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A Good Block

There's getting blocked and then there's getting roofed. You decide.

You Think You've Got Hops?

Next time you think you can jump high, watch this video and prepare to be amazed.

What're All Those Hand Signals?

In beach volleyball, hand signals are a very common sight. So what do they mean?

"One of the facets of beach volleyball is the use of hand signals by players to indicate to their partner what sort of play they intend to make. These signals are made behind the back, to avoid the opposition seeing the signals. Most commonly the signals are given with both hands by the serving player's partner before the serve, with each hand referring to the type of block the signaler will put up against an attack from the corresponding side of the court. Occasionally, however, signals are given during a rally. Generally, an open hand means the player will not attempt a block, one finger means the player will attempt to block an opponent's spike down the line, two fingers means the player will attempt to block an opponent's spike into the angle, and a closed fist means the player will block "ball," deciding where to set the block based on the set and on the opponent's approach and arm-swing. Wiggling the fingers on one of the signalling hands indicates that the blocker wants his or her partner to serve the player on that side of the court. If the server is a stronger blocker, he or she may run up to the net to block after serving. In this case, the signals given by the server's partner tell the server what type of block to put up."

Nebraska beats Stanford in Women's Beach Volleyball

The Nebraska women's volleyball team won the NCAA championship over Stanford in Omaha, Neb., last December, and then win the Collegiate Nationals Championship in beach volleyball - over Stanford in San Diego.

Nebraska All-Americans Sarah Pavan and Jordan Larson fought off two match points by Stanford's Cynthia Barboza and Bryn Kehoe to win 2-1 and take the Collegiate Nationals Championship in beach volleyball at Crown Point.

“Everybody expects the California girls to win because they do have that experience and they can come out to the beach whenever they want,” Pavan said. “We have cornfields. We do not have the luxury of coming out and playing whenever we want."

The Longest Volleyball Rally

This volleyball rally is one of the longest I've ever seen. Great defense, excellent offense, and amazing coverage to boot. A rally worth cheering for.

Goal Settting in Volleyball

Jim Brogan offers the 10 Steps to Success on his web site.

Attitude: Your attitude is the strongest (or weakest) aspect about you. It will determine your self-image and how well or poorly you do at everything. No more “I can’t”.

Goals: Succeeding and seeing results should be a lot easier if you know what YOU want. If you enjoy what you’re doing and you’re getting better, then you will want to do it more. The goals become even bigger and better.

Objectives: These are the “little things” that constantly focus your attention on the information that will make a difference. The benefits of attaining your objectives daily create a remarkable determination to reach your goals.

Organization: Once you are on the path to accomplishing your objectives and goals you will want to reach your outcome faster. The best in every class, in every sport and every area of life, learn that time is very precious; It needs to be used wisely.

Inspiration: It is inevitable; we all get knocked down physically and mentally. When you were just a baby you fell down but got back up, otherwise you would be crawling everywhere. However, mentally staying focused on your goals and objectives can be challenging at times; Don’t lose sight of “why” you want those goals.

Commitment: You will face challenges from friends, classmates, teachers even people you don’t know. It is GOING TO HAPPEN, you can plan ahead of time that there will be pitfalls. Top performers and successful people always embrace the pitfalls but stay committed to their goals.

Leadership: When you set out to accomplish something friends notice. It creates a level of confidence, courage and determination in you. Little by little, people start to see and wonder how they can get the same results. People start to follow!

Accountability: You have finally learned that, no more blaming your challenges, failures or circumstances on other people. If there is something to get done, a decision that needs to be made, or a challenge to meet, you have proven that you can do it. “If it’s going to be, it’s up to me”.

Good choices, Bad choices, it's up to you : So now your friends depend on you. They watch what you say and more importantly what you do; Your choices and decisions will impact many. Their is no “pressure” on you because you are so confident you can make your own choices as opposed to the group‘s choices.

Success system : If you follow the system you will reap the rewards!

A Good Six-Pack

Want to see a funny 6-pack? Click here!

Parental Controls - For the Coach

A high school or club coach’s career is full of challenges. Often times you’ll spend all your free time figuring out the strategy to beat the cross town rival. You might find yourself trying to connect with an athlete to get that fire in her game that you can see in her soul. Sometimes the challenge of the season is to get your schedule set early enough so that everyone knows they have practice tomorrow. The hardest test by far, however, is in handling the unhappy parents of athletes on the team. Surprisingly enough, regardless of the “problem” perceived by the parent, experience will tell you that parent management is relatively basic if you are prepared. There are four basic steps in the process. Skip one and you’ll find yourself painted in an ugly corner.

