Volleyball Toolbox

How to Boost Team Morale Off the Court

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Being a coach is much more than teaching proper volleyball techniques. See how to stay connected and show compassion to players during uncertain times.

When their playing days are over, athletes aren’t going to remember the box scores or hitting percentages. They’ll recognize who was there for them during the most vulnerable times of their lives. Here are a few tips for keeping team morale high from a distance.

Check in on your team

Your players’ health and well-being should always be a priority, but especially in times of crisis and isolation. Set a reminder in your calendar to reach out to them. Ask how they’re doing physically and mentally and let them know how important they are to you.

Avoid phrases like “you’re a hard worker” or “you’ve been a great asset.” Instead, choose affirmations that are specific to who they are and the unique impact they have on your team. “I love the way you cheer for your teammates,” and “I appreciate how you always take the extra time to shag balls between drills,” are great examples.

Create space for socializing

While virtual position training and at-home workouts are important, your players are probably missing the casual conversations and team time. Facilitate these by hosting coffee or tea breaks for your players to get together and talk about life outside of volleyball.

Have fun together

By now, you’ve probably seen the team pepper challenge on platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. But there are so many other ways to keep your team connected and break up the monotony. At VCNebraska, teams made their own versions of popular songs and got to know each other better through virtual talent shows.

You can also challenge players to come up with the best trick shot. Or host a Netflix watch party. No matter what you decide, just remember that teams with chemistry off the court, perform better on it.

Send a care package

If your budget allows, send players something to let them know you’re thinking about them. Tailor it to each individual’s interests and hobbies, or keep it general with a mix of fun and useful trinkets. Items like hand sanitizer (if you can find it), masks, snacks, scrunchies and card games are all great contenders.

Or send a handwritten note to let them know you care.

“I sent each of my players a handwritten note to not only let them know that I was thinking of them, but to encourage them as they were about to head into their finals week. Each note made them feel special and they know that I care for them as more than just volleyball players,” said Ruth McGolpin, head volleyball coach at Westmont College (Calif.).

Celebrate your players

Last but not least, keep everyone focused on the positive by celebrating wins at the team and individual level. Create highlights of your team’s best moments or make one for each player to applaud their successes. This might sound time-consuming, but it’s a breeze with Hudl’s highlight tools.

Not all celebrations are about in-game moments. You can also throw a virtual party or award night to recognize your team. If you have the budget, send pizza or another treat to your players’ homes so it feels like an end-of-season banquet. Create the awards you normally would and play that highlight reel you made. Most importantly, enjoy being together and give your players a small sense of normalcy.

 


Is Building a Relationship with Your Athletes on Your Preseason Checklist?

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Long story short, it should be. Head volleyball coach Lindsay Peterson explains the structure she uses to get to know her players.

 

Here we go again. The high school volleyball season is upon us. Like every good coach, you’ve meticulously planned out your season…right? Actually, if this is you, then I’m impressed—and also jealous!

As I began laying things out, getting my thoughts and ideas together for the next year, I’m reminded of one of the most important things I have to plan for: getting to know my players and building these relationships.

Let me stress to you that, even though I know this is very important for our players, there’s always a part of me that’s wondering if our time would be better spent in the gym, getting ready for our first match. But I also know building a team begins with building bonds between players and coaches.

So I thought I’d share with you something I’ve found helpful over the years, something I make sure to do every year with every player on my team.
 

Set up role meetings

 
I like to do these individually with my players. I sit each one of them down and ask them what role they see for themselves for the year.
 

Do these several times a year

 
My cadence is usually three meetings a year, but I meet with some players even more. I like to hold them at the beginning, somewhere in the middle, and at the end of our season. That way it’s easy for them to see how they’ve changed and grown over the year. We look at what we wrote down last time and whether it looks the same or has changed dramatically.

Here’s an example

 
This is a role meeting my assistant and I had with a former player. (Her name has been changed.)

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Name: Leanne

Position: Rightside

Name three positive things about yourself as a player:

  • See the court well
  • Defensive right side
  • Organized

Three downfalls you have as a player:

  • Impatient
  • Offense
  • Poor facial expression

Three things you want to improve before you graduate:

  • Stronger
  • Faster
  • Communication

Three things you’ll bring to the team:

  • Leadership
  • Energy
  • Calmness

Where do you see yourself in your position?

As a right side, second in line behind Emily

What do you need from us as coaches?

  • Feedback
  • Encouragement

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My takeaways

Player’s mentality

It’s so interesting to sit with each kid and go over these questions with them. Like many of us, it’s hard for them to articulate their own positive impact. But when it comes to their downfalls, they seem to have a list a mile long!

Creating relationships

These questions enable us to have an open dialogue about where they see themselves, and more authentic conversations about where we, as coaches, see them.

Documentation

Writing down the details of these conversations has also been helpful when speaking with parents and players about playing time. An added bonus!

 

 


Your Guide to Evaluating Your Volleyball Team

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Social media, pro­fes­sion­al development and assessments are all key to your team and club. Here’s the complete guide to mastering each.

This summer probably looks different than last. No trips to nationals, smaller sand volleyball tournaments, limited camp schedules and more free time. Use the next few months to your advantage and tackle things you might not have time for during a normal season.

