a player or as a coach, when you got lost in the moment. Time was transformed, your movement felt effortless, your focus was precise, and your performance was exemplary. In short, the experience was perfect, and somewhat elusive. We might remember these moments so clearly because they don't happen that often. Important research was conducted by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the late 20th century to investigate why these "flow" experiences happen and how they can happen more often. An important factor in their occurrence is the balance between the challenge presented by the context of the game or training environment and the skill level of the athletes involved. If the opponent or drill is too challenging for the participant based on skill level, frustration is likely to prevent a good performance. Likewise, if the contest or drill is too easy or simple for a team, boredom will prevent the athletes from having motivation to achieve optimal performance. The key is to manipulate the competitive and training environments to keep the balance of challenge and skill appropriate to maintain maximal motivation.
Coach - Player
As the coach, you have control over the drills you build into practice, the level of performance you demand, the way you structure groups and teams, and the level of competition in the nonleague portion of your schedule. The first task in an effort to achieve balance between challenge and skill is to evaluate your talent. At what skills do the players on your team demonstrate proficiency, and where are they weak? At what point do the skills at which they are proficient begin to break down? Evaluating these factors will help you find the sweet spot in training where athletes will experience enough challenge to feel pushed but also enough success to remain confident.
Another factor contributing to the balance of challenge and skill is the way athletes and coaches interpret failure. After all, the negativity that comes with frustration is rooted in the perception that failure is a bad thing. One of the common characteristics of training programs that elicit the most success from their performers is that failure is not something to be feared. In fact, failure is appreciated because it means that participants are willing to risk and to push themselves outside of their comfort zones to improve. People who fear failure attempt only the things they can already do. The player who fears failure and can attack very well crosscourt will focus only on her crosscourt attack, limiting the opportunity to develop her line shot. If you, as a coach, focus on failure (by either calling attention to it or punishing it), then you will end up fostering a mind-set that prevents risk taking and limits growth. Table 3.1 provides examples of how to manipulate the training and competitive environments to create a balance of challenge and skill to encourage peak performance.
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Player - Player
A positive team climate is not just dependent on the relationships between the players and coaches: it is one in which the players have a positive influence on each other. But how can players influence the balance between challenge and skill for each other? The answer comes in the way the team is grouped and how team members take responsibility for each other. At Hope College in Michigan, where I coach, I often structure scrimmage teams so that the top front-row players are attacking against the top back-row players. This makes it so that players who need more developmental work in the back row are digging balls against a front row that is also working on developing skills. Both groups are playing with and against teammates in ways that are developmentally appropriate.
On occasion, ignoring developmental level when grouping players can be incredibly positive. I worked with a volleyball club that would do position-specific practice with players from every age group on the same court by position. Experienced and talented 18-year-olds were grouped with 14-year-old novices. The challenge - skill balance was maintained because the experienced players were tasked with being good models of fundamental techniques for the younger players and with providing peer instruction. The younger players were encouraged to focus on the process (technique) rather than the result.
Player - Environment
Another way that we try to promote a balance of challenge and skill is to make sure that our players understand the big picture of our training. We use a whiteboard at practice to share our practice plan, the focus points and goals of each drill, and where our players are supposed to go. This helps players identify how the skills developed early in practice will prepare them for performance in the scrimmages later on. It identifies coaching cues and focus points that our staff will be verbalizing during the drills. The whiteboard also helps us track our performance in drills over time, which facilitates setting appropriate goals and standards. For instance, we do a crosscourt ball-control exchange drill in which players try to take a specific number of aggressive swings in five minutes. We keep the highest scores in that drill in the corner of our whiteboard as a reminder of the standard and players' past achievements.
Balance of Criticism and Encouragement
A positive team climate is one in which athletes improve their ability and learn more about their potential. The feedback they receive from their coaches, each other, and the environment contributes to both of these objectives. Telling players what they do well, although positive, does not help them maximize their skills. Focusing on the negative, for most athletes, results in frustration and decreased self-confidence. Again, the coach's task is to find a balance between the two as well as provide multiple sources of feedback.
