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Greetings, from the Wichita State volleyball bus. The 11th ranked shockers are off to play Bradley and Northern Iowa this weekend.

Since I am bored on the bus I decided to blog again. I think the reason why I stop blogging for long periods of time is because my posts are too long and I get too lazy to type out everything in my head. The solution...shorter posts.

So get your rss feeds ready because this blog has life again and will contain shorter posts so it doesn't seem you're reading a novel. If only this bus ride was shorter also!

Until then...
That's how the Ridge rolls

So close

So today USA Volleyball almost sent me to Puerto Rico! I guess the technical coordinator for the USA Girls Youth team backed out and they needed a scout and I would have been the replacement, but I am working the World League match in Bloomington...aaaaaaah so close!

Living from hotel room to hotel room.

Me and FIVB supervisor Benito Montessi from Italy


So living in hotels for weeks is starting to get to me. I miss my room! But it's all good because I love my job! Traveling with Team USA and meeting new people....I couldn't ask for more. I have my first official FIVB match under my belt and I'm ready for this weekend against Finland which should be 2 easy wins for Team USA.



Old school Newman vball and new school Newman vball


After this weekend I fly to Dallas to coach my 171 team at nationals then it's time to catch up with my Newman bros. A lot of the crew if coming to the ICT for Ripple's wedding....prolly more for the bachelor party and reception haha. Then it's off to Bloomington, IL for USA vs Spain.

I also got hired to be the VIS manager for the NORCECA boys world championships in Miami and I will also be the Public Relations and Media Director at the event. Finally I get to put my education to use! I will also be doing the same at the FIVB High Performance Championships in Tucson. After all that I have my Gold Medal Squared and WSU camps to attend to. Turns out I'll actually be missing the first day of WSU preseason.

I must say I love my job(s). It definately beats being in the office and in the gym all day. Hopefully this will lead to a full time career for me.

Until next time...
That's how the Ridge rolls

Goodbye Olympic Training Center....Hello World League

Last night was the final exhibition match for USA vs Brazil and was it nutso! First, we got waxed by Brazil in 3; however, Brazil wanted to play 5 matches no matter what. Second, the game was televised, but we couldn't set up a statistics network for some reason and the TV announcers weren't able to get the live stats from the game! Crazy night and I wish we could have played better but it's exhibition. I love the Olympic Training Center and I met a bunch of cool people. I know I'll see some of them at the World League matches that I'll be working and hopefully I'll get to see some at the High Performance nationals and Junior Olympics. I'll be back in Wichita today (Sunday, I'm sitting the Colorado Springs airport right now), and I depart for Wilson Estates, IL on Wed. for USA vs Bulgaria. The summer madness has begun! oh yeah, I forgot to add that I will arrive in Wichita at 3:52pm and I have a practice with my 171 club team at 5pm so I'm having one of my players pick me up from the airport and drive me to practice haha...so classy

1st day with USA vball

Let's just say I love Colorado Springs and the USA Volleyball Staff. I really would love to work here full time, but we'll see. We played Brazil last night and lost in 5. Props to Brazil, ranked #1 in the world, because they lost their starting setter due to injury. Brazil plays at such a fast pace. As I was evaluating sets I realized Fafoa (Brazil's setter) probably got her hitters in 5 one-on-one situations to every one of ours. We play again on Friday and Saturday. Hopefully we'll come out of this series 2-1.

