Previously, I discussed my perception that I was quickly losing ground as a coach. The following is a more detailed look at that thought process and how I drew the conclusions that bring us to the changes in my current approach.
When speaking of an activity that is supposed to be about growth, improvement, and competition, heading in a negative direction can be scary. It's easy to feel like I'm not doing enough or trying to do too much. It's easy to feel like a failure or that I'm occupying someone else's space. It probably isn't a good idea to dwell on those feelings, but they raise important questions. Is there something else I should be doing? Am I putting too much emphasis somewhere I don't need to? How do I define success and failure? At what point would it be best for the program if I leave and just let someone else do the job?
Assuming that competing is essential, here is one way I have been looking at the situation:
I've identified five main factors that serve as indicators for the competitive success of a volleyball team. I am not saying that these team qualities are the team's destiny, only that they serve as a baseline for identifying the probable range of outcomes. You can think of it in this way: A team that starts with "a" is likely to be "x" (good) and unlikely to be worse than "y" or better than "z." I include a brief description of each feature, and I give each program (boys and girls) a rating out of 10 with some rationale.
1. Pedigree - Some say you can't teach talent. While that might not be exactly true, you definitely can't teach athleticism (in the short term) or size (period). We all want to believe that we can solve everything with some intelligence, time, and hard work, but it's not true. Some players come significantly predisposed to perform better. A half-decent coach paired with a strong pedigree will beat the coaching genius with mediocre athletes most of the time. Four years is not a lot of time to change this.
Check the demographics. Factors include genetics, parenting, socioeconomic factors, and one's childhood. Of course, every player is an individual, but schools generally tend to have some set of athlete profile trends as well.
Our boys - 4/10
You can be any size person and play volleyball, but the advantage is usually to the big boys, and we are in short supply. We're reasonably athletic, not superbly so or enough to make up for our size. As a result, we learn the game slowly. Maybe that's normal, but I know it's slow because there is always at least one person on the team who learns a little faster.
One of my early memories of coaching at Mark Keppel involves watching the players line up on opposite ends of the court before the game. We were playing against Alhambra, and their team was taking turns jumping up and grabbing the basketball rim. Our guys thought it would be funny to mirror their behavior and take turns tapping the bottom of the backboard. We had fun, but they beat us pretty badly.
Our girls - 3/10
We are, on average, a very short team. We typically don't have enough height to put up a double block. As a result, we depend heavily on one or two average hitters every season. Defense is less of an issue because height plays a smaller role, but our size and speed still limit our ability to cover the court. In addition, very few players are well-rounded, and most players need to focus and specialize in order to be effective within our four-year time frame.
I remember one of my earliest tournaments when an opposing coach pulled all blockers off the net to dig. Unfortunately, we could not find the firepower to take advantage of the open net, and they blew us out. This is a more extreme example, but it effectively captures some of the difficulties we experience.
2. Experience - Does this need an explanation? Generally speaking, the longer you play volleyball, the better you are, and the closer you are to achieving your potential in the sport. Experience isn't everything, but it's a lot. There is a strong correlation between experience, winning, and high performance. You see experience in the fluidity of movement and intelligent decision-making. It is an easy quality to identify.
Our boys - 2/10
We get a few kids who have attended the local clinics and learn from playing with their friends. However, organized team experience is practically zero. We are perpetually playing catch-up and working on basic things, even at the varsity level. That being said, I think our players typically make a lot of progress in three or four years, and I'm very proud of what we accomplish from year to year. However, it is more, despite our experience, not due to it.
Sometimes, people are surprised to hear that we teach volleyball basics during every tryout. No, we don't review the basics; we teach the basics. From scratch...because almost no one knows anything. By senior year, we know exactly how much everyone has improved by the time they graduate because practically everyone shows up at our doorstep knowing nothing.
Our girls - 3/10
Much like the boys, most experience coming in is from some local clinics. Club experience is a little more common with the girls (up from zero) but no elite players. I don't mean to take away from the experience of those individuals, but the distribution of talent and experience limits their impact.
I remember watching a popular Youtube video about a team manager who entered high school with no volleyball experience and then made it onto the varsity team her senior year. While this is commendable, this is not a notable story for me. This might sound like a bah-humbug moment, but our frosh/soph team starts at ground zero every year. This is not a one-off story for us. It is nearly everyone every year, and the girls generally progress slower than the boys.
3. Recruitment/Retention - Numbers aren't everything, but they matter. A high school sports program will have difficulty surviving and thriving without consistently strong participation and interest. This can be offset with relative strength in other factors, but it isn't easy. A smaller pool of players means lower odds of discovering and unlocking talent. Having fewer players also means fewer permutations to find lineups and create effective rotations.
Not only is it essential to have substantial numbers coming in, but retention is also critical. Consistency makes it possible to plan seasons in advance. It is hard to bring a plan together when you don't know who you will be getting back every year. Furthermore, anytime players leave (expected or unexpected), the time and effort mostly go with them. This can be somewhat offset if they leave a long-term impact on the culture of our program or if they return to help coach. This is a natural cycle that takes place at a high school, but longer tenure is more efficient. Academic eligibility and discipline also factor into player usage and retention.
