"The 5 Characteristics of Recruits..."

Arizona Sidelines sent out an e mail to roughly 75 college volleyball coaches, from community colleges all the way to the top D1 schools in the country asking them this question:

“What are the 5 characteristics you are looking for in your recruits today?”

Here's what we got!

What you see is a Wordle, a fun way to emphasize the words most often used in a speech or writings or normal conversation. For our purposes, we plugged in the answers from the Coaches and on occasion, in order to make the Wordle more emphatic, changed some of their wording to fit the wording of their peers.

For example, talent, athleticism, athlete and athletic ability were all labeled Athletic Talent in the Wordle to make the case of its importance. In fact, Athletic Talent was the number one characteristic of the coaches, coming up 10 times. Competitiveness came up in 8 responses, Good Teammate, Academics and Work Ethic in 6, Character, Technical Training and Coachable in 5 each.

Former USA Men’s Olympic Coach Marv Dunphy, now the Men’s coach at Pepperdine put his five down this way:

Drive- I can fix just about everything else but if an athlete is not driven, good luck!

Toughness- There is a difference between competitiveness and toughness, I like tough kids.

Can they be on the court when we compete for a National Championship?

The ability to read the game.

Character- I can have one knucklehead in the program, but not two!

Kevin Hambly, the head coach at the University of Illinois and former USA Assistant Women’s National team coach listed his five:

Have the athletic ability to compete at this level

Play hard

Good Teammate

Good People

Do I want to coach them?

Gonzaga Head Coach Dave Gantt sent back this:

Academic Preparation

Volleyball I.Q.

Work Ethic

Athleticism

Growth Quotient- How much room between the current level of play and the projected level of play?

So what can we, as Junior coaches, take from this?

Athletic talent is sometimes there, sometimes not. We can’t coach a kid to be 6-2 or have the eye hand coordination of a magician at the ripe age of 13. That usually comes with the package. Technical training is an absolute for a coach as is the best and most efficient way to train it.

But competitiveness; Do we foster a practice that helps bring that out of players? Do we reward our athletes for their work ethic and being a good teammate or do we turn the other way because those things don’t necessarily lead directly to wins…or do they?

Don’t we owe it to our athletes to focus on good character, being coachable, a solid work ethic and climb on board to praise excellence in academics? Great players that want to play in college will because they are great players, but can “good” players get the opportunities because of their strengths in these other areas?

We owe it to ourselves as coaches and to our athletes to make these things important. The payoff down the road, whether they make a college roster or not, is substantial.

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.

Scraps...

In our continuing effort to inform and update coaching education and resources, please check out the following:

FREE COACHING WORKSHOPS AT ASU

Volleyball coaches in the area are invited to attend free coaching forums with the Arizona State University volleyball staff on August 14 and 21 in Wells Fargo Arena.

Head coach Jason Watson will be offering two coaching forums immediately following a Sun Devil volleyball practice. The team will practice from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. and from 8 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. the coaching staff will talk with attending coaches about the ASU volleyball practice structure and field any questions asked.

The forums are free and open to coaches but students of recruitable age are not permitted to attend.

Workshop Schedule

August 14, Wednesday: 7-8:30 p.m. | Wells Fargo Arena

August 21, Wednesday: 7-8:30 p.m. | Wells Fargo Arena

NEW APP ALLOWS DATAVOLLEY OPTIONS, PARENT HIGHLIGHT MAKER

VolleyVideo is a simpler and cheaper DataVolley for iPads. It allows you to record video of your team or players, or other teams (for scouting reports), and then organizes them by rotation and serve or receive. You can then watch and share these videos in any order, allowing you to, for example, view all plays where your team serve receives in rotation 3. Click here for a quick youtube video describing the application, or search "VolleyVideo" on the app store to get it.