Coach-Player
In my experience, athletes desire two types of feedback from their coaches:
- To be acknowledged when they do something well
- To be told specifically how to improve when they fail
At Hope College we want our coaches working hard to provide both types of feedback. We want to acknowledge and celebrate when our athletes succeed, both in result and process. I went through a phase in my coaching when I felt as though telling players "great pass" after getting the ball to target was redundant. They could see that the pass was perfect and didn't need me to tell them. I found that my athletes appreciated my praising their passes (or any other obvious demonstrations of skill) because pleasing me was important to them. This is further demonstrated in how often my players ask, "Coach, did you see that?" when they achieve success at something they have been working on. The athlete knows that she was successful, but she wants to share that success with me.
In addition to praising successful execution, we also want to praise successful process. Specific feedback on techniques that improve athletes' chances of success or attempts that are outside their comfort zones are worthy of encouragement. It helps to know exactly what your players are working to improve, so that you can give appropriate feedback when you see them make progress. Write down their goals or objectives, as well as the areas in which you would like to see them improve, and carry it with you during practice. Sharing those goals with your assistant coaches will keep them engaged and help them know where they can make a contribution.
When I realized that praising both success and progress toward goals was valued by my players, I also realized that I could be much more specific than just saying, "Great pass." We don't have a lot of time to convey a lot of information, so we use specific cues to convey exactly what led to the success. During one afternoon of our preseason, we spend a couple of hours in volley-school (an idea taken from the U.S. national team program), in which we explain all of the coaching cues our staff uses and exactly what each word means. This cuts down on needing to use whole sentences to explain the specifics of what the athlete did well or poorly; we need only one or two words that are well understood. We use words such as balance, square, plant, and press to convey specific aspects of skills quickly. You can use instructional feedback with motivational feedback to let your athletes know specifically what led to their positive results. Have a manager track the type of feedback you provide to see whether you are as positive, specific, and motivational as you can be.
The Positive Coaching Alliance (www.positivecoach.org) uses the phrase emotional gas tanks to convey athlete's emotional health. Praise, instruction, opportunity, and positive body language add to the emotional gas tank of an athlete. Criticism, punishment, and decreased opportunity result in emotional gas tank withdrawals. Keeping an eye on the emotional gas tank of each player on the team (how often you have made additions and how often you have made withdrawals) will help you predict how they will respond to the feedback. This is not to say that you should never make a withdrawal. Sometimes it is important to be critical, to uphold a standard, or to let athletes know that their behavior, attitude, or effort is unacceptable. However, in those situations, unless significant investments have been made, their motivation or self-confidence may diminish.
Player - Player
Players sometimes receive feedback from teammates more easily than from coaches. Such feedback can feel less threatening and also increase trust between teammates who are competing for the same position. We have developed a culture in which peer feedback is an important part of our program. The foundation is a lack of hierarchy within our team. For instance, we do not want our seniors to believe that they are any more important than our freshmen, or for sophomores to believe that they have any less value than juniors. We encourage our freshmen to give advice to seniors when they see an opportunity, and we ask our seniors to take the advice that they get from anyone with an outsider's perspective regardless of year.
In our program, the first 15 to 20 seconds of time-outs involve players getting into position groups so that the players on the bench can tell the players on the floor what they are seeing. This also gives the coaches a few seconds to meet and put together a cohesive, concise message for the entire team. For drill work in practice situations, we break up the team into smaller groups; while one group is performing the drill, another is positioned to give feedback. When we are working on blocking, one player says yes or no to communicate whether the middle closes the block, another player along the net says yes or no regarding the blocker's hands getting over the net, and another player identifies whether the block is timed correctly with the attack. The goal for the blockers, regardless of the result of the block, is to get three yeses from the players giving feedback. How can you strategically position your players who are not involved in drill so that they can provide valuable feedback to the players in the drill?
