By Tiegan Kirkwold

From the Hudl Blog

No prac­tice? No prob­lem. Here’s how play­ers can improve on their own.

All coach­es aim to bring out the best in their ath­letes. But it can be tough to ensure play­ers are mak­ing strides in their devel­op­ment from behind a com­put­er screen. So we com­piled some of our favorite resources for mak­ing progress from a distance.

Mental Training

The only way to improve your serve, swing, set (insert any vol­ley­ball skill here) is through com­mit­ment, hard work and patience. The same goes for the brain. The most suc­cess­ful play­ers choose a pos­i­tive atti­tude, main­tain a high lev­el of self-moti­va­tion, set high, real­is­tic goals, use pos­i­tive self-talk, and deal effec­tive­ly with peo­ple. But these skills don’t hap­pen overnight and they don’t always come naturally. 

Encourage your play­ers to put in the men­tal work now, so they can shine tech­ni­cal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly when they’re on the court again. 

• 5 Keys to Mental Toughness in Volleyball
• The Mental Game of Volleyball
• Mental Training from JVA
• How Olympians Train Their Brains

Strength Workouts

Staying active dur­ing this time will make the first prac­tice back a lit­tle eas­i­er, but it’s also cru­cial for injury pre­ven­tion. The good news is there are a ton of at-home strength and con­di­tion­ing work­outs on YouTube—send your favorites to play­ers to keep them moving.

You can also find ideas on Twitter and Instagram, from core work and weight train­ing to pre­hab cir­cuits designed specif­i­cal­ly for vol­ley­ball play­ers who are hard on their shoul­ders. Or cre­ate your own work­outs, record and upload them to Hudl, and have play­ers mes­sage you when they’ve com­plet­ed them.

Skill Development

Playing vol­ley­ball is kind of like rid­ing a bike — it’s hard to for­get once you know it. But that doesn’t mean you want play­ers to go months with­out touch­ing a ball. So we round­ed up some of our favorite drills they can do at home. The best part? For most of these, all they need is a wall and a ball.

• 10 Solo Volleyball Drills to Try at Home
• At-Home Volleyball Drills (Setting, Hitting, Passing, Blocking)
• Volleyball Drills to Do at Home Without a Net or Court
• Art of Coaching At-Home Drills

Officiating

You know how it goes. The first tour­na­ment is around the cor­ner and you’re scram­bling to train your play­ers on how to keep score, track the libero and be the down ref­er­ee. Use this down­time to get your team trained up so it’s smooth sail­ing once match­es start. 

Not sure how to get start­ed? Here are some ideas:

• Set up a time for your team to watch a train­ing video.
• Contact a local offi­cial and see if they’ll run a vir­tu­al train­ing ses­sion with your ath­letes and coaches.
• When you can, host an intra-club scrim­mage so your play­ers can prac­tice in a low-pres­sure environment.

Recruiting

Now’s also the per­fect time for ath­letes to own their recruit­ing process. Encourage them to do research on col­leges, nar­row down their list of schools, reach out to coach­es they’re inter­est­ed in, and com­pile their best moments into a high­light reel.

We recent­ly sat down with a few col­le­giate coach­es to pick their brains about recruit­ing, high­lights and get­ting noticed. They all had great insights for both coach­es and ath­letes, so be sure to share these with your team.

• Jaylen Reyes from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln
• Natalie Morgan from Loyola-Marymount University
• Dani Busboom Kelly from the University of Louisville

Hudl Homework

If you’ve already nailed the at-home work­outs and drills, switch your focus to video review on Hudl and have your play­ers study their craft. Ask them to watch video of pre­vi­ous match­es and cre­ate a playlist of their top five and bot­tom five plays. They can add com­ments and draw­ings explain­ing why it was a high or low moment. You can dis­cuss these in a one-on-one call and devel­op a plan to address their bot­tom five as prepa­ra­tion for next season.