Our boys and girls - 8/10
We boast healthy numbers. We lose players here and there, but our core players have historically been very committed. The only reason I would not rate us a 10 is my belief that we should be able to attract a more robust talent pool. This may sound insensitive toward the players who are already on the team, but there is a difference between valuing the people who are with us and how we approach a future that has not arrived yet. We rarely lose players to academic or disciplinary issues. Players rarely quit, and when they do, the effects are not always negative and can even result in a net positive impact. I am not counting people who leave because of exceptional circumstances, such as moving to another school for non-volleyball reasons.
4. Culture - I see culture as "the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization." It encompasses the underlying psychology of our athletes and can also be distilled into a philosophy of how to view the world. It is influenced but not defined by the program's history and accomplishments. It dictates the effort at practice, the level of performance in different situations, and how we handle ourselves, whether we are winning or losing. Over the medium to long term, it also affects whether we spend more time winning or losing.
Whether intentional or not, every volleyball program has a culture, and every team in the program will exhibit variations. A team's culture is shaped by the individuals who are a part of it but it also concurrently shapes and reshapes those same individuals. A strong adopted culture is critical because a team can only achieve in unison. It is impossible to get everyone on the same page about everything, but it's important to find
where you can. The differences aren't always essential, and there is no objective set of characteristics that perfectly fits every team and every situation.
Our boys - 6/10
The boys are competitive when pushed, they embrace conditioning, and they intuitively understand when they are pushing as hard as they can (and when they aren't). They are respectful to authority, fun-loving, and generally supportive of one another. Our weaknesses include a lack of focus, discipline, and intellectual maturity to understand what is a deep and complex game. There is also a logical disconnect between what they want to achieve and what needs to be done to achieve it. Like most people, we are content resting on our laurels when things seem to be going well. Sometimes I have to remind myself that boys will be boys (I should know), but sometimes they need to be reminded that accomplishing great things requires us to grow up.
Our girls - 4/10
Don't get me wrong, our girls are great, and I am very proud of them. This is not an indictment on the individual players who make up our program. The girls' program has NUMEROUS good qualities, many of which I believe are extremely important in team sports. However, we are also missing some of the core qualities that drive competition in sports. This significantly affects how quickly we improve and how competitive we are.
One way I look at it is the boys, overall, are too immature to put everything together, and the girls, overall, are willing to do almost anything except being athletes.
5. Coaching - A good coach can work wonders with the right set of players. A great coach can do it with anyone (winning is not guaranteed). What do good coaches do? They understand the game. They know their teams. They know how to put all that information together and make it do something. They can communicate critical information so that players can understand and utilize it. They build deep effective cultures that stick. They know where they are, who they have, and what they can reasonably do in that situation. Then they try to do more than that.
The best coach in one place may not be the best fit in another. People like to talk about whether this guy or that gal is a good coach, but the truth is very few people outside of the team get to truly see and evaluate a coach in an accurate and meaningful way.
Our coaches - ?/10
Our staff is more or less the same for both programs. I'm not going to give a rating because I'll either be too positive out of bias or too harsh to account for the conflict of interest. However, I do feel confident saying that our coaches are hard-working, dedicated, and focused on improving. I very much appreciate that we are flexible and work well together. Some areas of relative weakness might include our range of volleyball experience (as players and coaches), limitations on time, and a lack of organization from top to bottom (probably my fault).
So why do these things indicate the "end of coaching?" Aren't we supposed to just focus on getting better? Yes, that's part of it, but I also believe our goal should be to excel and win more than people think we can. Unfortunately, that doesn't feel like where we are headed. At this particular point in my life, it's hard for me to turn things up by putting in additional time. Closing experience and talent gaps is very time intensive. We encourage club, but I don't pressure families to do that because it is a costly commitment in terms of both time and money. That decision is theirs to make. I don't believe practicing year-round is really in the best interest of students, and while I would like to practice a bit more in the off-season, I can't do it anyway. I'm always trying to improve as a coach, but it's a slow process. The culture can change, but is there a point in light of the other factors? These competitive variables are either out of our control or very difficult to change with our available resources.
Long story short, our runway for growth is limited, and I'm less able to adapt than I was before. This is fine if my goal is to collect a paycheck or fill a role that no one else wants, but those are not my goals, and I think a program can offer more. Then again, maybe that's what high school volleyball is in some places. Mediocre to average teams, well-intentioned coaches, and the endless struggle to punch above our weight class. You win some games, lose some games, and remind each other it's not all about winning. Make some friends, make some memories, and put them down on your college applications.
There's nothing wrong with the status quo; I'm just not sure it's worth clinging to. If it's about the kids, why not let someone else come in and do it better? Why carry the guilt of not doing more when the team is probably willing and able to do so? I don't want to spend my career teaching that we can just beat the bad teams. I think it's even worse to convince them we'll win against some good teams when there's no good reason to believe so. I want to be realistic, and I want to be truthful.
Similarly, players who say they want to win or earn playing time but won't account for the relevant factors in this way are either deluded or not serious. Sometimes, as individuals or as a team, we find ourselves at the end of something we thought we started, only to find we never seriously attempted it to begin with. After more than a decade of coaching, I sometimes worry that I'm about to discover I haven't made any personal progress all these years. Conventional wisdom seems to be telling me that my years of being a serious competitor are over, and I've passed my window to win. We can continue practicing and playing. It would be fun, and I don't think it would be a complete waste of time. However, it's not clear where the path forward leads to or if it goes anywhere different at all. Is it worth it or is this the end?
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