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“Where is volleyball played?” is a question to ask your players or other coaches if you want to start an interesting discussion. “What is the most important skill in volleyball?” is the second question I ask to prompt some serious conversation.
I am not an expert at the sport of sitting volleyball. The experts are Bill Hamiter, Mike Hulett and Elliot Blake, and the Paralympians who compete in it. However, I have spent over 20 years in growing the disabled game together.
I often talk about variance and bell curves in coaching and player courses, as being aware of this fact of life, including in sports, is important.
I returned this week to a special place of ancestors, a village I first was lucky to visit a decade ago, the Makah Nation.
In advance know that this is a two topic blog, woven together by my favorite songs. This first part is for those coaches who need to know more about developing creative players with VB IQ, then I will close with things I have learned from my recent losses of those dear to me.
As we grow the game together, there are three places we need to create for kids to get a chance to make volleyball their lifetime sport…
I have written more than once about focusing on what you can control. This choice is important not only in sport, but in life itself.
At the 2014 Sitting World Championships in Poland in June, I watched a wide variety of coaching styles and while there are over 20 nations and their cultures competing here, the styles fall into basically two different camps…
If you come to visit us at USA Volleyball’s offices in Colorado Springs (please do!), and I am in town I will take you on a tour. One of the first stops, after the “Gold Room” where all staff meetings are held surrounded by pictures of all the US Olympic gold medal teams to date, beach and indoor, is this corner by CEO Doug Beal’s office. It is one of several statues commissioned in honor of 1984 Olympic silver medalist Flo Hyman.
There is only hard work, the science and randomness of our sport. At the start of my coaching, I was looking for “the answer” or the “drills” that would make me a winning coach. When I discovered the science of motor learning, I also learned that there is no magic, thanks to the knowledge of a coach that has been my mentor for nearly 40 years.