In a drill we call hot seat, which is a 6v6 scrimmage, one player is designated as the only one who can score a kill. One of our players did so well in that drill that a teammate bought a little red stool and wrote hot seat on it and put it in her teammate's locker to call attention to her great performance. When another teammate had a strong practice the next day, the first recipient of the hot seat passed it to her. Now, the little red stool moves from locker to locker as the previous recipient tries to identify the teammate who had the most impressive practice of the day. Such peer recognition goes a long way to build a team culture of encouragement, success, and positivity.
Player - Environment
Coaches can use video to provide important feedback in a way that builds motivation and confidence and increases effort. Many athletes are visual learners and benefit from seeing themselves perform. Technological advances have made access to video information very easy. We use an iPad app called BaM Video Delay to create a live delay on an iPad attached to a tripod. The delay is perfectly timed so that an athlete can perform a repetition in a drill, exit the drill, and watch her execution while a teammate performs the same drill on camera. The visual feedback allows players to see what they are doing correctly and incorrectly while also giving them the opportunity to experiment with a variety of techniques.
Videos of match play can also show players successful and problematic behaviors. Take advantage of available camera angles to focus on specific aspects of the game. For instance, if you can film only from the center line, focus on block penetration or the distance of the set off the net. When filming from behind the court, focus on blocking footwork and set distance. Be sure to focus on both positives and things to work on. Recently, as we were getting ready to watch a film of our serve-receive patterns from a match we had lost, I chose to show only the clips we had won. Seeing themselves succeed gave the players confidence in their ability to excel in their next match. Although this strategy worked in this situation, it shouldn't be the norm; it is important for teams to understand the reality of failure and to learn from those opportunities rather than disregard them.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Recruiting strategies for volleyball coaches
Phone calls and text messages are all allowed at certain times and may change. In 2015, a college coach can call an unlimited number of times during a contact period. The junior year is usually the heaviest recruiting time.
Phone calls and text messages are all allowed at certain times and may change. In 2015, a college coach can call an unlimited number of times during a contact period. The junior year is usually the heaviest recruiting time. It can get a little crazy with unlimited texting and people wanting to be texted back immediately. Top schools are the outliers because they recruit so young.
I have done only one home visit in the last eight years. In-person contact is allowed after July 1, but the rules may change each year. Sometimes I wish we could slow down recruiting by backing up home visits and official visits for a year so they would occur during their junior year instead of their senior year. Maybe the parents would be relieved not to have to pay to go to all of the universities on their own; they could simply wait for official visits during their junior year, which might slow things down a little bit.
Some athletes grow up wanting to go to a certain school. Perhaps it is nearby, or the whole family has gone there. If these athletes want to decide early, I think that is great. I worry about young players who haven't seen a lot of schools and are recruited by schools across the country where they have no real ties. These athletes seem to transfer more. De-commitments don't happen often, but they are most likely when athletes get to a school and find out it is not at all what they thought it would be.
Unofficial visits are very important now, but can be a challenge. Club volleyball is very time-consuming and expensive. Many parents can't afford to go to all the club tournaments, send their children to camps, and visit numerous college campuses. A lot of players regionalize; that is, they attend colleges they already know and feel comfortable with. However, they cannot make the most informed decision when they can't afford to visit all the schools that may be interested in them. Unfortunately, the official visit, which the university pays for, has become a formality during the senior year, after athletes have already made commitments. Families need to think about visiting college campuses as they vacation while their children are young. When they are driving around the country or flying to tournaments and cities, they can take time to stop by nearby campuses and get a feel for the schools. Athletes need to start early and see as many as colleges as they can.
Developing Trust
Once you have identified the athletes you are interested in, you should begin the relationship by making sure athletes, their parents, and their coaches trust you. They must believe that you are genuine in the recruiting process. I tell recruits to call me anytime, even if it is not about being recruited to the university I am working at. I tell them, essentially, that if they need help with anything about volleyball, playing on a summer USA Volleyball team, deciding which camp to attend, or anything at all, to call me.