VolleyHighlight is a similar iPad application for parents to create recruiting (highlight) videos of their kids. It allows parents to record videos of their kids and save only the highlights, then sorts these highlights by type (kill, ace, dig, etc...). After a few games, a parent should have enough highlights to send out to any college coach or recruiter. Click here for a 1-minutes youtube video showing the application. 

GREAT NEW MAGAZINE TALKS ABOUT SPORTS ANALYTICS

A great new magazine called "Sports Performance and Tech" is a great way to incorporate new science into your coaching. For the newest edition, click here. 

FIVB OFFERING TECHNICAL VIDEO FROM COMPETITION FOR FREE

During the last few years, our technical and analytical team has created a large amount of videos which contain technical and tactical clips that demonstrate the latest game strategies in modern Volleyball. This technical video gallery contains useful clips which are available to use for coaches, players and National Federations. Clubs, teams and federations can utilize them free of charge.

2012 Men's Olympic Games

http://www.fivb.org/en/technical/olympics/2012/men/

   2012 Women's Olympic Games

    http://www.fivb.org/en/technical/olympics/2012/women/

   2011 Women's Jr. World Championships

   http://www.fivb.org/EN/Technical/junior/women/2011/

·   2011 Men's Jr. World Championships

   http://www.fivb.org/EN/Technical/junior/men/2011/

  

  We at the Region will continue to keep you updated on resources as we get them. In the meantime, let us know if there is anything YOU need from us.

  Contact us at Outreach@azregionvolleyball.org

"Biesh"

The people in our sport…they surprise you, impress you, inspire you.

Meet Biesh.

Her name is Jessie but she’s called Biesh, short for a long last name that fits her awkwardly. She has lavish green eyes and a smile to match and she is a staple in a small community on the Washington-Canada border.

When she was born, Biesh sported funny looking fingers which were attributed to chubby baby hands. “When I was two an extended family member told my parents that my fingers were not normal and talked them into taking me to the doctor.” She remembers.  “That is when they diagnosed me with metachondromatosis.” 

Biesh explains, “Basically I have enchondromas on my fingers. An enchondroma is a benign slow-growing tumor of cartilaginous cells. So my doctors have always told me they are in my joints, but you only notice them on my fingers. I've had a lot of x-rays taken and they are all very gray and blurry because the cartilage kind of takes place of my bone. That is why I break bones so easily.” 

 “When I was young it bothered me that I wasn't ‘normal.’ She remembers.  “I would cry about it because kids made fun of me all the time. My friends tell me now that they first noticed in a basketball huddle in the 4th grade and a couple kids went home and told their parents that I had cancer. I think that my first broken finger playing fast pitch softball in the 7th grade was a big changing time for me. It's when I began to be scared about my athletic future. But, at the same time people started to realize that playing with my condition was actually tough and had respect for me.”

 

 

Despite the obvious issues related with just everyday living let alone playing a sport, Jessie loved volleyball. “I started playing in about 4th grade in just a small local league then played for my middle school in 7th and 8th grade. I was an outside hitter during those 2 years and didn't have any problems besides my hands being sore. Then I was on a club team in 8th grade and still played outside hitter then as well. That's when volleyball really became my favorite sport.”

The summer going into her freshman year Biesh went to the Volleyball Festival in Reno with the high school girls because they took two teams. “The Varsity coach became pretty interested in 4 of us incoming freshman and we all ended up playing together on JV our freshman year. She saw me as a passer, but I still played outside hitter on JV because that's where they needed me. There was a very talented group of senior girls my sophomore year. There was a really good senior libero, so I was a DS and her back up if anything happened. She got in a car accident on a game day so that was the only game that year that I actually played libero. Practicing with those girls really made me a better player though.”

