By: Tiegen Kirkwold

From the Hudl Blog

We know what it takes to craft the per­fect high­light reel for your banquet.

The state tour­na­ment is over. Jerseys are turned in. The next sports sea­son is gear­ing up, but there’s still time to reflect on the one that just fin­ished. Most teams will host an end-of-sea­son ban­quet to gath­er with team­mates, fam­i­lies and coach­es to cel­e­brate accomplishments. 

It’s on you to fig­ure out food, venue, dec­o­ra­tions and team awards. But we’re here to help with the end-of-sea­son high­light reel.

What to Include

Find the best moments.

Start in matches that had a big impact on the suc­cess of your sea­son. That five-set thriller where your team squeaked by with a 16 – 14 win in the last set? We bet there’s a 10-foot kill or two you could find. 

Show some variety.

The aces are fun to watch but every­body needs some love. After all, there’s no ​“I” in team. We want to see a great dig, or the lock­down defense from your post player.

Include every­one.

Your ban­quet reel is also a chance to thank your stu­dent-ath­letes for par­tic­i­pat­ing, espe­cial­ly seniors who may have just played their last match of orga­nized volleyball. 

Don’t show cheap shots.

It might seem obvious, but don’t high­light a kill that left the oth­er girl with a bro­ken nose. Doing that makes your ath­letes think it’s okay to put those moments in their reels — and that’s not what recruiters want to see.

Add a sick track.

Every great high­light needs a great beat. We have all kinds of hits in our music library to give your high­light some much-need­ed swag. 

Use spot shadows.

Make it easy for the audi­ence to know exact­ly what they should be look­ing at. Put a spot shad­ow on the key player a few sec­onds into the buildup play so all eyes are on them.

Break it up.

Use title slides to guide the video and intro­duce what’s com­ing next. Focusing on offense for the next minute or two? Put a title slide that says ​“Top Offensive Plays” with the names of ath­letes featured.

The How-To

Now that you know the recipe for a killer high­light reel, let’s talk about how to make one. The process is easy as 1, 2, 3.

Step one: Tag the clips in your library. Cre­ate the clip, trim or extend it, and send it to your team’s highlights. 

Step two: Head over to your team high­lights page by click­ing the Highlights tab.

Step three (where the mag­ic hap­pens): Click Create Highlight to get start­ed in the high­light edi­tor. Give your reel a name, choose a theme and cus­tomize it with video, music, slides and pho­tos. This is also the step where you’ll add spot shad­ows title slides. Check out this tuto­r­i­al to see the process step-by-step.

Share Your Reel

You spent time craft­ing the per­fect high­light to cel­e­brate your sea­son, so why not share it out? It just might land an ath­lete a big oppor­tu­ni­ty, plus it’s a great way to pro­mote your program.

We make it easy to share your reel on Facebook, Twitter or by direct URL. Or take it up a notch by embed­ding the high­light reel on your school’s ath­let­ics website. 

Take some time to look back on your team’s sea­son and remem­ber the ride — whether it end­ed in an ear­ly loss in the play­offs or a state cham­pi­onship. We can’t wait to see what you create. 

 

By: Lindsay Peterson

From the Hudl Blog

As a high school coach, it’s way too easy to only focus on your team. But when you con­nect every lev­el of your pro­gram, each ath­lete knows they’re part of some­thing bigger.

One of my biggest strug­gles dur­ing the vol­ley­ball sea­son is find­ing the time to get to know all the play­ers in my program. 

And it doesn’t sound so ridicu­lous once you under­stand our coach­ing staff only includes one coach who teach­es at the school. Everyone else, includ­ing me, teach­es at oth­er schools. Also between our dif­fer­ent sched­ules and the pres­sure of win­ning, you can eas­i­ly get so busy you for­get to even look up.

 

On any giv­en year, I have 48 kids in my pro­gram spread over our four teams, fresh­men, reserve, junior var­si­ty and var­si­ty. We’ve always put a focus on con­nect­ing as a var­si­ty team, with team bond­ing days at the begin­ning of every sea­son. It wasn’t until my third year of coach­ing, when I final­ly felt on top of things enough to be able to see out­side what my team was doing, that I took a look at the oth­er teams. 

Guilt hit me hard — I couldn’t tell you all of the play­ers names. I couldn’t tell you what posi­tion some of them played, and hon­est­ly, I didn’t know much more than a jer­sey num­ber for most. I felt like I had done my pro­gram a dis­ser­vice and missed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get to know the kids who would be the future of my pro­gram. I decid­ed right then I was going to make a change.

I sat down with my assis­tant and we decid­ed if we want­ed to build some­thing great, we were going to make an effort to get to know all the kids. We also start­ed brain­storm­ing how we could help the kids get to know each anoth­er across dif­fer­ent teams. You’d think every­one would know every­one because they all went to school togeth­er, right? Not true! Millard North High School (Neb.) has more than 2,500 kids across all the grade lev­els. We need­ed to make it eas­i­er for them to interact.

We start­ed off easy, walk­ing around to oth­er courts and greet­ing the play­ers, help­ing out in a drill, or just mak­ing an effort to ask the kids how their day was. Then we start­ed doing more. 

We made a vol­ley­ball pro­gram shirt and gave one to every play­er. We asked them to wear it on the same day — Wednesdays quick­ly became pro­gram shirt days. And we added pro­gram game days. A few times a year, we all come togeth­er and play games. Whether it’s 3-on-3 or 2-on-2 vol­ley­ball, or we mix it up with base­ball or triv­ia, we make sure to find fun ways to get play­ers from dif­fer­ent teams together. 

