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My Coaching Conundrum: Stats vs. Development in Junior Volleyball
tl:dr
Since attending the UK Volleyball Coaching Symposium, I reflected on how my coaching process (using stats to win more often right now) doesn’t always align with junior player development (long-term skill development that helps improve performance to a higher level)
I reflected on three situations where I gave feedback that helped short-term performances which wasn’t good for long-term development
I don’t have the full answer of how I will align my coaching process with junior volleyball development but I landed on this: if players can consistently perform the lower-level skills in matches, I will then proceed to coach the higher-level skills in training. We will perform the higher-level skills in matches but if things are clearly not working, we can always go back to what we did before.
UK Volleyball Coaching Symposium
I recently attended and presented at the UK Volleyball Coaching Symposium. It focussed on junior development and I learnt a lot in terms of technique and new ideas for my training sessions (see link). Another big thing I reflected on is how my coaching process doesn’t always align with junior player development. My coaching process is geared towards using stats to win more often. Junior development is geared towards skill development and doing what the seniors are doing. Both are about improving performance but my coaching is about short-term improvements that help enhance performance right now whereas junior development is about long-term skill development that helps improve performance to a higher level.
It’s actually something I’ve been thinking about for a while since coaching at the American School of London Boys Varsity team and Team SideOut Performance Boys West. There were some situations where I gave feedback that helped performance at that moment but reflected later that it wasn’t great in terms of their junior player development. I will outline those situations below to better illustrate what I mean.
No Jump Serves
When I first took on the UCL Men’s team, a few of the players jumped top-spin served in training. It resulted in a lot of service errors and disrupted training flow. I researched this before and found that jump top-spin serves weren’t that effective in the Men’s Super League (see link). I found that compared to jump top-spin serves, the jump float serve had a higher serve average, half as many errors, and you put the passing team in bad situations more often. You get a higher service ace % compared to jump float serves but it’s only 4% more (see table below). So if Men’s Super League level players are not good at jump top-spin servers then BUCS Tier 1 level players (where UCL competed) aren’t going to be any better. That pretty much put a stop to jump top-spin serves in training.
While I am ok with that decision, I had a similar situation at the American School of London. I had a player who had an aggressive jump float serve. After he made too many service errors in a match, I looked deeper into his service stats. His standing float serve was far more effective than his jump float serve (see below). I followed the stats and told him to do standing float serve more often in matches. I wanted a safer serve so we could play rather than a riskier serve that could immediately lose the rally. So in terms of performance, standing float serves is better right now but in terms of player development, I hindered it.
Safer Serves
One of the key strategic points for my UCL team was safer serves. Early in the season, I found the service rate was too high (over 20%). I also found that even when the opposition team had a perfect pass, we still won 52% of the time. I showed them the chart below to convince them of the strategy to serve it in (I called it “solid” serves) and we’ll get them in the attack. This safer service strategy helped us win BUCS Southeastern Tier 1, BUCS Trophy Cup and BUCS Premier Play-Offs to gain promotion into BUCS Premier (see link).
While I am ok with that coaching decision, I have a similar situation at the American School of London. A few players are eager to jump float serve. I let them do it in training and it was horrible. I had one bad training session and one reason was because players were jump float serving and it resulted in a ton of service errors. It ruined the flow of the 6v6 drill, which everybody got annoyed by and lost focus during the drill. In an effort to have a good, flowing training session, I implemented a new rule in the next training session: players had 5 serves in the 6v6 drill and 4 had to be in play. Otherwise, everybody had to do bear crawls. So in terms of performance, the training session was one of the best yet with lots of rallies, hussle, and intensity. However, in terms of junior development, it wasn’t great because there were quite a few lollipop serves in there and that’s not something you want long term. Additionally, I was coaching a fear of failure that isn’t something I want to instil in the players.
No Quick Middle Attacks
When I joined Flaming Six Coyotes, the team were doing quick middle attacks. I gave it some time but I found it just wasn’t working. The setter would only set after a perfect ball (which didn’t happen too often) and when the first ball was perfect and the setter did set to the middle, it didn’t always connect. I saw the Hitting % was low and that doesn’t even include sets that didn’t connect. Based on this, I decided we were going to set a little higher for middle attacks. It’ll increase that hitting window and we’ll get more use out of the middles. There was some player pushback and you could see from the very first training session that the middle players were smashing the ball now. They looked transformed. It was one reason, amongst others, that helped us win the London League Division 1A Championships and promotion to London Premier.
Again, while I am OK with that decision, I have a similar situation at the American School of London. We only set high balls for the middle and I haven’t coached quick middle attacks. It hadn’t entered my mind that we should. I guess it’s because I didn’t want that long slog of lower attacking performances, i.e. a lower Hitting %, where you may not even get the pay-off at the end of the season. So in terms of performance, it’s better to keep it the same with high ball sets but in terms of junior development, it’s bad because they would need to eventually learn how to do it.
Aligning My Coaching Process with Junior Development
So it makes sense that I should let players do the higher level skills because if they don’t practice it now, when will they do it? However, I can’t move too far away from my coaching process because my mind is very much geared towards using stats to win more often. So how can align my coaching process with junior development?
I don’t know the full answer. However, where I landed is this: if players can consistently perform the lower-level skills in matches, I will then proceed to coach the higher-level skills in training. We will perform the higher-level skills in matches but if things are clearly not working, we can always go back to what we did before. Hopefully, it’ll mean the immediate performance level (i.e. the stats) shouldn’t suffer too much but I still have some player development.
Based on that, I will coach quick middle attacks at the American School of London but I’ll start off by coaching medium-tempo middle attacks first (1.5 metre sets). I thought it would be a good stepping stone before I move on to quick middle attacks. With the service strategy and technique, I came up with a rule of no two service errors in a row when we do 6v6 drills. It means they can practice their jump float serves and risk it but they also know they can fall back on safer, usually standing float, serves. In matches, I generally let players make their own choices on serve. I will have a training block focussing on jump float serves.
Final Thoughts
I am glad I went to the UK Volleyball Coaching Symposium. It made me sit down and reflect on how I can align my coaching process with junior development. I don’t have all the answers to how I will navigate this. However, I do have a plan for my current situation at the American School of London. You’ll have to read my American School of London coaching reflection blog post at the end of the season to find out how it worked out.
It does occur to me that the answer is probably very obvious to coaches reading this. If you do have an answer then please comment. I would very much like to listen.
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