She worked hard the summer of her junior season to be the starting libero as her coach had been grooming her for that the past two seasons. But a coaching change forced Jessie to see the sport differently.  “I had a big attitude with the new coach because she was extremely different from my old coach. I played DS my junior year and the coach didn't even have me serve, so I played 2 rotations in the back row. I seriously became a different person from being so frustrated and after our district game the new coach and I had a big argument which consisted of her yelling at me on the bus while everyone else was in a Jamba Juice. After that moment, I decided that I didn't care what she thought or said but that I was just going to prove to her that I deserve the libero spot.”

The team earned a bid to state and while she played well, the team was swept in two straight matches and went home. That spring, her old coach put together a club team that lit a fire under her again. She wrote a note to her new coach apologizing for her poor attitude. “I also told her that I knew I could earn the libero spot and I just wanted her to give me a chance. She and I were perfectly fine after that. I was the libero and to make sure I didn't get injured that season I bought weight lifting gloves and would also tape my fingers underneath the gloves.”

 

 

“During a little tournament, a fluke play happened and the ball shanked off of my team mate right into my left ring finger and it broke. I was devastated just because I wasn't expecting to get injured that whole season, and we also had our biggest rivalry game 3 days later. The day before the big game I tried to pass back and forth with a friend and it just wasn't going to work out. Coach had told me that if at any time I decided I could play then I would play, but I didn't want to push it.”

 “But game day came and at team dinner I decided I was going to tape it up and play. So I did. My finger was basically a ball of tape and I took myself out after the 3rd game because we were on fire and I knew the team could finish it off without me needing to stay in. It really meant a lot to me to play in that game.” Biesh says smiling. “We ended up getting 3rd in league and districts and we were on to state. We lost our first match, and won the next 3 games to get 5th place. I was voted the Most Inspirational award and the Captain award.”

 Because of her condition, Biesh decided to hang it up as a player. That didn’t last long however. “A couple of months later I knew I couldn't stop playing. My setter and I sent out film to quite a few coaches and a local College coach was extremely interested in us. We ended up committing there and in the first 2 weeks of conditioning and practice I injured my shoulder really bad and 2 weeks later got mono.”

Biesh also was being coached by coaches that were, in her words, so up and down. “The head coach would only swear at us in timeouts and tell us how embarrassing we were.” She says dejectedly. “That was a terrible experience. I finally healed up and played in the final Community College tournament and played well. We tied for 7^th but I promised myself I wouldn't go one more year of being ‘coached’ by that terrible lady, so I moved back home.” Biesh is now the JV coach at her former high school, sharing the better coaching experiences she has had along her journey and when watching her in action, hitting all the high notes.

Biesh explains the love of the game and her competitiveness kept her pushing forward against a high tide of pain and adversity. “There was no way I was going to quit. It killed me to watch when I had broken bones, so I would just play as soon as I felt I could. I was extremely close with all of my teammates so they would encourage me and helped me work through all my ups and downs with injuries. It was extremely hard though; every time I got injured I would just cry at home because it was SO frustrating. My parents were the best at encouraging me during those times. Our community here is awesome as well. I had so many people; my basketball coach, teachers, parents, younger girls and more, that always could bring me up when I was down about it.”

“One of the great pieces of advice that really sticks out to me is a conversation I had with my basketball coach. I was having a hard week and told him I didn't understand what was going on with the way I was playing. He told me that everyone has their bad days but that it's still trying your best and pushing through those times that will make you better. He always related basketball to real life and so he went on to say that I will have to do that in my future with school, jobs, family and much more.”

She is realizing how true that advice was. “I have to be extremely careful when I am playing sports or doing anything with my hands because my fingers break so easily. So basically doing everything I love; volleyball, Crossfit, other sports, I feel like I am taking a risk which is really frustrating. They also get very sore, so it affects me when I am using my hands a lot because the next day I will feel like I can barely move my fingers. That can get hard with work, but I just have to stretch out my fingers a lot so they aren't as stiff.

“The day I played libero in our rivalry match with my broken finger is when I came to grips with the fact I can’t change my condition so I will just have to deal with it the best I can. Now I am absolutely not bothered by having this condition. It's something I can't let affect me negatively. I keep learning more about it as well, so that helps with understanding what I need to do in my future to make it the best it can be.”

