"All in..."

Arizona Sidelines sat down with ASU head coach Jason Watson this week. On the docket was Erica Wilson, the Sun Devil's outside hitter who played middle her first three years at ASU. Jason tells how he and his staff went about the change and why it worked. "We don't get to the NCAA tournament, we don't get 20 wins if Erica is not on the left."- J. Watson 

At the end of the 2011 season, we were creating all these point scoring opportunities but we couldn't score points. In looking around, here is the most physical kid that we have. She’s pretty dynamic, clearly athletic enough, so let’s move her. I really didn't discuss it with my staff. I just kind of rolled in to the start of the spring and said, “We’re moving Erica to the left side.”

So first week in the spring, “Hey Erica, guess what, you’re now a left side. I hope you’re okay with that,” and she was like, "Yea, let’s do it!" And part of it was, when we sat down and talked with her, there wasn't too much of a debate going on, we've got to be all in on this. There are going to be days when this is a really, really good idea and there’s going to be days when we look at each other and say what the heck are we doing here? We can’t be like that. You are now a left side and there is no going back. So we've got to be all in. This isn't a case of, let’s HOPE it works out. There is no option, this has to work out. We did that because we didn't want to be straddling this fence of uncertainty so I just felt it was easy for all of us if we just said from the get-go Erica is a left side. There is no further discussion. Let’s go, Erica is in on this.You know, at the time we’re reading all this stuff about how it’s okay for kids to make errors because they’re getting better so we shared that with Erica; if you’re not making mistakes, you aren't getting better. So off we go.

The first couple of weeks we’re doing it, we’re like WOW, she’s really, really good. And I think the first couple of weeks it’s like the honeymoon and life is great. Then we get into the dog days of spring and all of a sudden this is getting a little harder and this is different and our setter went down so now somebody else is setting and so the location of the sets is different and all of this stuff is different and it gets harder. And it was brilliant! It turns out it’s hard being a left side and turns out you get lots of sets. Turns out you get set when the game’s not going well and she got a lot of experience dealing with that in the spring. So it was good.

I think that was part of her buy in. She’s going to get all the sets and here we are, 15-14 playing Cal on the road and who do we set to win the match? We set Erica and she wins the match. In Washington, we’re up in game four and who do we set to the win the match? We set Erica and Erica gets a kill. I think she likes that. It’s her competitive nature, I think that’s one of the things she wanted to do.

We knew going in that the highs were going to be high and the lows were going to be low and we knew she was behind the curve when it came to managing the game. We knew that and we were okay with that and I think you have to be okay with that. The last thing she needs is for us to be yelling at her about stuff; "Hey, don’t hit it out…" Well thanks coach. She knew that. What we had to do was give her the tools to get better at some stuff and we were playing catch up, we all knew that. There were some days where you were like, oh boy…ooooohhh boy. And then there were some moments where you were like, YA! We don’t get to the NCAA tournament, we don’t get 20 wins if Erica is not on the left.  Last year, we had 9 wins with outside hitters with a better resume and who have played the position longer than Erica. I think that says volumes for what she’s done. It’s a pretty nice story.

If you would like to read the entire interview with Jason Watson as he discusses his teams rise this season, managing practices and the definition of success, e mail outreach and we'll send you the entire interview.