As coaches, we need to open ourselves up as mentors to these young players. Parents will start to lean on us if they can tell that we care about their children as people. Every conversation isn't about a hard sell, but about getting to know recruits and their families. Witnessing the lack of honesty in some coaches is very frustrating. We need to know where these athletes are coming from. We need to put ourselves in their shoes and understand what they are looking for and what they need, and understand the stress involved in trying to make the best decision of where to go to school and play volleyball.
I learned to recruit from the head coaches I worked for. I was kind of a natural recruiter because I love to talk to and help people, and that's really what recruiting is. The communication part was easy for me. Great recruiters have magnetic personalities. People want to engage with them; they are trustworthy and honest, and they love to talk about volleyball. They love the game and sharing their passion for it. Most great recruiters don't have huge egos; generally speaking, they just love volleyball and are outstanding people you want to hang out with.Since recruiting is all about selling the university and the volleyball program, it is key to have someone who the players can relate to on your staff. If coaches don't have that type of personality themselves, they may be the ones who stay back in the office and take care of the tremendous paperwork with recruiting.
Offering Scholarships and Maintaining Commitments
Generally, we offer scholarships when we are 100 percent sure that an athlete can help us, which could be as early as 9th or 10th grade. Letting an athlete know that a scholarship is on the table is totally different from pressuring her to make a decision.
The head coaches I have worked with don't pressure anyone to make a decision or give them a deadline, and neither do I. The offer is theirs until the bitter end. Sometimes, during a junior or senior year when things are feeling a little tight with our second or third choices, we have to let an athlete know that we are under some pressure to make a decision. However, we want athletes who want to be here. We want to make sure they are coming because they want to, not because we forced them to make a decision.
After athletes commit to our school, we keep in touch with them. We do this for the sake of the relationship, but also because other schools may not honor that verbal commitment and continue to try to recruit them. We want to protect our prospective athletes from this pressure. We may communicate less frequently at this point and talk more about day-to-day things. We are getting to know them personally, letting them know that they can contact us anytime, and staying engaged with them. This helps athletes feels as though they have made the right decision and will be comfortable at our school. It shows we care. It is also very important to stay in touch with parents as well.
Tracking Recruits
It is critical that you identify a system for tracking all prospective recruits and where you are in the process with them. We use University Athlete (www.universityathlete.com) as a database to house most of our information. With this program you can look up any athletes and learn more about them. It allows you to also add notes under recruits' names and look up their schedules at tournaments, which is very helpful. A club that registers with University Athlete submits its schedules, which are uploaded so you can find times and the number of the courts athletes will be playing on. Every club gives its information to University Athlete, and university coaches pay an annual fee to access the service. This has made the data management side of recruiting much easier than it used to be.
International Recruits
I prefer to recruit domestically; I believe there is enough talent in the United States for a lot of teams to be good. However, international athletes can be good additions to your program if you are looking to move up quickly in the national rankings. The opportunity to have a great athlete with playing experience who is not afraid to compete because she has been there is hard to pass up. Most international athletes want to play volleyball and get an education. It is sometimes tough to determine whether an athlete is eligible to play on your program because of that athlete's professional experience. One recruiting service that can help identify international recruits is American Volleyball Scouting Report Global (www.avsrglobal.com/coaches).
Is an Athlete Being Recruited by a School?
The definition of a recruited athlete is defined in the 2014 NCAA rule book as follows: A prospect is considered a recruited athlete if the college takes one of the following actions:
- Provides the prospect with an official visit.
- Has off-campus contact with the prospect or the prospect's parents or legal guardians.
- Offers the prospect a national letter of intent or an athletic scholarship agreement.
- Initiates a telephone conversation with the prospect or the prospect's parents or legal guardians more than once.
Ironically, a college coach can have frequent communication (letters, e-mails, texts, phone calls if the athlete initiates the call) with a prospect without that person being considered a recruited athlete if the college coach does not take any of the preceding four actions.
