I’m just back1 from the 2024 AMB volleyball tournament in Espino, Portugal. It’s the third year we’ve sent teams from Dalkey, and this year we sent a team called Emerald VC, which is the alter ego of the U18W Irish National Volleyball team. They competed in the under 17 division, and the Dalkey teams competed in the under 16 a division for the girls and the under 16 division for the boys.
It’s a great tournament, worth going to, because the serving is so much more consistent and so much more difficult than anything they’ll see at home. The teams have to win points, rather than wait for the other team to make a mistake and gift them points.
Because of the tougher speed, trajectory, and location of the serves, in general, the players are put under so much more pressure and they have to figure things out pretty quickly.
Dalkey Teams
The U16s competed well… The boys, in the first year for a Dalkey boys team, took an incredible tied for 9th out of 24 teams!
The girls entered the ‘A’ division (this year they split the U16 girls into a competitive ‘A’ division and a ‘B’ division) and finished 46th out of 56 teams, which is a respectable result! The girls had voted to enter the tougher division, and really fought well against some *very* strong teams from Portugal and Spain.
Emeralds VC
For the U18W, it was their first trot out since their silver medal in Malta. We’d taken a break on training, intending to use this tournament as a training session, effectively, so the first time the gang was all back together again was in Espinho, the night of the opening ceremonies.
In terms of tactical goals, I didn’t have many for this tournament, but wanted to focus on these 3:
On serve receive, I wanted to try out Joe’s 6 Mine/Go approach, subscriber link for the webinar:
Timeouts: I wanted the girls to own the timeouts more, which meant more interaction off the main circle
Adaptability in serve receive
Especially in rotation 1, which is historically our worst passing rotation (you can pick on the front row outside hitter and setter coming from the back row, as a server and wreak havoc), I wanted the girls to be able to adapt and pass with the opposite as one of the 3 passers and free up our OH1 to swing away
We also went over the team rules they came up with back in Italy that served them so well in Malta.
As you might expect, the girls started out slow, adjusting to the pace, and each other on the court.
The Results
Serve Receive:
On the serve receive front, the passing wasn’t bad, but we weren’t quite at the Zen-like 6 calls mine or go and no one else talks. I don’t think this is a problem, as our outsides pass particularly well, usually, and are good at taking charge of the court.
Timeouts:
We only traveled with 8 players, so the sub communication was limited, but our subs were far more engaged and contributed a ton to our on-court players (and when they were put on, as well). The biggest thing they were able to help with was helping our servers and attackers target weak areas in their defense. For the most part, the Spanish and Portuguese girls received very short, and played defense short, so deep, flat servers and attacks tended to ricochet off someone and into the stands.
Adjusting on the Fly
One thing I’ve *loved* about working with this group of 2007s and 2008s has been their flexibility. They’ve handled double-switches, shifting passing responsibilities around, and all sorts of inane requests from the coaches (mostly me, not Jennifer). They did adapt to servers who did a great job targeting zone 1 when we were in rotation 1.
General Impressions
The girls, being teenagers, were maybe a little more obsessed with the UV index and the nightly parties than the stats, and we *might* have had an issue with some players getting a bit too much sun, despite the coaches’ best efforts. But this tournament is 6,000+ athletes all crammed together for a week, so it’s not all just heads down playing. And, of course, we had a few girls fight through some pretty gnarly colds and likely COVID as the week wore on (as did every team there). There’s always that balance of risk for coaches bringing athletes abroad, and, while they can definitely get up to mischief, by and large the parties AMB sponsor are well monitored, the hotel we stayed in (Hotel Exe Praia Golf) was excellent, and the running of the event was really good. It was a lot of fun bringing the girls over with a little more expectation than previous years, and a good bench mark for where they’re at.
We did have some odd issues with service errors… this is something we had worked pretty hard through with the girls the last few years, and it was interesting (in a hair-pulling sort of way) to see old behavior revert (2 aces to 6 errors, 1 to 6, 5 to 9 in some of our rougher matches). I would chalk it up to lack of training recently, possibly, and having end lines where you can actually get an approach and jump serve, if you want.
The rounds, this year, didn’t quite align with our original goals. Last year, you played in one group and you were then put into a group of teams who finished with a similar record, then put into one more final group at the end. We got 6 matches last year and went 3-3, and the Emeralds got 9 matches this year and went 5-4.
After the first round the second groups were a mix of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4ths from other groups, to try and really level things out for the final group stage.
We finished third in our first two groups and then 1st our last group by winning all the matches. It might’ve been a number of their players suffering from colds or COVID as the energy of a few of our opponents was pretty low, and one of our biggest focuses during the last three matches was to just keep our energy up and closing out the games.
Our MVP and Most Improved Players both came from the middle, as both of our middles were absolute stars throughout the week.
What Went Well, What Could Be Improved, Next Steps
I normally work through What Went Well, What Could Be Improved, and the Next Steps with the team, but overall I was happy with the week. The girls responded to early setbacks well, they did a couple things that weren’t 100% helpful to the matches (UV index leaps to mind…), but it was a very strong training week. In the remainder of the year and their time together as U18s, I’m hoping to get them some more competition in October and December, with an eye towards being as competitive as possible in December, so it would be a very different approach, in the weeks leading up to the tournament.
The Scores
2 July
Esmoriz GC A vs Emerald Volleyball
25 - 15
25 - 16
Emerald Volleyball vs SO Marinhense A
18 - 25
20 - 25
3 July
Pacense Voleibol vs Emerald Volleyball
10 - 25
21 - 25
End of 1st group stage, 3rd
4 July
Emerald Volleyball vs CA Boadilla Vol
25 - 20
25 - 16
Nacional Ginastica vs Emerald Volleyball
25 - 23
25 - 11
5 July
CA Madalena A vs Emerald Volleyball
25 - 11
18 - 25
15 - 8
End of 2nd group stage, 3rd
6 July
CV Torrelodones vs Emerald Volleyball
25 - 20
20 - 25
13 - 15
Emerald Volleyball vs AA Espinho B
25 - 11
25 - 21
7 July
SC Espinho vs Emerald Volleyball
14 - 25
16 - 25
End of 3rd group stage, 1st in the group, tied for 25th overall, out of 52.
Just back on the 8th, was knocked flat for a week after! Just emerging from the dose of COVID I picked up over there (I’d recommend the sardines at Casa Americo over the COVID, if you’re going to pick something up).