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.

Spring Update

It has been one crazy spring semester/season! So I will attempt to update you on what's been going on lately.

1. My designated club teams (182 & 121) seasons are over.

Many people tell me you have to be so relieved to have less to do now, but it's almost like we just started clicking and getting better at a faster rate towards the end of the season that I wanted to continue on. For instance, my 12 year olds went from never making it out of pool play to making it to the finals or losing to the semis. We went from a team that could make a serve over the net to serving aces. I think a reason for a lot of my girls losses is because I forced them to use 3 contacts and actually set up an attack and many teams would play tennis with us (we hit the ball over and they hit it right back). There is a lot more chance in creating errror with 3 contacts and so I think that's why we lost certain games. For those interested in coaching, you have to coach a young kids team atleast once in your career. As for my 182, I had to leave them with a replacement coach for the 1st day of their last tournament because of WSU spring vball. I was scared to death but my assistant Courtney did an amazing job, and apparently the girls did an amazing job getting first in their pool for the day. The last few practices I had with those girls were awesome. We did a lot of work and we actually had a lot of people able to attend practice. My 182 has always had a strong backrow because of my "littles" (defensive specialists), but towards the end of the season I had everyone playing defense, showing me range, making plays. It was an amazing transformation. As for attacking, we finally started connecting on our slide even in transition. My setter got a lot smarter as to thinking her setting strategy in certain rotations. It's very sad that the season is over because I have so much more I would have liked to work with those girls. But I'll have to wait another season....that's if I'm still in Wichita next year =/

2. WSU spring volleyball is almost over!!

So far we've played in Florida against Miami and Florida Atlantic, and at WSU against K-state and Oklahoma. Let me just say...the shockers are going to open a lot of eyes next year. Joining us this spring semester were Mary Elizabeth Hooper (setter) and Dana Loganbill (middle). Both of them realistically should be playing club right now but decided to graduate early and start training with the shockers. Both have made a big impact, alongside with Peyton Thompson, a transfer from East Carolina University. The shockers just might have a shot at breaking into the top 15 this year. We finish out our spring schedule in Houston in which we will play Penn State, just the defending NCAA National Champs....no biggie ;) , Rice University, Texas State, and Texas A&M.

3. USA Volleyball

http://www.usavolleyball.org/

This summer I will be traveling around the USA with USA Volleyball as the Volleyball Information Systems Supervisor. I will be doing all the in game statistics for all the men's national team World Cup matches and I will be traveling to Colorado to work an exhibition match between the USA women's national team and Brazil! The sweet part is that I found out I can get college credit for doing this hehe. Nothing like working for the national teams, getting paid, and getting college credit =)

4. Gold Medal Squared

http://www.goldmedalsquared.com/

I also happened to join the Gold Medal Squared coaching staff for this season and will be working 3 camps. The awesome thing is that one camp I will be working alongside 2 former BYU men's volleyball players who won the national championship against UCLA a couple of years ago. And then my last camp I am working with my former coach I played under at Newman Unversity.

So you can see it's been a crazy spring and looks like it's an even crazier summer ahead. I sometimes forget that I'm a full time student also! Also, I forgot to mention while all this is happening I need to find a place to live in by the end of May!! My roommate got a job in San Antonio and the lease ends at the end of May. So if any of you want to make donations to the help RJ and Wu (Bryan Wooten my other roommate) pay for May rent/utlities please feel free to get a hold of me.

Until then...that's how the Ridge rolls!