Recruited Walk-Ons
We have a number of recruited walk-ons. Russ Rose, women's volleyball head coach at Penn State, loves to have a nice-size roster. Some athletes love the program and are super invested in what the school has and they are good enough to play and contribute, but at the time they applied, there was no scholarship for them. They are treated the same as athletes with scholarships in terms of academic services, equipment, and meals on the road. You would never know who is on scholarship by the way our athletes are treated. We have even had starters who were recruited as walk-ons.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
Keeping stats and knowing how to use them
Coaches should be coaching; they need to spend as much time as possible in the moment and not with their heads down writing on paper. One of the greatest issues with keeping statistics is that the process of recording them can keep coaches from doing their primary job - coaching.
Issues With Using Statistics
Coaches should be coaching; they need to spend as much time as possible in the moment and not with their heads down writing on paper. One of the greatest issues with keeping statistics is that the process of recording them can keep coaches from doing their primary job - coaching. But if the coach isn't recording statistics, who should be? As the head coach on the bench, I have a sheet of paper on which I keep track of only the one or two statistics I believe are important to win the current match. These often change from opponent to opponent. Everything else is delegated to someone else who can quickly give me information as needed.
Statistics are only as valid and reliable as those recording them. It's often a challenge to find a reliable bench player, parent, or team manager who can keep accurate statistics. I love to have the backup setter keeping track of my team's passing and attacking statistics. It keeps her mind in the game, and it helps her understand what is working out there on the court. The same could be said for other players such as backup middles, outsides, and defensive players.
One of the greatest weaknesses of statistics is what many people call paralysis by analysis. A coach could easily make the mistake of taking numbers at face value and not using them to ask deeper questions. Some coaches spend too much time diving into the numbers and ultimately lose their coaching instincts. A coach who makes decisions completely based on numbers is just as susceptible to coaching mistakes as a coach who depends completely on instinct and subjective evaluation. The ideal situation is somewhere in the middle.
Statistical programs can be very expensive, or their complexity can make them very time-consuming. However, the recent development of tablet and iPad applications is making it very easy and inexpensive to track basic statistics. Several current programs include iVolleyStats, Volleyball Ace, and Rotate 123. The devices and applications will continue to change, so pay attention to new developments and use the right one for your program.
Tracking Statistics
It's really easy to say that detailed statistics should be taken during every practice and every competition. At the NCAA Division I level, a full staff and coaches are dedicated exclusively to the Data Volley statistical program. More often than not, recording statistics is the job of an assistant coach, bench player, or parent. I firmly believe that coaches should put coaching as their first priority. Coaches who have difficulty taking statistics and providing real-time feedback to their athletes should delegate the statistics to someone else. Those with limited options for statisticians are better off video-recording the match or practice and recording statistics from the video later.
The summer USA Volleyball High Performance teams often have a limited number of staff members. Obviously, the Olympic pipeline for USA Volleyball is extremely important, so recording quality statistics is as well. Following are some methods that can be used with a pen and paper and a limited staff.
Box Chart
Using a box chart, a coach can record multiple statistics at one time. The following box chart (table 17.1) shows who executed the serve receive, the rating of the pass, and what happened after the pass was set.
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We can gather a great deal of information from this chart. First, Jocelyn had 25 total passes for 43 total passing points. That means that her passing efficiency was 1.72 (43 passing points divided by 25 passes). We also know that 6 of her passes resulted in a first-ball kill, 10 passes resulted in a ball kept in play, 4 passes resulted in a first-ball error, and she was aced 5 times. We also can determine that 9 of her 25 passes were perfect (36 percent). This box chart can be used to track multiple stats for several players. The data can also be used to extrapolate areas of strength and weakness in a particular skill.
Stat Line
Using a stat line also works very well when a coach doesn't have enough time to chart events. With this method it's quite simple to keep track of many statistics at once. Following is a stat line chart for attacking, passing, and defense.