1. Set Ground Rules for the Team BEFORE Concerns Arise.

A. Your perspective drives your coaching style. Make sure you communicate to your parents and athletes, your philosophy and expectations on every aspect that is important to you. Especially in the areas of commitment, attendance, play time decisions, goals of the team. This is more commonly known as your coaching philosophy, only with details.

B. If a parent feels inclined to discuss a concern, draw out the procedure of approach. Depending on the age level or topic of discussion, a good order of process would involve:

Athlete addressing the issue with coach
-if the issue is not resolved-

Athlete and parent addressing issue with coach
-if the issue is not resolved-

Athlete, parent, coach meet with the club director/athletic director
If the parent or athlete have an emotionally driven concern, require a 24 hour wait period so that all parties concerned can arrange a congenial meeting rather than subject anyone to a ranting rampage.

C. Insist that the athlete is involved in the communication process. This ensures that everyone is hearing and understanding the situation, and involves the growth and development of the athlete as a person.

2. Listen to the Message (not the delivery)
Everybody is different. Some are more emotional than others in terms of their children. Others jump right into the accusatory mode of destroying their child. Luckily, some parents will come with the appropriate mentality of wanting to understand the decisions you make as a coach. Sift through the emotional display. Hold on to and only address the parent concerns that are appropriate to discuss. Refuse to discuss other players’ issues or attitudes with a parent. Get concrete facts of concern. Most areas of discussion include play time for the athlete or playing to win as a team. Be sure you have a pattern of consistency in these areas. No one has to agree with your policies, they only need to understand. Areas that should be of utmost importance include the physical safety of the players, illegal activities, or inappropriate actions that will reflect poorly on your program. Rumors are exactly that. Address facts only.

3. Mirror the Parent Concern

First and foremost, the parent needs to know his or her voice is being heard. As an adult, they have that right to respect. Even if you have to take notes, reflect to the parent what you understand is their concern. If the parent has concerns about items that cannot be discussed, let them know up front that you are not in a position to address that concern and explain (briefly) why.

4. Find the Calmest Ground

Concerns have 3 end results:

A. Address the issue at hand, explaining, from the coach’s perspective, why you have made the decisions that have upset them. They don’t have to agree, they only need to understand.

B. If you have refused to discuss a topic (IE another player’s play time) and the parent won’t let it go, suggest they contact your club director/athletic director. Their job is to support you and protect the program. If your boss wants to change the rules, then so be it. However, more often, the parent will find a dead end there as well.

C. Agree to consider their concerns. Believe it or not, sometimes as coaches, we forget things or inadvertently neglect situations to which we should be attending. You don’t need to admit to any short-sightedness, but the offer of reconsidering your thoughts in a situation can at least leave the parent feeling respected whether you change anything or not. Always contact the parent with a follow up conversation or email to communicate the result of your reconsiderations.

It cannot be said enough that the parent, athlete, and coach perspective of the team’s management are three completely different views. The parent and athlete perspectives are legitimate personal opinions and should be addressed respectfully. However, in the end, it is the coach’s perspective that controls the program. Certainly as a coach, we’ve made mistakes, but they are our mistakes for which we must take responsibility and learn.

Chess and Setting?

There is more to setting than meets the eye. To be a setter, you not only must be athletic, but you must also be smart. You must know when to set which hitters, when to call a play, when to dump. You must know not only your rotation but the other team's rotation, taking into account weaknesses (i.e. a short blocker) and capitalize on them. Set your tallest hitter up with that short blocker and your team has a better chance of being successful that play.

But what does chess have to do with this? Chess is a mind game, a bloody battle with twists and turns that you must foresee and then either defend the move or counter it. A bishop can move diagonally as many squares as it wishes. A pawn can only move forward one square at a time (two only on its first move) and only capture enemy pieces diagonally. A knight moves in an L-shaped pattern, forward or backward. I could go on and on, but I'm sure you know have a taste of how complicated chess may become. You must know every piece and how it moves, on your side and the opponent's side... just like setting.

In chess, one may set up an intricate trap where you sacrifice your bishop (3 pts.) for a rook (5 pts.). A good trade, with a gain of 2 points. However, the ultimate trade would be the Queen (9 pts.) for the checkmate, or the win. In relation to volleyball, you may set up the middle once on a quick and let her get blocked. The middle on the other side is now ready for the quick again, confident that she can block it. But she knows that a smart setter won't set the middle right away... or will she? Perhaps the setter will run the middle around on a slide... yeah! That's what she'd do! In this scenario, assuming I am a front-row setter, I would tell the middle to run a slide around the back and then set the four. The opponent would be so caught up thinking about whether or not I'm going to set the middle again she would completely forget about the outside attacker.