When you walk into her high school gym, the place where she now is guiding younger players toward their own dreams and goals, there is a color picture on the wall next to football players and other sports illuminati of the school. At the end, the last picture you see is of Biesh; pony tail defying gravity, green eyes hypnotized on an incoming serve, and a pair of large black gloves encasing 10 fingers taped to discomfort.  

Above the picture simply says, ‘Biesh.’

The people in our sport…they surprise you, impress you, inspire you.

 

 

Losing sight of the shore.......

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. - Andre Gide

 Change: some people welcome it, most are annoyed or terrified by it. In a player’s parlance, being taken out of our comfort zones. We’ll ask a player to change their footwork or hold their hands differently in serve receive but do we ask the same of ourselves as coaches?

 If you have taken and IMPACT or a CAP class in the last few years, you know that USA Volleyball’s stance on stretching before practice is DON’T! It’s a waste of valuable court time and according to over 300+ studies, could actually impair performance of your athletes. This isn’t because USAV doesn’t like stretching nor had a bad experience in a yoga class; it’s based on scientific data and analysis.  Yet go into a gym and watch a practice and more times than not, what will you see?

 As coaches, we need to embrace change. Sometimes we will change a drill, a way to practice, or a player in a different position and sometimes it works and of course, sometimes it doesn’t. But the question is, are you willing to try?

 Michael Andrew is a 14 year old swimming sensation who stands at 6-4 and 178 pounds. He has broken 32 national age group records and is working toward an Olympic berth in the coming years with his father as his coach. That in itself can sometimes be a difference maker but Andrew has been training using a new theory of training called Ultra Short Raced Paced Training (USRPT) developed by Dr. Brent Rushall at San Diego State.

 In his training, he says goodbye to traditional USA Swimming practice lore of massive yardage and uses shorter training sessions of sprints, usually none more than 50 meters at an intense pace. The theory is that the method produces far less lactic acid that makes muscles ache and shut down allowing more intense short training bursts.

 Two words often slapped together are Science and Fiction but as sports goes further into how to make athletes better, stronger and faster, and the better ways to coach these athletes, the fiction becomes less so. Many coaches are looking to find an edge over their competition by looking toward science through research papers and utilizing their physiology and kinesiology departments at their schools.

 Aaron Nelson is going into his 21^st with the Phoenix Suns and the last 13 as their head trainer. He has used individual approaches with athletes and cutting edge science to help make the Suns athletic staff one of if not the most recognized in the NBA.

 Nelson has implemented a glassed in room full of cardio machines that simulates 10,000 feet above sea level. He has also used and gotten results from an anti gravity treadmill, which allows players to rehabilitate from injury or surgery with 80% of their body weight removed.

He also now uses an on-site cryosauna which uses blasts of nitrogen gas every 30 seconds for 2 and a half minutes to bring the temperature down to 300 degrees below zero which promotes healing and improves energy. “The science is bio-mechanical.” Nelson said recently in the spring 2013 edition of Thrive magazine. “At 180 degrees below zero, the body changes from frostbit to survival mode- the brain thinks the body is going to die, so it sends all the blood back to the core where the vital organs are in an effort to keep the body functioning. You get a huge amount of oxygenated blood in the core and once you get out of the cryosauna, it goes back out into the peripheral limbs so it’s a flushing of the system.” Not the standard ice bags and cold plunge for the Suns with Nelson at the helm.

 Atul  Gawande in his amazing book about the medical field called ‘Better’ talks about the importance of change. “Look for the opportunity to change.” He says. I am not saying you should embrace every new trend that comes along. But be willing to recognize the inadequacies in what you do and seek out the solutions. As successful as medicine is, it remains replete with uncertainties and failure. This is what makes it human, at times painful and also so worthwhile.”