Assess Your Culture

The past few months didn’t exactly go as planned, so it’s important to check in on your team values, beliefs and culture to make sure everything’s set up for next season. Here are three ways to do just that:

1. Send a survey. Have your players and coaches take a short, anonymous survey about their experience on the team. Ask open-ended questions like, “Do you feel like your contributions are valued?” and “What could the team do better to show appreciation for you as an individual?” This will help you gauge how your team’s culture is being perceived.

2. Reflect on last season. Were there times you saw someone truly live your team values? What about a time when someone failed to live up to them? Coming up with these instances will help you identify areas of strength and room for improvement.

3. Look at retention. One of the biggest indicators of a healthy team is its ability to retain athletes. Do players come back to play after their first year? If you don’t see a lot of returns, it could be a red flag that there’s something to fix in your team culture.

Evaluate Your Players

Volleyball is a team sport, but players still need to perform individually. You need hitters that make smart choices at the net, setters that spread the ball well, and defensive specialists who nail passes when it’s 23-all. But you also need players with intangible qualities—positive attitudes, good work ethic, body language, etc. So take a deep dive into each of your players’ performance. Then schedule one-on-one virtual meetings to go over it.

Here are a few templates that hit on all the important qualities:

Stat Your Film

While we’re on the topic of team evaluation, stats are a great way to objectively see how your team is performing. After all, numbers don’t lie. So if stats and reports aren’t already part of your review process, use this extra time to incorporate them.

It’s easy to add tags to matches already on Hudl. More of a visual learner? Check out this step-by-step video to see how it’s done. Or if you have Hudl Assist, double-check all your matches have been sent to our analysts (and send them if they haven’t).

Once your matches are tagged, dig into your team’s performance using Hudl’s comprehensive reports. See basic and advanced stats like blocks, kills and pass quality rating in the stats report, or look at how your team’s hitting percentage tracks over time in the trends report. And you’ll definitely want to use the attack tendencies report to discover your players’ hitting strengths.

Step Up Your Game

It’s not all about the athletes. Use this time to focus on yourself as a coach so you can show up for your team.

To network and connect with fellow coaches, check out these platforms.

Whether you’re looking for drill ideas, summer workouts or professional development courses, we have you covered.

  • The Digital Coaching Center has presentations and advice from thought leaders in the sports community.
  • Hudl Academy is full of self-guided courses to help you master Hudl at your own pace.
  • Learning platform edX gives you access to 140 free classes from Harvard, covering everything from probability and statistics to persuasive writing and public speaking.

Market Your Club

Success in the club circuit is defined by identifying, recruiting and developing talented players, which in turn attracts more skilled athletes to your team. To keep your club top-of-mind for players during tryouts, use these marketing tactics. (Don’t worry, you don’t need a business degree to implement them.)

The most important (and free) investment you can make? Meeting players where they are. That means using social media. Try posting player highlights, club events, travel opportunities and team accomplishments to your club’s social media accounts to attract new talent.

Player assessments, marketing and professional development might seem like a lot of work, but you’ll be glad you took the time to get your house in order once you’re back in the game. For more team evaluation ideas and resources, check out the Remote Coaching Guide.


The Formula for High Performance Team Building

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THE FORMULA FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE TEAM BUILDING

Dr. Cory Dobbs
The Academy for Sport Leadership

“Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will care.” -Your Student-Athlete

Here’s a simple formula that should provide you a clear way to grasp high performance in the area of team leadership. High involvement plus high commitment equals high performance.

So, what does all this mean for you? Well, high involvement means you need to nurture the involvement of every team member. Did you get that—every team member. Each and every team member needs to engage with the leadership development process by bringing a high level of energy and focus. Only when you have high involvement can you entertain the idea of high commitment. Simply put, if you don’t have high involvement you can’t have high commitment, and if you don’t have high commitment you’ll never see high performance.

If you select only a few team captains you’ve willingly and knowingly chosen low involvement. Those student-athletes not selected to develop as leaders will not care much about the process of leadership development of their peers. They’ll clearly say by actions and non-actions, “Why bother, there’s nothing in it for me.” You’ve chosen not to get them directly involved and commitment comes from being involved.

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download your FREE exclusive ebook from Dr. Cory Dobbs


Those student-athletes you’ve chosen as team leaders might show high commitment to leadership and leadership development. Why not, it benefits them. But you are still left with the reality that you don’t—and logically can’t have—high involvement with only a few chosen participants. Thus, you’ll never achieve high commitment nor high performance.

However, if you choose to involve everyone on the team—a leader in every locker—you have a chance to attain high commitment. By placing leadership practice and opportunities in the hands of every team member, you involve everyone. And depending on the quality of programmatic development you have a chance at achieving high commitment. Ahhh, once you get high commitment it is very likely you’ll get high performance.

This isn’t some mystical process. By deploying a leader in every locker approach your players are highly involved with an opportunity to become highly committed. Your challenge is to get them to willingly invest their minds and heart into the team leadership development process, building skills and competencies that lead to high performance. So, to wrap up this leadership bite here’s the formula once again: High Involvement + High Commitment = High Performance.


External Team Communication

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Pat Fox – Head Football Coach, Pontiac Notre Dame Prep (MI)
Coach Fox is a football coach. We believe that his message is applicable to all programs and all sports.
The following content is provided by Glazier Drive