American School of London 2024 Coaching Reflection

Introduction

This would be my third season with the American School of London Boys Varsity team (see 2023 and 2022 reflections). I had six players who graduated from last year so it was going to be another brand new team. However, I knew the players I had left and players coming up were good so I knew I had a good team. So how did the season go and what did I learn?

ASL Competitions Report

Boys Varsity

Friendlies | 5-5 Win-Loss Record A 5-5 win-loss record isn’t the best. I would say it is a fair record though. There was only one loss that I felt that we should have definitely won. It was our first match of the season (against TASIS) and we just played so badly. However, we ran it back with TASIS a few days at the London Invitational and won the first set 21-5 so I felt better.

London Invitational | Gold | 3-0 Win-Loss Record Sadly, there were no visiting teams (the American School of Paris and the British School of the Netherlands came last year) so it was just three other London-based American Schools. We won all three matches pretty comfortably.

International School Sports Tournament (ISSTs) | 4th Place | 3-4 Win-Loss Record This was probably a fair result in the end. International School of Brussels (ISB) was the best team by a good margin and they won. Frankfurt International School (FIS) were probably the second-best team but we did take them to the final sets in the group stage. The American School of Paris (ASP) was third and they beat us twice, first in the group stage and then in the 3rd vs 4th place match. That 3rd vs 4th place was a five-set loss so it was close.

ASL Coaching Reflection

Needing Tougher Matches To See Where Your Weaknesses Are The main reflection was I needed tougher matches earlier in the season to see where the real weaknesses lie. It was only when we travelled to Frankfurt to play Frankfurt International School and the International School of Brussels that we got tested. The main thing I saw was I needed extra passing because we couldn’t deal with the tougher serves. I came up with a solution where I moved one outside hitter to opposite and the defensive specialist was outside hitter. I never done this in practice but I thought it would work so I went with it. Thankfully, it worked because we managed to win our last match on the trip. Of course, we started to work on this new system when we got back. So without those matches, I wouldn’t have seen that we needed to boost our passing.

It was the same when we played in the ISSTs. Different teams presented different challenges and I employed some strategies to combat that. Some of these strategies were never practiced before in training, which again, is something I hate to do. For example, I employed a defensive system of 6 defending the line because there was an outside hitter who would hit and volley deep into zone 1. It took a while for the defender in Z6 to understand that but once he did, we defended those balls easily. I also did a double sub because we got stuck in a particular rotation multiple times. I explained in the time-out what a double sub was and that the rotation would be flipped. I did the double sub and the whole team got confused and they didn’t know where they needed to be. There was also one situation where I did a block switch. I sent my big middle blocker to Z2 to block their big outside hitter and my setter to Z3 where there was a smaller middle attacker who was never going to be used. I explained it to them multiple times (during time-outs and before serve) but they were absolutely lost. Since this was our final tournament, there was no opportunity to practice these things in training.

So I don’t blame the players for not understanding what I was asking them to do because they never practiced it in training. Like I said at the top, I needed these tougher matches earlier in the season so I could see where our weaknesses was and come up with a solution to combat that and practice it in training.

Quicker Middle Attacks I taught quicker middle attacks this season for the first time. It was something I wanted to incorporate and it was something important for the skill development, i.e. if I don’t coach them now, when will they ever learn it? I was apprehensive because I may have to suffer a dip in attacking performance. However, I was surprised that the players picked it up so quickly. After a week, the players used it in the next match and it looked like we had been doing it for a while. What was I worried about?

Safe vs Tough Serves I also coached jump float serves as part of their skill development. The players were keen to do it and again if I don’t coach them now, when will I ever coach it. However, after the Frankfurt trip, I found the service error rate as a team was too high at 20%, with some players having a 33% error rate. It didn’t come with aces either because the ace rate was a paltry 4.5%. So I went back to my old philosophy of safer serves in rather than riskier serves out. I am probably ok with that decision still because the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze plus the fact that service isn’t highly correlated to winning. However, when I see other teams with tougher serves, I do think I want a bit of that. I was thinking the solution is I should devote 5-10 minutes of training on serves just to get in those reps and improve the overall quality of the serves.