No, it's not exactly chess, but if you want to be a good setter, you better know how to play your pieces.

These Girls Got Game

In most sports, the male athletes tend to dominate the media and headlines. The NBA is much more popular than the WNBA and the WNBA is probably the most televised sport for the female athlete. This is where the sport of beach volleyball is going to help break the gender barrier in sports.

Now That I Have Your Attention

Beach volleyball alone is starting to become more and more popular in the media. The bronzed bodied men and the bikini wearing women are a television broadcasting companies dream. If your everyday couch potato is channel surfing and flips to beach volleyball the first image they will see is the sun and the sand. right off the bat the fun in the sun image is on the screen. Now they take their death grip off the remote to see four beautiful babes playing volleyball in bikinis. At this point their jaw may need to be locked back into place after a quick drop. The image that these women are presenting is attracting viewers all over the country and even world wide. The Olympics for the first time in 1996 held beach volleyball in their list of competition.



These Girls Are Good


Once the couch potato is done eyeballing the ladies they will want to understand the game that is being played. Volleyball is a fairly simple game to learn. There is no Man in Motion calls, Moving Screens on a pick and role, or breaking of the wrist in a bat swing. So for the average viewer, following the game is quite simple. If you are an avid fan of beach volleyball you know that on the men's side there are two different teams in the finals almost every week. On the women's side, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh dominate the brackets. They are consistently in the finals of the tournament almost every week. They are becoming the image of beach volleyball since every week they are on TV. More and more Americans are learning who these two ladies are because of their domination on the court.



The Effect

Over the past couple years there has been a growth in the sport like no other. More and more young kids want to play volleyball to hopefully one day be able to spend every day of summer vacation at the beach playing volleyball. The most growth has been on the women's side of the sport. Younger girls see Misty and Kerri each week and strive to be like them. More women's volleyball matches are televised than men's matches. Even at the High School level, the girls attract more money in sports programs then boys volleyball. Girls volleyball even has a State tournament where the boys season ends with regional champions. Women are beginning to dominate the sport of volleyball, so boys...WATCH OUT!!!

Coach J

You Got Served!!!

The serve in volleyball is one of the most important factors in a successful volleyball team. It is the one aspect in the game that a player had total control of. If a server misses a serve there is no one else to blame but himself or herself. So what is the best serve in the game? The tough knuckle ball Float Serve or the much glorified Jump Serve.

The Root Beer Floater

When most players reach the college or even high school level of volleyball the floater is looked down upon as a weak and easy serve to pass. There tends to be little power and velocity in the serve, which is a passers dream in executing a perfect pass. But, if a player develops a solid Float Serve, it can become more effective than a Jump Serve due to the few factors that can not be duplicated by a Jump Serve.

A good Float Serve has no stabilizing spin and will dart more like a knuckle ball in baseball. The movement of the ball is very unpredictable to the opposing players (USAVolleyball Guides to Basics). The opposing players will not know where the ball is going to land in the court due to this constant movement side to side.

The Float Serve does not have a distinguished landing spot unlike the Jump Serve. As seen in the Float Serve & Jump Serve Diagram, a passer could pick up easily where the ball is going to land so a passer can set up early with a good solid platform to pass the ball. The Float Serve on the other hand does not drop to a landing spot till the very end of its flight. This creates a tough decision for the passer if they should pass overhead or with a platform. As the diagram shows, if there is a deep Float Serve, a passer also has to make the decision of whether the ball is in or out.



Jump Around

The Jump Serve is probably one of the most difficult skills in volleyball to master. Without the proper technique and timing, the jump serve could potentially embarrass the server more than embarrass the other team with an ace. Even if the jump server does not have the hardest or fastest serve, since the jump serve has been made out to be the toughest serve in the game to pass, it creates a lot of intimidation on the other side of the net.

Once the Jump Serve is mastered, it can become one the most deadly weapon on the floor. A good Jump Serve though does not mean a powerful hit bolting at the passers really fast. A good Jump Serve is one like UCLA’s Garrett Muagututia, who can also place the ball wherever he wants the ball to go. Also the variation of long to short and side to side jump serves keeping the passers guessing where the ball is going to go. It is with years of experience though that Muagututia has been able to develop this serve to be one of the most powerful tools in his game. But with the power, speed, and accuracy a large portion of the Jump Serves by most volleyball players end up in the bottom of the net or out of bounds.

Taming The Beast

The Jump Serve can be a vital weapon but can also blow up right in the server’s hands. Since the Jump Serve is so hard to control, many times a player will miss the serve at a critical moment in the match. It is because this serve takes so much time to master and perfect that it can become a huge momentum changer both for better or for worse. If the server can nail a jump serve every time with precision and force, then the player should Jump Serve. If the server is inconsistent with the serve, let them just combine the two servers and perform a Jump Float, so there is still the same height trajectory as a Jump Serve but maintains the control of a Float Serve.

