I think it was my fifth or sixth year as the head coach of my high school team. We were pretty successful, a few seasons of 30-plus wins, a few sectional championships, and a visit to semi-state losing to the eventual state champion. Let's just say we were making positive impressions throughout those years.
Because one of my players was good enough to gain a scholarship to The University of Miami of Ohio, I conned Coach Condit into letting me work a few of her summer camps. Great experience. Great food. Great people. Great kids.
Living conditions ... not so good.
Because I was the only guy working the camp, I was put on the third floor in a corner room of an old dorm. Does the phrase “not an air conditioned dorm” help you understand my misery? How about if I add “heat wave?” Does that help? I had never been so effing hot.
That week was so hot I spent every free moment in the hockey arena. That’s when I learned how they put the ice down. Did you know the ice is really thin? I did not. But I digress from my digression ...
It was so hot that I slept under a wet towel with a fan blowing full blast on me every night. There were just two tiny windows, so no breeze. It was hot. Damn hot!
Not sure why I shared that with you. It has absolutely nothing to do with the point of this story. But, every word is true, nothing exaggerated.
Sorry for the digression – back to the story ...
I knew this week would give me a great opportunity to learn from some really good coaches. I was hoping to learn new stuff and how to teach the old stuff better. And I did.
To this point in my volleyball life, I had not heard anyone talk about offline passing let alone see anyone teach it. During the sessions with the advanced players it was introduced. I thought it was a new way to receive serve. I was all ears. Instead of playing the ball on her mid-line when passing, the passer would move, pivot, drop her shoulder, and pass the ball outside of her body. The college girls who demonstrated it did very well. The campers took to it well. I liked it.
You need to understand passing was a practiced art in the mid 1980s. If the ball came off your arms with any weird spin, point for the bad guys. The R2 positioned himself back on the passing line. He was responsible for detecting “illegal“ passes. He blew more balls dead than the R1 did. And forget about passing a serve with your hands. No way. You might as well catch it and roll it back to the server.
That is why I had such a difficult time making the transition to today’s game. We worked and worked at that ball coming off the platform perfectly. Believe me, not everyone could do it. I had some kids who perfected it, and they were not the best athletes in the gym. They just knew passing was something they could master and others couldn’t. It was their opportunity to shine.
But the people in the volleyball world with the power slowly eliminated the perfection of the game. They chose athleticism over skill. Today, there is nary a need for the officials at all. There is no such thing as an “illegal“ pass. Oh, they will tell you that a player can't lift the ball ... but everyone knows that’s BS. When was the last time you saw that called?
It is still hard to watch the ball bounce off the passer’s arms, smack her in the face, and it’s “play on.“
Or watch the official do nothing when the ball spins out of the setter’s hands and is crushed by her outside hitter for a point. Evidently, it was an “athletic move” on the part of the setter. We can’t expect the poor setter to be good enough to actually set the ball correctly, now can we? That would be unfair.
Oh, and the one that still makes me puke ... a hitter who has miss-timed the ball, or is just too damn slow to get to the ball, throws the ball over the net to avoid the blockers or to place it where she would like it to go. It’s a “power dump.”
What happened to the skill of being able to get to the ball and hitting it? I told one official I was going to outfit my back row with baseball gloves. That didn’t go over well. Yellow card.
It still pisses me off.
What they have done is taken the skill – the art – out of the game. To this day, I don’t understand why. Well, I do know why, but that topic is covered in another blog, I’m sure.
Back to offline passing ...
Looking back, this was the beginning of the transition from the game I coached early in my career to what it is today. I remember thinking this offline stuff was going to be tough to do and not get called. Little did I know that doing it correctly would be a non issue.
But I liked the concept and thought this was the new way to receive serve. The footwork seemed easy enough to teach. The way I saw it, this new way to receive serve would eliminate the short serve and force teams to serve deep over our heads. It would force teams to change their status quo. I was excited. We would be the first In our area to try it.
Come August of that year – no, we weren’t supposed to practice during the summer, but too many coaches cheated, so welcome to year-around volleyball – we did nothing but practice offline passing. We spent hours and hours on the footwork, the platform position and the body position. It was all new, but the girls took to it.
The girls were into it. After all, they could stand up, get out of the way of the ball, and pass. What’s not to like? To their credit, they became very proficient at standing very near the 3-meter line and passing serve. Some of them actually passed better that way. I was pumped.
Other teams were a bit shocked.
They had never seven a team pass from where we were passing. They eventually tried to serve the ball over our heads. This resulted in several side outs for us (no rally scoring back then). When they adjusted, we would just take one big step back. Overall we were pretty successful passing this way. I’m too lazy to research what our record was, but I know we won many more than we lost.
It did put a great deal of pressure on our setter though. Some of those passes got to her pretty quickly. The hitters had to speed up a bit too. As I look back, I’m not sure we had the personnel to pull it off completely, but we came close.
After that season, I saw Coach Condit somewhere. The conversation got around to how my season had gone. I told her it went great, and I really loved that offline passing. I bragged on the girls a bit telling her how well they adjusted to the different way of passing and the different positions we used. I explained how hard they worked on it. I told her that we spent hours perfecting it.
She looked at me and asked something like “That’s how you received serve?” She sounded dumbfounded. When she stopped laughing, she said they used that technique only in emergencies. Their goal is to pass online.
Oops.
To say the least, I was a bit embarrassed. ”Oh” was the only reply I could muster.
I felt like a complete idiot. I imagined she was thinking, “I hired this tool to work my camp?”
During the entire season, it never occurred to me not one other team was receiving serve like us. We played top-ranked teams in Indiana and a couple who were nationally ranked. Never dawned on me. I can only hope the other coaches thought I was being a trailblazer, an innovator. Unfortunately, I don’t think any of them tried it with their programs. So much for my trailblazing.
I tell this story not to demonstrate my idiocy – that has already been well established – but to illustrate that kids will buy into your vision. Even it’s a bit crazy.
I told them this new way of passing was the answer. I figured out how to present it and teach it so they could see success. After all, I was convinced. My focus was this passing technique and building the confidence of the team.
After they bought in, they were focused. They believed in it. They believed they could be successful. The better they got, the more they believed. Because no other team was doing it, it was a sense of pride for the team.
Even though the whole concept was a massive misunderstanding on my part, it was a success. As I said, the girls became very good at it. They gained a sense of pride by doing something no other team could do. They knew they weren’t the best team, but they thought that receiving serve as they did gave them a better chance in every match we played.
If a coach can set a focus for her team – whether it’s perfect passing, serving a particular spot on the court, or never putting your hands on the floor on defense – this will bring the girls together for “the cause.” It builds team-esteem. It creates a purpose.
I still remember telling my girls if they made this top-ranked team we played call a timeout, I would buy them all candy bars. They were so focused on getting that coach to call a timeout, they not only succeeded, they came real close to beating them.
My mistake demonstrates the magic of focus and the belief in one’s self. Remember, success is not just on the scoreboard.
It may not have been a mistake after all.
P.S. I never used offline passing as a serve-receive strategy again.
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