Coaching Pancakes and Eye Sequence (Ball-Setter-Ball-Hitter) So in keeping with skill development, I decided to coach them pancakes and the eye sequence of ball-setter-ball-hitter. Both were two things that helped me as a defender and anticipation of play. So I wanted to give them the experience of doing pancakes and introduce the concept of the eye sequence. I only spent a 2-3 sessions on this as the focus. I didn’t see any pancakes in subsequent matches and it’s hard to know whether they took on the eye sequence. It’s probably one of those things where it takes a lot of time to develop and I would need to continue drilling them on it.

Libero Passes in the Middle Passing Unit I have a great libero and is definitely our best passer and defender on the court. One of the things I learnt on the Frankfurt trip is to shuffle the passers (between the two outside hitters and opposite) so the libero is always the central passer of the three-person passing unit. I inherently knew that most serves will go to the middle so it makes sense to have our best passer as the central passer to take the most balls. To my surprise, it did feel like all serves went to the libero. There was even a match in the ISSTs when I had a middle playing opposite. I knew he was a terrible passer but I still made him pass so the libero could pass as the central passer. I just prayed no serves went to him. Plus the other team won’t know that he can’t pass. As it turned out, I only remember three serves going his way and two of them went out of bounds.

Libero Defends in Zone 6 Since most attacks go to the middle-middle of the court, I did think I should put my best defender in zone 6. I made that change during the Frankfurt trip as we needed more defence. I feel that it worked out better this way and the libero preferred it too because he felt he took more balls.

Set Up Two Courts For the first time, I had two sessions when I set up two courts rather than one big show court. It was so I could focus on coaching the quicker middle attackers for the setter and middles while the other court focused on serve and passing. I also did a session to give the setter reps on attacking the second ball. I really liked it because it gives you a lot of options to do different things. Even if you do the same drill on both courts, e.g. serve and passing, you automatically double the number of reps because the players are split on two courts. This is something I will do next year, at least once a week.

Dealing With Behavioural Issues This was the first time where I had to constantly deal with behavioural issues, i.e. some players messing and screwing around. This really affected many training sessions where I felt the team didn’t train well. There were even some training sessions where I felt it was so bad it was better not to have trained at all. It is something I will need to think about how to combat that for next season.

Final Thoughts

It was a good season. The trip to Frankfurt and the ISSTs was a lot of fun because we were in competition mode and I had to use my tactical brain to turn some performances around. Not gonna lie, training was a bit of a drag due to dealing with behavioural issues.

In terms of results, we could have gotten 2nd place in the ISSTs if a few rallies went our way but 4th place was probably a fair result for us. However, next year will be the year. I only have one Senior graduating so I will still have the same team.

ASL Grade 7 A Girls Reflection

I also coached Grade 7 A Girls for the first time this season. There isn’t too much to reflect on so I thought I would just tag it at the end of this post.

I didn’t know what to expect but it was a great experience. The girls were nice and super keen to play. I also found out that they were really good so I just had to organise them. I also had more matches (6-0 win-loss record) than training sessions. This wasn’t bad because I didn’t need to plan so many sessions and I didn’t take any stats on the matches (although I would be interested in knowing) so it took less time overall.

In the final tournament (LSSAs), we were up against seven other Middle School (Grade 8 and 7) teams of London-based American and International Schools. We lost the final against ACS Cobham. ACS Cobham were the superior team but they had 8th graders, who wouldn’t look out of place in a Junior Varsity High School Team, whereas we only had 7th graders. The difference in physicality was stark. They had two big servers that we couldn’t handle (I think I would have struggled to pass those serves) so we would start 0-8 down. We would crawl it back to when it rotates around to the two big servers then that would finish us. So we finished in second place with a 3-1 win-loss record.

The biggest thing I learnt was consistent serves in are key at this level. If I am asked back next year, I think consistent serves will be a primary consideration for picking the A team. Also, I should dedicate 10 minutes of training on coaching serve.