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Using Performance Analysis to Your Advantage | Wales Boys School Team
I was asked back in May to be the Head Coach the Wales Boys Team for the Sainsbury’s School Games*. Of course I accepted because it was going to be a great coaching opportunity and something good for my CV. The whole experience as fantastic and I learnt many things as a coach. You can read a report of the event in the Volleyball Wales’s website but since this a performance analysis blog, what did I learn in relation to performance analysis?
Make the change if it is backed up by the performance analysis. This was the biggest thing I learnt. As the Head Coach, I could use performance analysis to make real informed changes to enhance performance. Before the tournament, I had two setters who I felt were fairly even in skill level in setting and attacking (I did not have any match data to make definitive choice). Because of this, I decided to use a 6-2 system. Basically, the setter in the back row sets the ball so there are always 3 front row attackers. I used the week long training camp to train this system.
In the tournament itself, we lost all three of our matches on day one. I statted all three matches, compiled it all and found setter one had better setting statistics than setter two (assist pct: 20% vs 11%). In addition, setter two had much more attack attempts than setter one (39 vs 8 – the second most on the team) which inferred that setter one had a better distribution of sets. Another reason setter two had more attack attempts was, upon watching the video, he would still attack bad sets by doing a standing jump and swinging away. All of this pointed to the fact that I should be using a 5-1 system. It utlised the better setter and the naturally aggressive attacker. The only disadvantage of changing system was we did not train for this in the training camp and it could potentially disrupt the team. It was one of those decisions that could make me look like a genius or an absolute idiot. I quickly decided to put my money where my mouth is and go with the change. I’m glad I did it because although we still lost the match, I felt we played our best match in the tournament at that point. It was also reflected in the live statistics. I stuck with the 5-1 system and we went on go play even better in our final match, which decided 5th and 6th place. We narrowly lost the third set 13-15 to Northern Ireland.
Scout the opposition. We played all five teams in the tournament so in our final 5th vs 6th place match against Northern Ireland we already had a match to do some scouting. I used the match statistics and found they only had two real effective hitters. Watching their attack attempts on video showed one of the hitters mostly hits power cross-court and the occasionally rolls his shot down the line. The other hitter hits power down the line and hits/ rolls a sharp angled shot. I told the team this and informed them how to block and defend this. I would remind them too during the match to see who is attacking and adjust accordingly. Although I don’t have the statistics to back it up, it did look like they picked up a couple more balls as a result of this strategy.
“Stat rust” is a real thing. It’s basically a term I made up just now to say if you haven’t statted for a while, you get really rusty at statting. It didn’t help I didn’t know the opposition players and the buttons on my laptop is messed up bad. It’s bad that when I press “0”, it will come as “/0”. 7You will think I can just use the number pad but that comes out as “0-“. The “7” button will come as “”. That is, it actions the arrow up before the number “7”. If I press “y”, it will actually go action the arrow left before inserting the “y”. So writing “my” will come as “ym”. Pressing “z” is a bizarre one. When I’m on Chrome, it will bring out the Chrome Help page and in Word, it will hide the toolbar. This is especially annoying if I use the shortcut key for “undo”. I won’t even go into what my arrow keys are doing! There are a few other buttons that does mad things like that.
So it was a fantastic experience coaching at the Sainsbury’s School Games and I hope I can do it again for next year.
* The Sainsbury’s 2014 School Games is a multi-sport event for the UK’s elite young athletes of school age.
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