As we con­tin­ued to get bet­ter at it, we start­ed run­ning skills courts with sep­a­rate group­ings. For exam­ple, on a set day of the week, all the set­ters in the pro­gram go to one court to have some posi­tion-spe­cif­ic train­ing, while the rest of their team works on anoth­er drill of some sort.

It might seem min­i­mal or sil­ly to focus on, but this has helped our pro­gram tremen­dous­ly! Now the girls real­ly look for­ward to our game days with every team. This gives the old­er girls an oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­play their lead­er­ship skills, and it gives the younger girls role mod­els to look up to. 

Getting togeth­er as a pro­gram helps every play­er feel val­ued. They know they’re part of a greater good. It’s also helped our coach­ing staff. We know our girls bet­ter and we’re bet­ter pre­pared to build report with all the play­ers, even ones on oth­er teams. 

We’ll handle the stats—you analyze them.

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Video and stats go hand-in-hand.

Tying data to video gives you the most information possible. Your players will improve faster when you can quickly pinpoint and review the plays that most contributed to a match’s result.

Click play to see the video below.

 

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Advanced, interactive reports are waiting.

You don’t have to lift a finger. We compile all the analysis into easy-to-navigate visuals—click any total to watch those moments play out. Filters give you the power to see stats for a single athlete, rotation, set, match or an entire season.

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• Assisted Blocks
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Serving

• Service Attempts
• Aces
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Serve-Receive

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This article was provided by  Training-Conditioning

Having players keep a journal can help a coach connect with their players.

At Bettendorf (Iowa) High School, Head Girls’ Volleyball Coach Diane Lichtenberg has been a steady rock for 32 years. Last year, she became the ninth active high school volleyball coach in the state to reach 700 wins and was inducted into the National High School Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame. Her squad captured state titles in 2012 and 2013, and had runner up finishes in 2006, 2014, and 2015. And her program hasn’t had a losing record since 1990. How does she get the most out of players each and every year?

Lichtenberg says it starts with setting lofty goals, an approach she learned as a player at Iowa State University being coached by Mary Wise (now legendary coach at the University of Florida). “I was a very competitive person, and I really liked the hard work and physical exertion that she expected,” says Lichtenberg. “Mary instilled in me the importance of a strong work ethic and high expectations, and I carried those into my coaching.”

But Lichtenberg also understands that you can only ask a lot from players if you show your commitment to them. One way she does this is through journaling—writing back and forth with her players—which has become a mainstay of the Bettendorf program.

At the beginning of the season, Lichtenberg buys each player a composition notebook. She asks the athletes to write down their thoughts, questions, and goals, and she responds to what they have conveyed. It allows her to connect with her players in a thoughtful way, while giving them the opportunity to stop and consider their progress and needs.

“It helps them reflect on what did and what did not go well in a game,” says Lichtenberg. “At the same time, it gives me a chance to respond to whatever they wrote, so they know I hear them. I might say, ‘You did a great job with that! But let’s work on this.’ I will then incorporate the things they are struggling with into our practice plans.”

To get their wheels turning, Lichtenberg provides a slip of paper with prompts. For example, before games, she asks players to write down their goals, and they revisit these afterward to reflect on how they played and whether or not they achieved each objective.

“Sometimes we will do it as a rating chart,” says Lichtenberg. “They may even have to rate themselves on certain categories within the mental side of the game.”

Typically, Lichtenberg has athletes journal once or twice a week. Notebooks might be due on a Monday after a weekend tournament and she does her best to return them by Friday, so athletes can read them and be ready for the next competition. “It does take some time to work through 15 or 16 journals, but I feel it is worth it,” Lichtenberg says.

Not all the journaling focuses on volleyball. “Sometimes I ask them a couple of personal questions,” Lichtenberg says. “I might ask about their grades, if they had a good weekend, or if they plan to attend homecoming when it’s coming up.

“And I always finish up by asking if they have any questions or concerns,” she continues. “If they do, I will give a longer response. Or I might have a face-to-face conversation with the player about the issue rather than trying to write it down.”

Lichtenberg has been incorporating the journals into her season plans for more than 12 years, continually tweaking the process. Two seasons ago, she split the task of responding with her assistant coach, to save time. But she found that she prefers to do them all herself, as it helps her get to know every player.

This past season, Lichtenberg experimented with having the players write their thoughts in Google Docs, and both she and her assistant coach were able to read and respond to every player. However, Lichtenberg found she prefers the hard copies and plans to return to them—especially since she is going to be dealing with quite a few new players next year.

“Last year, there were eight girls who were my primary players, and seven of them are graduating,” says Lichtenberg. “I feel like going back to the original format will be important with next year’s girls.”

Lichtenberg’s focus on communication continues with the players’ parents, as she works hard to keep them informed and feeling appreciated. “I send out weekly emails that provide a rundown of our plans for the week, including games, practice changes, travel plans, or any other information they may need,” she says. “I also remind them if we are having a team dinner, and I usually thank the parent that hosted the week before.”

Call-outs continue through the season, up to the very end, when she asks players to write a letter to their parents thanking them for their support. She then composes a letter of her own to parents, and gives them out at the team’s award night.

“I don’t think we let people know often enough how much we appreciate them,” says Lichtenberg. “Our parents have gone out of their way to help their children. Getting a thank-you makes them feel good and I think it’s an important gesture.”

It also circles back to her coaching philosophy. “There are so many life lessons that we can teach through volleyball to develop the whole person, not just their volleyball skills,” says Lichtenberg. “Part of that is being a good person, learning responsibility, and trying to think of others.”