TLDR: Any coaches in Paris? I’ll be hanging around Paris Arena Sud 1 today (Sunday), tomorrow for the morning and late night quarter finals, and Tuesday for the late night quarterfinal. Be sure to say hi!
The Tournament
July was a bit of a whirlwind, with the AMB tournament in Portugal, hitting the main goals we set out to achieve (mainly training reps). I just got around to statting the matches off our Balltime videos1. Now, the stats weren’t the point, as I said, it was all about training, and there was plenty in the video to work on.
But I’m pleasantly surprised by us, again, keeping our points above our errors (not by much, but we’re taking baby steps)… it was surprisingly our serves that let us down, on the error front, with a way better ratio of kills to attacking errors this time around. Our passing… well, we still have a ways to go. Most of it comes down to communication and the unit working as a unit. And in the new view below, you can see we are finally earning more points than we’re getting “mysteriously”2.
From the video and the stats and reflecting on the wrap, the next training sessions and goals will likely be around improving our attack rate. I really liked this mindset from Volleyball Toolbox, Hexagon Setting: Dealing with Bad Passes, so I’m going to work with the girls on getting this idea implemented more often. Of course we’ll keep working on serve receive with our passers, but we also just need to start getting some real good kills.
There’s some individual stuff I’m going to work on with some of the athletes, especially when it comes to things like foot faults on service and attacking with a higher reach, and I’m sure going to use the tape a lot for some physical cues, along the lines of things Joe explored with his 99 External Cues series.
The Camp(s)
My daughter really wanted to check out the US volleyball scene (which she started in way back at the tender age of 5/6 in the USYL when I was a site director in the Los Gatos/San Jose area), so she attended the Princeton Volleyball Camp and the Advanced Nike Volleyball Camp at Smith College and man oh man, did she have a blast!
Sabrina at Princeton was very accommodating for our two U18W Irish national team athletes, and Greg and Connor and the staff at Smith were amazing.
She got some excellent feedback from Greg and Connor, plenty of playing time, and the camp goers were a great bunch.
Incidentally, anyone looking for coaches for your summer camp, I’d be happy to be considered! 🙂
I think, for any Irish athlete, it’s a good idea to hit up one of these camps if you’re even considering trying to play in the US (though there are plenty of *amazing* opportunities here in Europe). It will give you a good idea of the level of play, and also a taste of what life is like on a US college campus. I can’t say enough about the Nike camp… they were so well organized and involved and helpful.
The Olympics
And now it’s on to the Olympics! We’re lucky enough to be over in Paris for a few days, and will be catching the men’s quarterfinals tomorrow and women’s on Tuesday. Not all of them, but a few matches, anyway.
If you’re over in Paris, too, feel free to drop me a note to meet up or say hi inside the arena.
Can’t wait to see USA/Brazil and I know somebody’s very excited to see Fornal vs Slovenia… err… *Poland* vs Slovenia.
Upcoming Coaching Clinics and Workshops
All the while I’ve been putting together the Service Reception: From Cradle to Grave Toolkit, aka, “The Ball Knows Angles” workshop for delivery for Volleyball Ireland at some point, which I think should be an engaging learning experience for all who attend (even myself).
And on that front, I’m also keen to deliver some of this coach developer material to others, so if you’re interested in a a workshop or clinic with your group, feel free to grab a chat with me here: https://calendly.com/thecodehub/volley-chat (and if those hours don’t work for you, send me a message with the button above) or I’ll be in England at John Forman’s coaching symposium in September, too (see the event waaaaaay at the bottom of that page)!
Can’t wait for the best the world can offer over the next few days!
I *love* Balltime! I feed every one of our matches in and they’re always working on new features. This isn’t a paid promotion, but Dan and the crew do amazing work.
These stats and views come from the new 2.0 version of my app, Volleyball Stats 9000, out soon, and yes, this is an ad. The mysterious points are ones that aren’t from a kill, block, ace, all of which can be tracked easily with the app. So when the app can infer points being won or lost based on what stats you’re keeping, sometimes we have these mystery points that show up… usually, at our level, thanks to errors by our opponents.