After taking over the Wayne High School program, I had my share of assistants. All well meaning, trying to learn. One of them took the head job at a high school near my home after I resigned my position in the late ‘90s.
I would talk to him at times about his team. He kept using terms like “I won this match,” or “I’m doing this at practice.” He used the word “I” way too much, but I digress. He wanted me to stop by and see one of his practices. So I went.
He had a lot of enthusiastic girls who worked hard. It was the end of July, so it was hot. The team looked strong and athletic. After watching the team run through some warm-up stuff for 15 minutes or so, he wanted to show me this new drill he came up with or saw somewhere.
First problem in my opinion, all of his drills were timed drills. Second problem, too many players not involved.
Let’s get back to problem #1. He had his players – all varsity players – run a digging drill. One player standing on a box on one side of the net who hits balls at a defensive player on the other side. The defensive player started at the left back, dug a ball, ran back to the middle back, dug a ball, moved to the right side, dug a ball, and then played a tip. She would then begin the process again. The scoreboard was set to 1 minute. Her objective was to see how many times she could go around the circuit.
After all of his defensive players had gone through, he walked over to me and said something like, “I love that drill.” I told him it was a great conditioning drill, but that was it. (I lied. Anything related to a volleyball skill must be done properly, so as a conditioning drill it was also terrible.)
He wanted me to explain. I said, “Of all the players who went through that drill, not one did anything correctly. They need to learn the skill of digging a ball before you do something like that.” By the way, there was no corrective encouragement, only encouragement to go faster. I did not mention to him the inefficiency of the drill.
One player hitting balls at another while the rest of the team screamed encouragement and shagged balls is another immense waste of time.
Players should go as fast as they can, and as slowly as they need, while perfecting a skill.
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