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Lost a friend last month, who impacted so many, without being a coach – just by being damn good at what he did, officiate.  Players around the world held a moment of silence.  We had set up skiing plans for this season, and enjoyed a great Rio Paralympics together – after he was done being a great Rio Beach Olympic referee. 

How can we avoid creating false confidence in players?

Sometimes, a little reminder is the push you need to keep trying.

For more than 40 years, one of the first things I say to new teams and summer camp players is just that: “I want to see mistakes out here on the court.”  

Consequences and punishment are so prevalent in our sport and this blog explores why. It also talks about how outcome, winning and losing, is "punishment" enough to continue to drive the desire to get better.

Learning about volleyball in school does not have to involve waiting in line to get one chance to pass the ball. Find out about the news STEM kit created by USAV and the Huddle Group.

Years ago, having played some myself, it was easy to say “yes” to coaching my daughter’s 7^th grade recreational volleyball team. My twisted logic told me, “I’ve played for years. These are young kids. How hard can this be?” So began my coaching career.

USAV Director of Development John Kessel looks at the use of physical punishment in volleyball.

In today's Youth sports world parents are starting to fear free things are not as good or adequate and are opting to continue to spend more and more rather than just letting kids play.

Pat Madia, USAV Western Empire Region’s Coaches Education Committee Chair, shares eleven core tips for a new coach. Remember and share this, plus other great information for any new coach in the I’m a New Coach section of the USAV Grassroots section.

Volleyball bingo is a great way to help players focus on things they needed to work on in practice

Allowing kids to learn and teach themselves is difficult, especially when you consider that the best learning happens during failure. Coaches must foster education by allowing that failure, not preventing it.

Learning to play this new instrument and letting others figure it out helps to drive home the lesson that doing the activity is the most important than other things outside of it.

Most coaches who have taken IMPACT learned that a coach's feedback/feed-forward is the most important form of changing an athlete's skill set.

IMPACT training provides a long list scrimmage scoring options. Some coaches mistakenly read this as “all you do is play games” with supposedly no focus on technical skills. The assumption is, since it is not a coach controlled training environment, it must not be technical.

You spend most of your time active. Wouldn’t you rather play a sport where you get to sit around most of the time like baseball, cricket or wrestling? While you get to rest a bit between points, volleyball makes all 12 people on the court move all over the place and that is just tiring!

We’ve become so ingrained with how indoor volleyball should be: nice gym floors made of wood or tile with shiny red or blue poles surrounded by thick padding and pristine black and white game nets in use because the practice nets might have a small tear in them or seem dingy.

If you live in a place with thousands of players, this article might help you get better. If you live in a small market with just a few or maybe no players (yet), this is a competitive advantage to help you take on those teams that seem to have all the talent.

Words have little meaning to beginners in motor learning.

My son had something that I gave to him in his dorm room at Princeton; in capital letters on an orange post-it note, the word “YET.”

The term false or fake fundamentals, along with the concept of irrelevant training, is one that it seems coaches, parents and players simply want to ignore.  Understandably so, as it gives them a feeling of success and mastery, even though it is not helping them in competition.