 As coaches, we live in that world: sometimes painful but hopefully worthwhile. Continue looking to other coaches, books and writings and conversations with athletes and staff that are NOT volleyball coaches.

 Changing the way coaches think about change….we can all do better.

 

 

Jess

Jessica is 16 years old. In many ways she is a lot like other 16 year old girls. She likes country music, talks a lot with her friends and she loves playing volleyball.

Jess is an outside hitter for her high school team set a small rural community in south eastern Washington. Her family owns orchards; thousands of cherry trees….thousands! Jess is one of 11 children and her summer days are spent playing and practicing one of her sports; softball, basketball and volleyball, then configuring rides and schedules of friends and families to make getting through the day most efficiently.

With a strawberry blonde pony tail that sways behind her every step, Jess is relaxed and comfortable on the court. At 5-9, she isn’t overly imposing and her build does suggest someone who plays several sports but she has the ability to put a ball down. In one drill, she passes 5 perfect 3’s in serve receive. When the coach calls the team’s attention to the accomplishment after the drill, Jess is visibly embarrassed. She is humility defined.

Jess is 16 years old and has a checking account. She has had to pay for the volleyball camp she is attending. She has to pay for the college camp she wants to go to in a few weeks. She earns her money working for her family in the orchards. Camp ends at 2 p.m. on a Thursday and Jess will go back to her family orchards and begin to pick sweet cherries, by hand, off the trees until her basketball game at 7 that night. She will get up early Friday and spend the day and the weekend picking fruit and plotting her schedule for the upcoming slate of games ahead.

Jess’s high school team just won the Washington State High School 1A softball championship. At a party celebrating this fete, she and her team mates are choosing championship rings. Jess’s ring is modest because if she wants it, she will pay for it herself and also because Jess herself is modest in her abilities and accomplishments.

As humble in life as Jess is, she is relentless on the court. Quiet but focused and coachable; she wants to get better for her team. She is usually on the outside, but the coach also throws her into the back row, and then on the right side. Jess nods and goes, gives it everything she has and plays at 100% the entire time. At the end of camp, she is soaked in sweat and tired.

Jessica talks to her teammates in the hallway at lunch. She never has a bad thing to say about anyone and never complains about anything. She appreciates the help she receives from her friends and family and her teams and is always first with a please and a thank you.

Jessica has a new coach this season. Her coach is someone she has known for a long time; the upshot of a small town existence. Jess listens to her coach’s feedback and makes changes, keeping her mind open. She wants to get better for her team.

Jess is 16 years old. She has just finished a drill where she hit 11 balls from the outside, 6 of which were for kills and no errors. She had the highest hitting percentage of any of the hitters in the drill yet she seems uncomfortable. After the final few hitters finish, she walks up to the coach and tells her she missed a hitting error. She wasn’t perfect, her hitting percentage in the drill needed to be adjusted lower.

The coach, knowing that it was important to Jess, made the adjustment on the white board in front of the team.

Jess almost seemed relieved. She finished practice with the same intensity and fire as when she first stepped on the court. She takes off her shoes after practice, shoes she paid for herself, and gathers the three team mates she will give rides home to. Then she gets home, changes and heads out into the trees. She’ll help her family in their business, help her checking account along the way and further solidify a work ethic that makes coaches hearts race.

Jess is 16 years old. She wants to get better for her teammates.

Athletes aren’t always able to be picked out of a crowd but you sure know them when you meet them.

Coaching Your Own: Blurring the Lines

It was loud and venomous.

The gym was silent and you could hear the coach unleashing his anger, his disappointment, his sense of being betrayed by one of his own on his 18 year old opposite. The rest of the team stood huddled together, far away while he railed on his right side, the one who had just missed her blocking assignment after just being reminded about it moments before.

Her father sat in the stands, dying inside: dying because he wanted to be there for his daughter, to help her. He wanted to stop this coach from making his daughter feel badly, from making her feel worse.