182 year in review

So I just woke up from a nap on the bus. Suprisingly the bed on the bus wasn't uncomfortable! It's exciting because I never get to sleep on a bed in the bus during the season haha. So on to my 18s season...lot's and lot's ob obstacles and challenges. First was the lack of size and not having any true middles. Secondly I lost a setter to mono, a hitter to knee surgery, and a little (defensive player) to a wrist injury. The team had a huge playing experience gap amongst players. I also had a stud senior who didn't know where she was going to play in college and she was getting offers from schools which I thought she was too good for. I learned that coaching an 18s team can be difficult because they have so much going on with their school activities and sports that you really have to accomplish as much as you can when you have everyone together...atleast for me. I had one player who was an outside and never had played middle or hit a quick set in her life but was just a physical player that can jump out of the gym. I've never had a player that worked as hard as she did. There would be nights where I'd do team conditioning and pretty much kick their ass until their body reaches failure and this girl kept trucking when everyone else might have slowed down or even stopped. I wish I could have done more to fix her goofy footedness :( fortunately I was able to grab a middle a little into the season; however, she had a stress fracture in her foot and hadn't done anything physical in a looooog time. After getting her back in the game and getting her to touch the ball she ends up being our best all around player. She ended up signing with the University Central Missouri. I was so relieved that she is going there because she hadn't really gotten any worthwhile offers because she really just got in the recruiting scene this season! She had gotten offers to schools that I thought weren't good enough for her. My setter was very easy to coach. The funny thing is that she reminded me of me when I played club. A shorter setter that had a good brain and played like she was 6 feet tall. I was able to run in system back row pipes and even biqs (back row quick attacks) which not a lot of setters would be able to handle (same with the hitters). She will be playing at Fort Hays State University next year. My littles were amazing. They we're the 2 I really didn't have to coach much. They knew what they had to do and got it done. I was able to pretty much run a 2 person serve receive passing rotation whenever I wanted to because of them. I think teams remember us for our backrow playing on defense and offense. A lot of that was possible because of those 2. One of my littles will be playing at Missouri State University next year. My outsides were the ones that improved the most throughout the season. One of them is a very solid outside player who's main weakness was defense but towards the season was digging balls like she was a libero. My other outside had a problem of over running the ball on her approach. Our last 2 tournaments she did a better job of fixing it and was lighting girls up in the backrow. She even played 6 roatations in the last tournament when she usually got subbed out and did phenomenal. My other hitter was only a sophomore in hs and didn't show intimidation at all being on the court against 18s teams. She was like a sponge that just wanted to learn as much possible so she can improve which was awesome. My 18s was a very awesome experience. I've always wanted to train girls like mens team with the in system backrow ball and these girls did it well. The last college I coached at couldn't do that as well as they did. I was also pleased with how we attempted to get a good approach and high percentage swing on every dig because free balls suck...there's that men's volleyball hitting mentality again. Though we faced so many obstacles that tried to slow us down we still improved. Even though we didn't have a lot of team practices where everyone was there, we were able to play in system as a team come tournament time. My parents were awesome supporters. There are a lot of parents that nag to their coaches as to playing time or you're doing it all wrong and they'll hound you especially as an 18s coach but I never ever had to talk to a parent about anything like that. The only parent talks I had were about recruiting and injury. So thank you parents for being so supportive and trusting me with your daughters. Well it looks like it's time for another nap on the bus :). I'll update everyone on our Houston trip soon!

Season wrap ups

So I'm blogging from my blackberry right now because I have a 9 hour bus trip to Houston ahead of me. With all this free time I figured I'd give my 182 and 121 shockwave wrap up.

I'll start out with the little ones and let me tell you that was an experience! Until now, I had never ever coached a team that was younger than 15. Well I guess I have coached at camps with younger players but never ever a team for an entire season! These girls started out at the very bottom. Couldn't serve or maintain 3 contacts. I thought it was going to be a very long season ahead of me. A lot of the girls on my team went to the same school so practice almost seemed like social hour for them. But after going to our first few tournaments the girls didn't like how we were performing and was always wondering why the other teams get to keep playing and we have to ref then leave. They started to take practice seriously and I even had girls wanting individual practice time before our practices. I was totally stoked because we then started to be a serving team. At the 12s level I learned that you place your setters where you need them in your lineup and then you start with your best server then second best and so on. I had girls actually attempting to take swings on sets! If we had only picked up on our passing and setting earlier in the season I would have had a reason to work a lot more on approaches and hitting. I had girls who were so frustrated about not being able to serve over the net and yet at the end of the season those girls probably had a higher ace percentage for the attempts they were given. I remember when we played in our first championship match. The girls were soooo excited. For me I was probably even more excited, not so much of the fact we were in the finals, but how the girls were actually setting up attacks and playing defense and covering. I had the girls promise me that no matter what happens that they can't be mad or sad because they have accomplished so much today and that winning the tournament would be icing on the cake. Sadly we lost and it hurt, but everyone was happy in the end. The parents were so happy that the girls finally made it to the finals. I was so fortunate to have awesome parents that understood what I was trying to do with the team and to support me in my vision. True we may have finished the season with probably a .500 winning percentage, but had we played in probably 2 more tournaments we probably could have finished with a .750 winning percentage. In the beginning I was freaking out because we weren't winning games and a parent came up to me and told me that I need to calm down because the girls are only 12, they aren't supposed to win games (I'm guessing she meant that the focus was not solely winning), rather learn. Coaching a 12s team made me realize that most of my club career all I really ever focused on was winning that I forgot how much more improved the became. I hope my 12s will realize how much they grew as volleyball players this season. But a coach can only do so much and I think that's something they won't realize until their older. I want to thank the players for all the hard work and fun times they have given me and I really need to thank the parent for trusting in my team vision and supporting me....also thnk you for a rediculously amazing end of the year party!!

Well that concludes my 121 season thoughts, I was going to blog on my 182 season but this bus ride is making me very sleepy. I figure when I wake up from my little nap I'll probably still have a lot of time to blog on my 18s.