The Competitive Cauldron...Jersey Style

It started as a conversation at dinner a few nights before her DePaul Catholic Spartans were to take the court for their summer camp. Coach Coleen Henry, diving into her 13^th year at the helm of the New Jersey high school volleyball program was engaged in the discussion about the competitive cauldron, the now infamous coaching tool developed by North Carolina Women’s Soccer coach Anson Dorrance, used in varying degrees in so many sports including volleyball. She wasn’t aware that there was a character side to the Cauldron and this intrigued her.

Henry is an analytical thinker, an outside the box coach who sees certain skills and traits in players, no matter their size or volleyball tradition and puts them in a position on the court where she thinks they will succeed. She has had much success in the past few seasons despite a dwindling student body base of which to gather her team. She is upbeat, positive and always seems to get the best out of her athletes.

Her mind clicking, she listened as to how certain soccer traits were shuffled in with character traits that would help the team learn, enjoy and sustain cohesiveness. Before dessert had come she had a plan.

The first day of camp, she asked her varsity girls to list as many characteristics as they wanted about what makes a good teammate but wanted them to highlight or number the top five on the page. She collected them after the first camp day and went to work.

Of the nearly 100 traits and characteristics she got from her 12 girls, she started to whittle. Which words were the same on each sheet, which words meant the same things. She and her coaching staff sat down and organized the athlete’s responses into five larger categories and again, using the athlete’s words, described each category.

Sportsmanship: Respect, humility, positivity, treat other teams and teammates with respect, no cursing, respect officials and coaches, attentive during team talks.

Grit: Hustle, competitiveness, passion and fire, accountability, perseverance, mental toughness, determination, works hard, never quits.

Communication: Positive, listens well, vocal on the floor, off court communication, addresses team issues before they become bigger.

Adaptability: Coachable, open to change and correction, flexible, overcomes obstacles, does what is asked of them, proactive and shows initiative.

Team-First: Supportive, committed, shows leadership, selfless, shows preparedness, encourages teammates, cheers, understands that the team is only as strong as its weakest link.

That part done, Coleen honed the scoring system she had heard from the dinner discussion. Everyone must be ranked in each category from a 0-5 (5 being the best) in increments of .5. The player that showed the least amount of that particular characteristic had to receive a 0 while the person that showed the most got a 5. The rankings were placed in the middle between those two. You also could not rank yourself and yes, the coaches had input as well.

Henry liked this idea to ensure that players wouldn’t take the safe way out and just vote everyone a 5 or a 3. Yes, this could be uncomfortable for the players as she noted, especially at a Catholic High School, girls are less likely to call each other out. This was why she liked the idea so much. It was a group ranking by each player’s peers and coaches and the score would be a genuine reflection of how each player was perceived.

She built the sheet with each characteristic and their description on it, with the scoring rules at the top, and listed each player’s name with a place to put the score. The sheets were handed out to the players and they brought them back the next morning.

In the meantime, Coleen went to wordle.net. It’s a site where you can take a group of words and list them and Wordle will take the list and based on which words come up more often, build a piece of art that the creator can adjust with different colors, fonts, placements, etc. Using her team’s list of traits, she came up with a Wordle picture that showed the girls which teammate traits were most important to them. This will be used for t shirts later on in the season.

Once the sheets came back, they were tallied. Every players score from every other player and coaches by category and then a composite score and ranking for the total. They were handed out right before lunch on the last day of camp and she asked each of the girls to come see her for their sheet and a quick chat.

This is where Henry is masterful. Some players received scores under a 1.0 but as she told them, this is a tool, and if this is the perception the team has of you, it’s up to you to change it. One by one, the players came up and got feedback from her, some with higher scores were still given things to work on. Those with lower scores were told what they needed to do to improve and how she expected to see improvement in the scores the next time she gave the team this cauldron. She was diplomatic, positive and sold them on the idea of it being a tool and not a popularity contest.

Henry did say there were very few surprises to her. The girls that she thought would score highest did and the ones that weren’t as communicative or less engaged in the process of what the team was doing were lower. But this was a chance for the athletes to be judged by each other and she liked what she saw.

Coleen says she’ll do another one after all of her scrimmages in a few weeks and another one after her first tournament or two. She understands it’s an experiment but in order to continue to move the program forward, she is willing to take some chances….outside the box.