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I’ve seen the volleyball world from more angles than your average person.
I’ve coached some pretty bad teams, I’ve coached some pretty good teams and I even still play at a pretty high level. But I must say the referee stand is one of the more enlightening places for me to view it.
In Orange County, Calif., I have the privilege of officiating high-level teams coached by some of the best in the business - true professionals like Donnie Rafter at Woodbridge or Newport Harbor’s Danny Glen (Misty May-Treanor’s high school coach). I get to compare how experienced and inexperienced coaches do things, and see why the good ones experience long-term success.
Here are some tips and observations from my travels:
From the stand, I’ve seen a lot of mediocre coaches get greedy. When a coach asks for a call, they probably won’t get it, and the more they do it, the farther their team will go into a victim’s mindset.
A good coach will not give his or her team excuses outside of themselves for failing because it makes failure more probable. It’s also common for an inexperienced coach to ask for the wrong call at the wrong time. A great example of this is the coach who will ask for the opposing setter’s hands to be called early in the match when his own setter is not as skilled. If the referee tightens the standards, he must do so to both sides, causing the initial request to backfire in the long run.
Everybody has seen it up close or from afar. The coach who yells, screams, and belittles his players.
“How could you do that?” “Stop making stupid mistakes.”
Words like those, with ferocious and mean-spirited intensity, are a hallmark of coaches who fail their players if not on a competitive level, certainly on a personal one. I’ve seen players break down on the court whose attempts to pass the ball with eyes blurred by tears are usually less than successful.
Like greed, there may be short-term gain, but when viewed in the long term, you have players with shattered self-confidence who fail in the clutch because they haven’t had proper support and motivation during the challenging times.
When I played for UCLA men’s coach Al Scates, while it wasn’t all hugs and kisses, there was no belittlement. Scates treats his players with such respect that they can’t help but hold themselves in high regard.
Every coach can divide their roster into a group of trusted players and a group that doesn’t usually have the skills or nerves for the job.
The gluttonous coach doesn’t try to build confidence, skills and trust in players beyond his starting six. And like so many of the other sins, this is a short-sighted strategy.
Players have injuries. Players have family emergencies. And sometimes players in the starting six benefit from having “a fire lit under them.”
To hoard all game-time experience to just six players limits confidence and thus future performance from players who will likely have a role to play in future matches and tournaments.
One can easily argue a team will never reach its competitive potential using the ninth and 10th players regularly. And that person may be right. In the gold-medal match, only the best have earned their place between the net and the baseline.
But until that gold-medal match, every good coach should look for opportunities to throw a little experience to the entire roster, especially between points eight and 15 when the outcome of a game isn’t on the line.
A coach who leaves the lower-skilled player in for too long may be exhibiting the sin of pride.
Sometimes that lower-skilled player can be a true monkey wrench in the gears. A smart coach will see it and fix it by whatever means necessary before the momentum of the match goes too far the wrong way.
Timeouts are great for slowing or changing momentum. Pride can cost games and even matches when timeouts are called too late or not at all by an overconfident coach who hasn’t noticed the change of momentum in a game or match.
I’d estimate that in my coaching career I’ve thought to myself, “one more point and I’ll call it,” about a hundred times, and about 98 of those times my team ended up losing the next point ensuring the timeout needed to be called.
If you’ve got a bad feeling and the ref is making eye contact with you, don’t hesitate. Referees notice momentum and feel unprofessional when they miss your timeout call, so when they think you need one, they’ll probably be looking at you. Take the hint.
I’ve seen a number of coaches who have a superior team just sit back, not coach, or even pay attention, and let their starting six fail to improve on their way to an easy victory.
I’ve watched a coach ignore a couple lucky points by the opposition, miss a timeout opportunity and lose a game to an obviously inferior team.
During a match with an overmatched opponent, why not pay attention, see which players aren’t feeling challenged enough to play mentally at 100 percent and replace them with experience-needing bench players who can probably still get the “W” in the books?
If they start to look like they can’t, you’ll have a starter who can probably come off the bench rested and angry and ready to turn the game around for his or her team.
A match with a weaker opponent also provides a wonderful opportunity to try out players in new positions. Do you have an athletic and smart middle hitter with good hands? Toss them in at setter and let them try something new. They may prove to be far more able than originally cast. You’ll probably have to direct things from the sidelines, but if your prodigy fits the bill, they’ll figure it out quickly.
I mentioned that I’ve coached some not-so-good teams in my time, and for a person as competitive as I am, it was and always will be difficult to avoid the deep-seated feelings of jealousy, which can lead to the other sins discussed here.
For coaches without requisite players for winning gold medals and such, I recommend the strategy of setting pre-match goals to generate constant improvement.
Next time you’re the No. 64 seed going up against the No. 1 team, set a goal - something like 50 percent of passes inside the 10-foot line or 30 percent of your sets to the middle hitters.
I’ve even set goals for my team of 10 or 15 points out of 25 when I saw a team and knew they were a couple of levels higher. It really helped my team stay focused when they might have given up, which is always the worst possible result. When I asked for 12 points, my team ended up getting 20, played as well as they ever had, and we all viewed the game as a success despite the loss in the books.
Everybody loves winning. And to win you must have some desire. One must remember, however, that crossing the fine line from desire into lust can be a bad thing. Pretty good coaches can start to commit some of the sins written about here that they would otherwise avoid.
It’s really easy to do in the heat of the moment when emotions are high. Getting greedy with the referees or line judges or being verbally abusive does not benefit the people you are really working for - the kids.
Coaching for glory or a paycheck just isn’t what youth volleyball is about. Successful coaches want foremost to build their team into a collection of great people and want victories to reward their players for all the hard work they’ve put in.
Everybody in the volleyball community, especially coaches, has a huge obligation to the youth. I believe moving past the idea that victories make great people and into the idea of coaching to serve your players.
Ed Ratledge plays on the Crocs AVP Tour and also coaches and officiates youth volleyball in the Southern California area.
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