You coach because you’re passionate about helping your athletes get better. The wins are great, but what lights your fire is seeing players improve. Consider attack tendencies the newest accessory on your coaching toolbelt.

Maybe you have an outside whose attack percentage is lower than you’d like. They have a solid swing with some power behind it, but the ball just isn’t finding the floor. With attack tendencies, you can sit down with them and review their attacks. If you notice the player tends to attack left back—which isn’t great because most of your opponents put their libero there—you can work on thumb up shots during your next practice so the ball falls deep line.

With the speed of the game, it’s easy for you (and your coaching staff) to miss this. You might catch on by watching video, but that takes time. And looking at stats is great, but it’s not going to give you the full picture. That’s where attack tendencies come in. You see the what, where and why behind every swing and in turn, you can help your athletes improve their game and become greater offensive threats.

You don’t let your team play in a match they’re not prepared for. You spend countless hours watching scout film and planning your practices around what you find. Good news—the attack tendencies report will make this part of your job easier than ever.

You have your biggest match of the year coming up. It’s at home, against your rival who beat you in five sets the first time you played them this season. To get a win, you’ll need to be prepared offensively and defensively. Their middle’s .400 attack percentage catches your attention right away, so you dive into each swing. You notice their attacks are most often falling in the deep corners of the court, so you might switch to a rotational defense when they’re front row. You might even triple block the middle and be less concerned with what the pin hitters could do without a block.

No matter what you decide, this new report will make learning your opponents’ tendencies easier than ever. With the perfect scouting and practice plan in place, your team will be ready for the big match.

You love numbers so much, diving into your reports on Hudl is basically your favorite hobby. But a number only tells part of the story. Attack tendencies will change your view, so you can change your understanding.

Say you’re worried about the outside on the team you’re playing next week, so you dive into your stats report and click on #14’s attacks. You see the video clips that show all of those swings, but your opponent recorded from a side angle, so it’s hard to tell where the attacks are landing and where the hitter is taking off from.

Have no fear, the attack tendencies report is here. See the start and end location of every attack so you can plan your defense accordingly. Notice most of the sets aren’t getting all the way to the pin? Bring your right side and middle blocker in a couple of steps and challenge the attacker to go line—you’ll have a defender there anyway.

TL;DR: the possibilities for using attack tendencies are endless. We’re excited to see how this report will help club, high school and small college coaches and athletes improve, win, teach, plan and scout.

Statistics are vital to college and national volleyball teams. Their coaches comb through the numbers, looking for any faults that could be improved upon. They have members of their staffs dedicated to analysis.

But this data isn’t limited to the nation’s best squads. With Hudl and Volleymetrics teaming up, these insights are also available to high school and club teams.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” Giuseppe Vinci, the founder of Volleymetrics and consultant coach for the U.S. National teams, said. “We’re trying to take something very complex down to just a few numbers that can really help coaches on that level focus on the right things.

“It’s the question that coaches ask themselves every day—what should they coach today? What should they train today? What should they focus on today? That’s what I’m most excited about and what’s going to make the biggest difference. Not just saving coaches time through Hudl Assist or through our platform, but saving them time and making their practices more efficient, more focused, more on point—we can do that with data and video.”

Vinci advises coaches to mainly focus on their side of the net when it comes to stats, rather than study opponent tendencies. He recommends keeping an eye on reception, serving, side-out percentages and first-ball-out percentages.

Hitting efficiency is also always on Vinci’s radar. This number tells a more complete story than simply looking at kills and errors. By calculating (kills-errors)/attempts, hitting efficiency paints a more effective picture of a player’s performance.

“It’s, ‘How many points am I scoring per swing?’” Vinci said. “It’s an average of how many points I’m scoring every time I take a swing. The higher that number is, the more I’m going to score and the more I’m going to win.”

Many of these stats can be tracked on paper, but they’re taken to another level when linked with video. Statistics are useful on the surface, but the story behind each number is more telling—that’s where video comes in.

“We’re talking about the competitive level of sport where you can just learn and improve so fast,” Vinci said. “You’re learning so much. Learning by seeing is just another level of learning.”

“Everybody says a picture is worth 1,000 words. I’ll say a video is worth a million words. That is a big, big thing.”

To learn more about how stats and video give teams an edge, check out our free eBook.

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.

 

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.)

——————————————–

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

——————————————–

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!