There are so many ways play­ers can keep improv­ing off the court — whether they focus on pre­hab, learn­ing a new skill or plan­ning their future. For more play­er devel­op­ment ideas and resources, check out our Remote Coaching Guide.

By Tiegen Kirkwold

From the Hudl Blog

We’re all adjust­ing to the new nor­mal this vol­ley­ball sea­son. Here are some tips to help you make the tran­si­tion to remote coaching.

Awkward silence. 

Off-top­ic ban­ter.

Slow inter­net. 

Virtual team meet­ings can be tough. 

“My biggest chal­lenge is keep­ing my girls engaged. We are doing video calls as a team, but it’s tough to get them to do any­thing or talk.” Nate Torvik, Team Indiana Volleyball Club

This is unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry for every­one. We’re here to help with ideas for your next team meeting.

Host a Virtual Book Club

There are great books on mind­set, lead­er­ship and excel­lence. What bet­ter time than now to hone skills like these?

Step one: Decide on a book. If you (or your play­ers) can’t get to a book­store right now, pick one that’s in stock online or con­sid­er an eBook.

Step two: Come up with a sched­ule for how many pages your play­ers need to read every week and get the first club meet­ing on the cal­en­dar. We also rec­om­mend start­ing a group chat to keep every­one accountable. 

Step three: As you read, share inspir­ing quotes or favorite pas­sages in the group chat to keep each oth­er motivated.

Step four: Have each play­er come to the meet­ings with a ques­tion or dis­cus­sion top­ic. That way, every­one will have some­thing to share.

Group Workout

It can be hard for ath­letes to find moti­va­tion to work out alone. If that’s the case for your team (or even if it’s not), a vir­tu­al work­out might be a good way to hold each oth­er account­able and give ath­letes a sense of accom­plish­ment. Just make sure to put a plan togeth­er before­hand. If you don’t, the pause it takes to decide what exer­cise to do next can mess up your rhythm. 

Pro tip: Take the pres­sure off your­self. Have play­ers flex their lead­er­ship skills by assign­ing one of them to lead each workout.

Play a Game

These next two have noth­ing to do with vol­ley­ball, which could be a nice change of pace. Pick a game or two (like Heads Up! or Houseparty) to put your ath­letes’ com­pet­i­tive­ness to the test — and have fun.

Online Cooking Class

Teaching life skills, being togeth­er and eat­ing good food? Sounds like a win-win-win. Pick a recipe to cook with your team vir­tu­al­ly. Share the recipe and ingre­di­ents they’ll need before­hand so your team can sched­ule a gro­cery pick-up (or Instacart order).

Review Video Together

Matches aren’t hap­pen­ing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t watch vol­ley­ball. Search for a col­le­giate or pro­fes­sion­al match on YouTube. Have your team pick a play­er in the same posi­tion and write five things about what they’re doing well. How does the say­ing go, ​“Monkey see, mon­key do?”

You could also pick a match you uploaded to Hudl and teach your ath­letes how to review film. Remind them not to focus on how awe­some the kills and stuff blocks are, but nar­row in on foot­work and tim­ing as an attack­er, or see if they’re releas­ing too ear­ly from base on defense.

For more ways to com­mu­ni­cate with your team and sug­ges­tions for the best video con­fer­enc­ing, mes­sag­ing and con­tent shar­ing tools, check out our Remote Coaching Guide.

 

From the Hudl blog

By Lindsay Peterson

Team cul­ture takes the com­bined effort of coach­es and play­ers. In this blog, vol­ley­ball coach Lindsay Peterson explains how coach­es can start build­ing the right traditions.

I’ll nev­er for­get my first col­le­giate vol­ley­ball game. It was the first time I’d been through the actu­al warm-up with the team. We did all the nor­mal things; warm up our arms, pep­per, work on team defense, etc. 

Then right before our time was done, the seniors pulled us into the hud­dle and told us there was a chant we always did before every match. A cheer that start­ed off just a whis­per and end­ed as a scream by the end. A cheer that in few words described just how good we thought we were. 

