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What I Learned Coaching and Scheduling All Nations 2025
All Nations 2025
All Nations 2025 was the biggest yet again. We had the largest number of total teams at 62 (the last two years had 61 teams). We also had the most players ever, with around 750 players participating. Player registration was crazy. Player registration over the past couple of years would take 1-2 months. Last year, it took 3 weeks to fill up. This year, it took 24 hours to fill up 700 player registrations! When the waiting list registration opened up, it took 30 minutes to fill up 200 spots! I’m told there were also full teams waiting to get in, too!
I love being a part of the All Nations tournament. You get to catch up with friends you haven’t seen in a minute, it’s a fun coaching challenge since you don’t know the team and you have to quickly figure out how to get the best out of everybody, and I love the vibes when there’s a great volleyball match and the sidelines are jam packed with people watching. I always say the finals are the best in England – most attended and loudest! Watch the finals below (go to 41:22 for a great rally).
So, what are my reflections on scheduling and coaching at the tournament?
Scheduling Reflection
I just realised this is the 11th year scheduling the All Nations tournament. Read my previous reflections on scheduling the tournament: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015.
The Schedule Went Pretty Smoothly The schedule went pretty smoothly in the end. All matches were completed on days 1 and 2. Lots of courts finished early on day 2, which did hurt the heart a little because more matches could’ve been played. However, the organiser did like the slightly earlier finish on Sunday. I knew the bottleneck would be day 3 as we needed to complete 88 matches, and it would be the knockout rounds, i.e. closer matches. However, there were only 4 overrun matches, so it wasn’t bad. Thankfully, it was easy to incorporate into day 4’s schedule. All 4 matches were men’s matches, so I just put it in front of the 4 courts that had men’s matches.
Seeding the Teams After a complaint about how I seeded the teams last year, I decided it would be easier all around to seed the teams based on their placings from last year. Think of it like protected rankings. I did bump a team up or down if a team was clearly better (I bumped Russians up to first seeds as they were the strongest team on paper) or to avoid certain teams being in the same pool (I bumped Italy Red to third seed to avoid Italy Red and Italy Blue being in the same pool). For new teams, I included them after all returning teams were seeded. I would generally order them by region (European teams first, then Asian teams, then the rest) so each pool had a balance of teams by region.
Schedule by Pools Being Played on One Court I went back to scheduling pools being played on one court, rather than scheduling matches by rounds of pool matches over several courts. It was easier to avoid teams refereeing their own country’s matches, due to the intermingled pool schedule. Also, I realised that scheduling matches by pool rounds guaranteed long days, as there would be 2-4 hours between matches. By scheduling pool matches being played on one court, some teams may have some shorter days, which I think teams would appreciate.
A Maximum of 306 Matches I realised that 306 matches were played in 2024 and 2023, with some matches needing to be cancelled. That meant whatever tournament format I had, 306 matches was going to be the maximum. If 62 teams played 10 matches each, that is a total of 310 matches. It meant that some teams had to play 9 matches. The way the tournament format was, I had 304 matches scheduled, with most teams playing 10 matches and some only playing 9 matches.
Schedule Formatted for Google Sheets Since I was going to post the schedule on Google Sheets, I just formatted the schedule so I didn’t need to do any formatting when I copied and pasted it from Excel to Google Sheets.
Check that the Teams are Not Playing First and Last I do look at each team’s schedule when I assign refereeing duties. However, I specifically check for teams playing the first (08:30) and last (18:30) match of the day. I had at least one team that played first and last. It isn’t too nice to have. So, check and make changes to avoid that if I can.
My Schedule Being Checked The organiser did have my schedule checked by somebody else. It did shock me initially, but if there were things that could make the schedule better, then a good idea is a good idea. I did make some adjustments based on their recommendations.
Coaching Reflection
I coached Team USA again this year. We finished 7th overall. Read my other All Nations coaching reflections: 2024, 2022, 2016, and 2015.
Coaching a New Team of Players I only had one returning player from last year’s championship-winning team. It meant I had a brand new team. I had four liberos and one outside hitter, so how do you fit them in? I also had two new players for the second weekend, so how does that change the balance of things? It was a fun challenge to figure out how to find a system that maximises the strengths of the players so that we play optimally. I also didn’t have stats to help me in that regard. I probably only found the best line-up right at the end. If I had found that line-up earlier, we could have maybe finished in the top four or even made the final. But every All Nations coach has that challenge, so it’s not unique to me.
Talking to the Players MoreBrian Singh said that one thing you can do to become a better coach is to simply talk to your players more. This is a definite weakness of mine, so I made the effort to chat to players individually. It was mostly about their thoughts on the last match. It wasn’t deep conversations, but I thought it was good to get to know players just a little better than I would have previously done.
Recruiting Players I don’t really recruit players for Team USA. However, watching the vibrant finals again makes me want to do the work so I can get to another final. On the other hand, if I do a great job of recruiting the best USA players in England, the team would be too overpowered that winning would be a formality (although I’m sure other teams would disagree). Where’s the fun in that?
Coaching Record 2025 | USA, 7th Place 2024 | USA, CHAMPIONS!!! 2023 | USA, Joint 5th Place (Coached the first weekend only) 2022 | USA, 2nd Place 2021 | No team coached due to being in Essex 2020 | Cancelled due to COVID 2019 | USA, Division III Champions (17th Place Overall) 2018 | Turkey, somewhere between 17th to 23rd 2017 | No team coached due to work at Wagamama 2016 | Germany, Joint 5th Place Overall 2015 | Asia, 11th overall 2014 | Asia Women | 21st Place (Second from bottom); Asia Men | Place unknown 2013 | No team coached – probably because I just had the most intense two weeks of my life 2012 | No team coached due to doing the All Nations Volleyball Statistics 2011 | Asia, Place unknown 2010 | Asia, Place unknown
Final Thoughts
It was another great All Nations. The schedule went pretty smoothly, so I’m happy with that. I wish I had got USA to the final, but 7th place is decent. Now, onto the All Nations Juniors schedule.
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