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UCL Coaching Reflection 2021-22
New Teams
Due to a contract clause, I was unable to coach my City University London team for at least 3 years (until October 2023). This is quite sad since I have coached them since they restarted the volleyball program in 2013. This was when they didn’t have CitySport and we had to play in a sports hall with no volleyball nets (only free-standing poles where you add weights at the base so it didn’t fall over) and no volleyball court lines (we only used badminton lines).
However, it did give me an opportunity to coach other teams. One of the two new teams I coached in September 2021 was University College London (UCL) Men. It was a nice opportunity to coach a men’s team for the first time (although I did coach the Wales Boys team back in 2014). So how did the season go? Read my reflections below. If you wanted to read my reflection on coaching the other team, Flaming Six Coyotes, click on this link.
UCL Competitions Report
BUCS Southeastern Tier 1 | ChampionsI was really happy that we won the league in my first season with them. We ended on an 8-2 record. I did feel the league was relatively straightforward. Kings College was the team to beat early in the season and we beat them twice. Brunel (2nd place) and Sussex (3rd place) got vastly better (mainly due to recruiting a new setter who transformed their offence) after we beat them the first time around. We actually lost to them the second time around but we were already on course to win the league and we did it with a match to spare.
BUCS Trophy Cup | ChampionsI was extremely happy that we won the Trophy Cup (where all regional Tier 1 teams are entered). The furthest I got with City Women was the semifinals. We got to Big BUCS Wednesday (where nearly all the Championship Finals are played) so the players got to play in a big event atmosphere and the nice teraflex flooring. I did expect it to be tougher, especially the semifinals versus Bath and finals versus Aberdeen, but we cruised to a 3-0 victory in both matches (I did prepare my team with opposition scouts).
BUCS Premier South Play-Offs | PromotedWe won our two play-off matches so we got promoted to Premier South, the highest tier in university volleyball. We played against the team that was last in Premier South (Oxford) and first in Western Tier 1 (Bath). It was supposed to be a tough task, especially since we did not train after the BUCS Trophy Cup Final, but we comfortably won both matches 3-0 (again, I did do a bunch of opposition scouting so we were well prepared).
Volleyball England Student Cup | 10th Place We definitely could have done better. I knew the key match was to win our very first match against Cardiff to make the Top 8. However, we lost that match and we made 10th in the end.
UCL Coaching Reflection
Stick with the Coaching Plan My coaching plan has always been to organise the team by coaching systems of play first, i.e. reception, defence, free ball defence, out of system etc. This is because I feel this is the easiest and quickest way to improve the team’s overall performance. However, I did think about whether I needed to do something different since I was coaching a men’s team, specifically if I need to do something extra in blocking (my weakest area to coach). The way the season turned out, although coaching blocking may be a bit lacking, I shouldn’t really deviate from my coaching plan.
Winning Does Pave Over Any Issues in the TeamIt does seem silly only to realise it now but if the team is winning, the team is happy. If the team is losing, issues will start to appear. The critical incident was our loss to Brunel. We won the first two sets and had a couple of set points in the third. We didn’t take them but we lost the match in five. After the match, players were telling me why we lost and things we should be working on in training. I did take on board what they said and incorporated some of the things in training but I did think that if we took one of the match points, the issues would still be there but the team would be happy.
Limit the Number of Trialists Per Session to 35 or 40The biggest issue I had at trials was the sheer number of trialists that came. I had 54 trialists in the first session and this was just far too many to manage. All the players seemed to merge and I couldn’t distinguish one player from the next. To manage the numbers, I cut half the trialists during the session and then about half again at the end. This was harsh because there could have been someone good but they didn’t get to show it (I had one player that I cut but he begged for a second chance. I did and he become my starting libero). I also like time to make a considered decision rather than making it there and then. Upon reflection, limiting the number of trialists per session would help. We had 67 trialists over two sessions so 35 or 40 trialists per session would work. Plus, I would know some of the returning players so the number of players that I need to look would be fewer.
Only Select 15-16 PlayersI tend to only select 15-16 players for the team. It worked out that I selected 19 players! Having 19 players is just far too many for training and matches. Some players did drop out but it was still too many players. The attendance rate was 77% for the season. So if I wanted 12 players at training and there’s a 77% attendance rate then it works out that I need 15.6 players. So the 15-16 players work out for next season.
Employing Unusual Tactics
The second part of my coaching plan is slowly changing the team to get the best out of them (i.e. maximising their strengths). Since every team is different, it can mean employing unusual tactics.
Put Less Risk on the Serve (Code: Just Serve In!)I found that we made too many service errors without enough aces. When I analysed the stats deeper, I found that even when the opposition had a perfect, positive or neutral pass, we were still winning the rally 51-52% of the time (see chart below). So if we just put the serve in, we were more likely to win the rally regardless of the quality of serve. Even if it is a small percentage, over the course of the set and match, the house will always win. This was in contrast to Flaming Six Coyotes, where I had a great serving team (more aces than errors) so I went into it and asked the team to serve tough.
Starting the Setter in Zone 4 For Serve and Zone 5 For ReceiveAfter I wrote the blog post about should you start the setter at 1 (see link), I found that I tend to start the setter in my worst point-scoring rotations because I was putting too much value on starting the best attacker in zone 4 or the best server in zone 1. So I decided to simply start the setter in the best point-scoring rotation. As the stats rolled in, I was surprised that our best point-scoring rotation was the setter in position 4. After some deeper analysis, I found that I could start the setter at 5 when receiving because it was actually our highest point-scoring rotation when breaking it down to whether we were serving or receiving. It was just that serving when the setter is at 5 was pretty bad that it dragged the overall setter at 5 percentage down. It was unexpected that those were our best starting rotations as you would expect them to be the worst generally.
Less Emphasis on Tipping I found that tipping can be highly effective but undervalued in volleyball, especially in the women’s game and in lower level volleyball (see link). I didn’t have any evidence that tipping is effective in the men’s game at lower level volleyball but I coached it anyway. Based on the stats, I found that my team was not good at tipping (8% hitting efficiency) and it was just best to go hard attacks (23% hitting efficiency). I did talk about strategic tipping to take out the front row attacker in attack but that was it.
Less Emphasis on Free Ball SituationsI wrote that free ball situations is an area where we could train more (see link). Depending on where you place the free ball (see link) and the technique used (see link), we can possibly gain some extra points and efficiency this way. When I coached this in practice, while I saw some results (my libero was able to score 3 free ball points this season), the training and emphasis meant players would put more free balls over rather than being aggressive and attacking the ball. I want my teams to be aggressive in attack, since most points are scored via the attack, and free ball training having the opposite effect so I stopped coaching free ball situations.
Using the Opposite in Out of System/ Setter-Out Situations I had a team where both my opposites were pretty good setters. I thought that we could the opposite, rather than the libero, in setter-out situations because then we could still use the middle. We practiced it and try it in a match but it didn’t work. The theory was there and it could possibly work with more practice but I didn’t want to spend training time on something that may never work. So I abandoned that idea.
Next Season
I am looking forward to next season being in Premier South. There will be three scholarship teams in the division and it’s going to be tough playing against them. My goal right now is:
Be the best team outside the scholarship teams, i.e. fourth place
Get at least one win off one of the scholarship teams
Go past the first round of the BUCS Championships
We will see if these are reasonable goals.
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