But he didn’t. He knew. He was a coach; a coach and a father, THE father. He knew from experience, from seeing other parents first hand, that she had to fail once in a while, he had to let her fail and with failing comes the consequences. It was part of being an athlete, part of being a grown up. It was also part of being a parent.

So he said nothing, did nothing, dying inside.

After the match, he hugged her. They had spent a tumultuous half season together the winter before…together, on the same club team.

He questioned himself often coaching his own flesh and blood: was he too hard on her because she was his daughter? Too lenient? After a few months, it was obvious to both of them that he couldn’t find the right balance and after she accepted a scholarship to a local college, they both sat down and agreed that the best thing for her was to go work out with her college team the rest of the season. It was hard for the coach; he hadn’t been able to find the right mixture of coach and dad.

But he knew it was what was best for her, and as a father, he was more than okay with that.

The blurred lines of coaching your own child come with a price. Sometimes it’s a broken relationship, sometimes it’s a sport a parent holds so dear to them that they eventually force their kids away from it Either way, it’s a delicate balance that can be a great experience, a nightmare but usually something in between.

Barry Goldberg is the head coach for American University in Washington D.C. He has been at the helm of the program for a quarter century. Barry is also a club director and has seen the best and worst of parents but knows when it comes to your own kids, it’s a different ball game.

“My kid plays lacrosse” Goldberg muses. ”He sits the bench half the time and I’m thinking, about the coach: are you crazy? The kid is the best player on the field.” Goldberg chuckles. “It’s not like I don’t get it, I just have to make sure that my facts are correct. Now it’s completely my opinion that he’s the best player on the field, it’s not my fact. It’s the coach’s opinion too and that’s what counts.”

The USAV Director of Sport Development, John Kessel has played and coached the game of volleyball at every level. He also has a son playing volleyball at Princeton and a daughter playing at Bowdoin College in Maine. He has raised both as a single Dad and has coached both of them at one point or another in their careers.

“In high school, I coached Cody. Now that he’s in college, I just talk to his coach about things in general. The same is true for Mac. In high school, I would just talk in general. I did not really think that the coach was making bad decisions, as I don't train them 5 days a week, he did.”

Kessel wrote a terrific blog on this exact subject which you are encouraged to read.

http://www.teamusa.org/USA-Volleyball/Features/2011/September/30/To-My-Amazing-Daughter-Performance-IS-Variable.aspx

Club Director Goldberg understands parental frustration because he, like so many other coaches, has it with his own children. So he understands what drives Parents to their behavior at times.

“Two days ago I had a parent in my office saying she has invested all this money into getting her daughter a scholarship.  Well, there’s no way this kid is going to get a scholarship. She’s a little club player and if she makes her high school team we’re going to be really happy. I told this mother she was playing for the wrong reason; that we are here to really just educate your daughter in the sport and if she gets something, great. I told her, ‘Your daughter might struggle to get something; I can see the level of where she’s at right now; it’s going to be difficult for her. You should be preparing to cover her schooling. If something comes up, tremendous! Don’t invest in this to get your kid a scholarship and don’t put pressure on your kid who’s thinking I’ve got to save the family by getting a scholarship. She’s going to pull her hair out, she’ll go crazy.’ She walked out of here angry with me, I’m sure.”

“It’s parents, it’s kids. I’m blind with my kid” Barry confesses. ”I’m blind with my wife, I’m blind with the things so, so important to me. It’s hard, for all of us.”

“Parenting, coaching, and teaching  others, but perhaps most importantly, yourself, sometimes known as learning,  all follow the same principles” Kessel contends.” Since I love to compete, on the court when things are in my control, I know what I can control in learning, but that learning includes a lot of errors along the way. When I take it to the other roles off the court, the principles don't change, just the methods. I teach still, or just celebrate watching, as I love to watch people I care about, play this wonderful, lifetime, team game.”