We’re in the busy season! Youth matches, adult matches, classes in Coach Development, internationals heating up!
So this week, on training, I’m keeping it simple.
Youth
Our youth teams did an amazing job against U18 teams in the youth championships, despite all of them being U16s. That’s a huge task and I’m impressed at the level they’ve gotten to this year with our amazing coaches who’ve stepped up.
Theme of the week: one thing I *really* like about Karl’s sessions from the North is his emphasis on diving.
It’s so much fun to watch teams that just don’t let the ball hit the floor. I’d work a bit on diving this week, and specifically technique, so they don’t hurt themselves (oh man, I remember bleeding into so many jerseys from my bony hips hitting the floor).
Here a couple great videos from AOC on individual defense (a lot of these are premium content, but it’s so worth it)
Tod Mattox:
https://www.theartofcoachingvolleyball.com/dynamic-warmup-drill-to-raise-defensive-intensity/
https://www.theartofcoachingvolleyball.com/explosive-digging-drill/
Kirsten Bernthal Booth (you can just toss balls rather than hit them, if you’re not comfortable swinging at the players):
In Castlepark and Loreto Foxrock, we have the mats to use… so throw a couple out on the floor and get kids to get low, stay low, and slide onto the mats, to start. The socks on the arms idea in Tod’s videos is good (or arm sleeves)… but it would be great to just give them that mindset of “just go”!
Adults
The adults I coach need a bit of work on attacking the ball. We’ve gone through some ups and downs throughout the year, and I think some of it has affected their mental approach to hitting. I saw a lot of people rushing to get under the set, waiting for it, then jumping (sometimes backwards) to hit the ball.
So after a warm-up, probably to do with defensive responsibilities, we’ll go into just getting the hitters to wait, wait, wait.
We’ll do this with self-toss attacking, and then with coach toss, if we really have to, and then we’ll get a setter involved for the last step, but we’ll get them all attacking with a nice, big, slow start, then fast fast to close.
I’ll have the full complement of rubber disks and cones out to try and set some visual cues to get them to stay back, get outside.
CDC-41
I’m so lucky to be on the Sport Ireland Coach Developers Course (https://www.sportireland.ie/coaching/coach-developer/certificate-in-sports-coach-development), where we’re working through becoming coach developers, and not just coaches.
As a part of it, I’ve got my reflective journal assignment, which I’ll be moving here. I think the course is really well done. For my ‘other job’, I train the trainers for a large company, and certify folks based on their delivery and a lot of the same principles we’re going through in the CDC, so I’m shamelessly stealing techniques and tools already.
U18W
On Saturday we have the Saint Patrick’s Challenge at the Indoor Arena and our U18 women get their first official competition in 2024 against Northern Ireland.
Tickets still available, we’ll be on around 6:30pm. It’ll be a dogfight, like it usually is, but a great tune up for the SCA in Malta and see how the work they’ve been doing lately against a lot of better competition will stand to them when it’s show time.