Luc: K 3 3 D 0 B A 3 2 D A B K E E
The translation of Luc's stat line would read like this from the first stat entry: kill, three pass, three pass, dig, zero pass, block, attack attempt, three pass, two pass, dig, attack attempt, block, kill, attack error, attack error. From this stat line we can determine the following about Luc's performance:
- 2 kills + 2 attack errors + 2 other attack attempts = 6 attempts
- 2 kills out of 6 attempts = 33% (kill percentage)
- 2 kills - 2 errors out of 6 attempts = .000 (kill efficiency)
- 5 serve-receive attempts for a total of 11 passing points = 2.20 (passing efficiency)
- 2 digs and 2 blocks
Most Important Statistics to Track
This subject is up for a great debate. The answer may lie in the type of team you have. If you have a team that scores at a very high level, then you are likely tracking the major offensive statistics. If your team depends on defensive skills to equalize matches, then you should be focusing more on serving, blocking, and defensive strategies. Let's have a quick refresher on the basic statistics in volleyball.
Basic Offensive Statistics
- Kill: When an attack attempt leads directly to a point
- Attack attempt: When an attack attempt results in neither a kill nor an error
- Error: When an attack attempt is blocked for a point, hit in the net, or hit out of bounds. Balls that are blocked are considered forced errors, whereas balls hit in the net or out of bounds are considered unforced errors.
Basic Defensive Statistics
- Block:A block is awarded to a player or players who score a point for their team by blocking an opponent attack. As many as three players may receive a block if they are all part of an attempt to block an attack.
- Block solo:When a player is the only one blocking a shot
- Block assist: When more than one player blocks an attack, all players receive a block assist regardless of whether they were the player who blocked the ball
- Block error: When a referee determines that a blocker has made illegal contact with the net
- Dig: When a player stops an opponent's attack attempt from being a kill
- Cover: When a player digs a teammate's attack after it has been blocked by an opponent
Basic Setting Statistics
- Set attempt: When a player attempts to set to a teammate for a kill
- Assist: When a player sets to a teammate and the attack is a kill
- Ball handling error: When a referee calls a player setting the ball for a lift or double contact
Basic Serving Statistics
- Serve attempt: When a player attempts a serve
- Ace: When a server's attempt is not passed and directly results in a point
- Serve error: When a player's attempt is served in the net or out of bounds, or a player commits a service line fault
Basic Serve-Receive Statistics
- Reception: When a player attempts a serve receive
- Reception error: When a player's poor serve receive leads to a direct point for the serving team
The following table 17.2 illustrates the two primary measurements of team system success, how those statistical measurements are determined, the best way to track the systems, and some goals your team might try to achieve.
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Serve-Receive Statistics
One of the most common ways to determine the success of your serve-receive game is to grade each serve reception.
Passing Average (3-Point Scale)
How to most accurately rate this statistic is up for great debate. Many coaches use a traditional 3-point scale ranging from 0 for an ace or overpass to 3 for a perfect pass. Figure 17.1 represents the value of each pass based on where the ball would have landed on the court.The team goal is to achieve a 2.30, or a 60 percent 3 pass.
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Passing average, 3-point scale.
Passing Average (4-Point Scale)
There is a statistical problem with the 3-point passing scale. Statisticians will tell you that anything with an odd number of data points is not statistically valid or reliable. Therefore, many higher-level programs use a 4-point scale ranging from 0 for an ace or overpass to 4 for a perfect-perfect pass (see figure 17.2). The team goal is to achieve 2.70, or a 60 percent 3 and 4 pass.
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Passing average, 4-point scale.
Passing Average (Weighted Scale)
Recently, I had a conversation with Jim Dietz, who is the very numbers-savvy head coach for Lincoln Land Community College in Illinois. He has been working with a passing scale that is weighted to include an expected success outcome based on the quality of a pass (see figure 17.3). It's fair to say that a 2 pass is twice as likely to yield a point as a 1 pass. A 5 pass is 5 times as likely to yield a point as a 1 pass. The team goal is to achieve 3.30, or a 60 percent 5 pass.
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Passing average, weighted scale.
Learn more about The Volleyball Coaching Bible, Volume II.
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