This chant was a rit­u­al — it nev­er changed. Game after game, we spoke those words. It was exhil­a­rat­ing, it made my blood pump, my heart race, and let me know that we were all in this together.

I look back at the moment and real­ize the com­plex­i­ty of that sim­ple cheer. It was tied to every game in the years I was in that pro­gram, includ­ing a Division II nation­al title, count­less wins and bro­ken records. It’s impor­tant to have these pos­i­tive tra­di­tions in your pro­gram, whether it’s cheers, chants, dirty sock rit­u­als or the thou­sands of oth­er things your team could do to get excit­ed about games. I’m a firm believ­er in pos­i­tive tra­di­tions + pos­i­tive lead­er­ship = pos­i­tive team culture.

There are two sides to my team’s cul­ture: how the coach and staff build tra­di­tions to facil­i­tate pos­i­tive cul­ture, and how team lead­ers help estab­lish that cul­ture. In this first blog, I’ll focus on the coach­es’ side. 

Pre-Season

I had a coach tell me once to always work play­ers extreme­ly hard in your first prac­tice of the year, then at the end of that prac­tice ask them what they want to be known for. I tried it and the results were great. 

Kids are eager to tell you what they think. Now for us, win­ning and los­ing isn’t who we are. The things we stand for and how hard we’re will­ing to work, that’s who we are. Having my play­ers estab­lish ​“who we are,” and what we want to be known for, is imper­a­tive for us to begin our season. 

Most of my teams agree on some­thing close to the same thing every year: tena­cious, relent­less, com­pet­i­tive, a nev­er-give-up atti­tude, hard-work­ing, hard to defend, sup­port­ive, etc. Every year will be dif­fer­ent because each year’s team is dif­fer­ent. Even your lead­er­ship might change. But you can sus­tain team cul­ture in your gym by estab­lish­ing who you are. 

During the Season

As the sea­son begins and then pro­gress­es, make sure you’re estab­lish­ing con­sis­ten­cies. For instance, before every home match, my team comes in ear­ly and sets up the nets. Then they spend the next 30 min­utes serv­ing and passing. 

It’s also a tra­di­tion for the team to gath­er at my house twice a year for ​“prac­tice.” We play games, eat snacks and watch moti­va­tion­al movies. Other tra­di­tions could be team din­ners, team-build­ing days, themed prac­tices, pro­gram game days. There’s a pletho­ra of inex­pen­sive, or even free, activ­i­ties for your play­ers to par­tic­i­pate in that are ben­e­fi­cial for your team culture. 

Make these activ­i­ties sus­tain­able and worth­while, and plan them in advance so it’s easy to stick to them.

Post-Season 

The end of the year is almost as impor­tant as the begin­ning. To make sure the cul­ture you’ve been build­ing all year will car­ry on, use your ban­quet to remind your play­ers of all the things they accom­plished through­out the year. You could even use awards to empha­size what’s most impor­tant for a pos­i­tive culture. 

At Millard North, we give out the Mustang Award to the play­er who has put in the work and nev­er gave up dur­ing hard­ships. The best part of this award is that it usu­al­ly winds up being a kid who doesn’t always get the ​“clout.” 

For exam­ple, one year it was a mid­dle who start­ed in the first 25 match­es of the year. She replaced an injured Division I hit­ter, worked incred­i­bly hard, and we went unde­feat­ed dur­ing the time she start­ed. When it was time for the injured play­er to come back, she didn’t give up. She con­tin­ued to give it her all, became a leader on the prac­tice side, and pushed us to be the best we could be. She gave her­self com­plete­ly and didn’t com­plain one time! That’s why this award is so impor­tant to me and to my pro­gram culture. 

Positive team cul­ture is a direct reflec­tion of the lead­er­ship pro­vid­ed by your coach­ing staff. Find ways to pro­mote cul­ture on your court and in your pro­gram. The long-last­ing ben­e­fits will be worth all your time and effort.

 

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.