Volleyball Coaching Life- 25:0

There has been a bit of discussion on social media about those teams that have been at both ends of a 25-0 score in the year end tournaments. The discussions brought up a jumble of thoughts and emotions so I thought I would put them down on paper, well, electronic paper, and try to suss out and unjumble my thoughts.

In this era of large convention center tournaments, these kinds of scores should not be happening except for the first day of play, as the way the teams are funneled through pool and bracket play allows teams to settle into a steady state of competitive play the deeper they get into the tournament. Teams are funneled into top and bottom halves with each set of pool play, until they compete with teams that are mostly on the same level of play as themselves  on the last day of competition. Sometimes, an additional day or two of sifting might have been needed, but the idea is that the pains of the early blowouts might be assuaged later in the tournament. I believe the power league idea takes the sifting to a better ending.

One then has to wonder: how did these teams end up in this predicament?  

Some had suggested that it was the fault of the coach and players for not having gotten better over the season. I can’t see how a single set snapshot can represent the season. We all know, or should know, that any score — set or match— has more to do with the matchup at that moment in time between the teams rather than the people involved. Remember that sports are critically dependent on the interaction between two opposing teams.

There are other things to consider as well: the composition of the teams, the relative experience of the players and coaches, the level of the team and club, whether they are a competitive team practicing close to every day in the week or a rec team practicing one or two days a week. To say that it is all the fault of the players and coaches for not being good enough is disingenuous at best and bullying at worst. Players and coaches need time to develop and learn, sometimes these kinds of experiences are necessary for both players and coaches to learn whether it is their passion at that moment, or not.

While I agree that this kind of failure is sobering and perhaps a shot across the bow for the team at the receiving end of the bad news, I wonder how much positive impact is there to this kind of beat down. Some who eschew the participation trophy mentality have jumped on this situation and have said that this is a perfect lesson for all involved. There are many lessons to be learned from failure. While I agree with that, I wonder about the value of the lesson from a 0-25 beat down.

I do have a soft spot for the underdog, I had written many years ago about the worst team. (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-very-worst-team.html). I feel ambiguous pangs of sorrow, of missed opportunities, of a personal need to go tell the players and coaches that things will work out, even though I never actually know if they will or not. I fear that the players and coaches will walk away from my sport after having had a monumentally bad season. Even if this was just a bad set, that this was an anomaly within a relatively successful season, it is traumatic. I think of myself as being the coach of that team, and I ask myself: what would I do? How can I take something this monumental and get in all the lessons that needs to be taught and still not come off pollyannaish and untruthful? It is because I know that the players can be cold-eyed realists that I work at communicating positively without being false and condescending; because I know that as soon as I say something that rings false, I will lose my team. No matter the age of the players, I am not a good liar; and no, I won’t play poker with you.

Many had postulated that it was the coaches and parents who eagerly signed up for divisions of play that are much above the level of the players. That is easy to do, I had written about it before when I spoke of the debate over sandbagging ( https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2023/03/volleyball-coaching-life-sandbagging.html). The same principles apply: coaches not knowing how their teams will pan out early in the season, the competitive need to enter the post-season tournaments early to reserve a slot before the tournaments fill, coaches and parents projecting the progress of the teams without any data to support their projections, and unforeseeable injuries or absences to key members of the team.

Sometimes the lower levels of tournaments fill quicker than the upper levels, so the tournament directors give teams and clubs incentive to pay a level up, never realizing, or caring, about the competitive mismatches; just to fill the tournament. On the other hand, despite the clamoring for a means of determining the “true” levels of each team, we in volleyball have never and probably will never develop such a system because we are dealing with the vagaries of human behavior and the unbounded randomness that pervades sports, particularly junior sports.

Are the mismatches becoming more prevalent as the tournaments get bigger? I don’t know and I don’t see any way to decide on a correlation between the growth and number of mismatches, and I don’t care to dig into the minutiae. Additionally, I am not sure this is something we can actually control: too many variables, too much nonlinearity, too many complicating couplings.

This is the part where adults need to be cold-eyed realists. This is also the part that makes the scheduling decisions so fraught with uncertainties. How well will the team compete at the end of the season as compared to the beginning of the season? Coaches will always start the season optimistically: I can improve the players 100-fold, I am that great of a coach. We will play as I command because they will be my little robots and do as I command them. Parents of course will project whatever dreams they have for their off springs, or their own unrequited dreams of sporting prowess. Sunny and bright June and July are so far away when sitting around a table with other parents and coaches in the cold and dreary October and November planning for the season.

The other part of the equation is that coaches and parents have all the best intentions in the world when planning the end of the season. Having an end of the season tournament where players can enjoy the experience in a large tournament seems like a win-win proposition. It is to end in a crescendo. No one should say that a team is not deserving of ending a season with a celebration. Some had said that some of these teams should not travel because they are not good enough to be a “travel” team. I ask them: What is a “travel” team and what is not a “travel” team? Are there strict quantitative limitations that they should follow? Is there a check list? The answer is a resounding NO.

Yet, as adults we should take responsibility for structuring a season as best as we are able given the uncertainties and unknowns. Avoiding a season where we end up demoralizing our players, no matter what age, is imperative. As coaches we need to help our players develop and keep their love of the game that we are passionate about. As parents we need to walk the tightrope of allowing our children to learn from failures while also showing them that there is always a positive side to bad situations.

Losing every match or set in the season does not make for a lot of positive reinforcement. On the other hand, we can prepare all we want but something like that can happen, and we need to be prepared for the conversation.

Getting back to the topic of losing 0-25. It won’t kill them, but at the same time, it may just kill the player’s passion in volleyball, or any sports. We can’t know for sure. But as coaches we need to scaffold our seasons to that we have more bright spots than low spots; those bright spots are not necessarily dependent only on the win/loss record. I would imagine that most players would bury that 0-25 score deep in the recesses of their memory, so much so that they disappear. But we need to be prepared to address it honestly.

I know, very unsatisfying. But at least I had unjumbled it in my mind. Until someone else raises another pertinent point.