Serving It Up

So no matter what serve you decide to use, be sure you master both. Developing a good solid Float Serve can be just as effective as a powerful Jump Serve. If you are able to execute a good Jump Serve then use that to your advantage to create some tension in the gym and maybe even some noise. BOOM!!! ACE!!!

Coach J

Reprimanding Volleyball Players for Breaking Rules or Nonperformance

Do You Have Players Bricking It?

What do you do when someone comes late to practice? What if during conditioning exercises a player only does 8 push-ups when you asked the group to do 10 pushups? What if during wind sprints the player fails to cross the designated lines or for the last few feet when finishes, stops early and walks the last two steps across the finish line?



Many coaches tend create an immediate punishment, such as the offending player running laps at the point in time, or after practice.

What if the player habitually breaks rules on fails to conform. The rest of the group after a while just knows that Tami is always late or Van just likes to see how far he can push the coach without getting in trouble. For the most part the rest of the team knows it is between the player and the coach.

Hey It's a Team Thing.


There was a commercial with Mia Hamm and some of the Women US Olympic soccer team going with a teammate to the dentist office. The dentist comes out of the back with one of the American players, announcing grimly that she needs two fillings. Four other players in the lobby, including Hamm and Brianna Scurry, stand up one at a time, courageously stating, "Then I will have two fillings."

It was a team thing. Sometimes players have to learn it is a team thing.

The most common example I see is when a volleyball hits the ground that shouldn't have. Many coaches will make ALL the players do lines, or push-ups or just hit the ground and get up.

Real Effectiveness: Team Pressure

One way to exert more conformance pressure on the offending athlete is to get the team involved, whether they like it or not, and have them put pressure on the player.

My favorite way to do this is, for example, if one player, Tami, always walks across the finish line when doing lines, I ask her to sit down on the finish line and get real comfortable. I then tell the OTHER girls they are going to run lines, so Tami can see what it looks like to finish completely. Then the rest of the team runs a double set of lines as Tami sits and watches.

Both Tami and her teammates are annoyed with me and each other, but it gets the point across; and I have little problem with compliance after that.

How Should a Volleyball Captain(s) be Decided?

In the Army, Air Force, Navy, or any Military Force there are always leaders of troops. These generals, lieutenants, and captains are selected by their time in the service, their physical stability, and they are required to take a responsibility test. After all these test, there is another process with higher ranked officers discussing if the potential candidates ability to lead. This process can very easily be translated onto the volleyball court when the decision of who should be the team captain(s).

Coaching Factors in Selecting a Captain

If the coach is the one to make the decision, he or she may very well take into consideration all the requirements that the military takes. The coach will look for someone who has played the game for a long time or has been playing for his or her team for a few seasons. The coach will look at their skills on the court hopefully showing physical talent in every aspect of the game: hitting, serving, setting, passing, blocking, digging, and so forth. Now there may not be a paper exam of responsibility like the military has but the coach will find someone who can be responsible for all the teammates both on and off the court.

The coach will have a good player(s) in mind to be the team captain(s), but is it the coach’s responsibility? Does the power rest in the decision of the people like a democracy? The point being, should the team players decide who they want representing their team and leading them into the battlefield of volleyball competition? If the coach were to choose someone that the team may not get along with or believes they should not be the captain, will the team respond to the captain when he or she is trying to motivate the team or assist them in a game or at practice? With this in mind, if the players of the team choose who they want to be their captain they most likely will respond to the leader better than if the coach picked someone the teammates will not follow.

Best Player or Best Leader?

With the power of who becomes captain in the player’s hands, will the vote just become a popularity contest? Will the team just pick the person who is the best hitter assuming that hitting is the most important aspect of volleyball? Will they pick the player who has the highest status in school or outside of school? Are the players educated enough to know what a true leader is and what responsibilities in lie in being the team captain? All these aspects come into play when a player makes a decision on who their team captain should be.

So where does the decision lie? Who has the authority to pick who leads the team? Does the coach who hopefully has played the sport, been around a lot of different captains or has been the captain on a team decide the team leader? Or should the players who have to listen to the elected captain pick who they want to lead them? For some teams and clubs it is all different in the decision making of the team captain.

The Key Factor: Leadership

Hopefully whatever process is taken the coach or teammates take into consideration all the aspects that the military takes when they promote a solider to a higher rank. The captain will be selected by their time with the team, their physical stability, they are a responsible individual, but most importantly they have the ability to lead a team to victories.

Coach J