Volleyball Coaching Life-The Five Levels

In reading Joe Maddon’s Book, The Book of Joe, (Joe Maddon 2022), I was able to gain valuable insight into his rarified world of managing a professional baseball team. One thing that caught my attention was when Maddon wrote the chapter about professional baseball players and the differing attitudes that make up the levels of development for the players. It is Chapter 8: The Five Levels of Being a Professional. I am expanding on it, in the context of junior athletes and coaches.

My take is my own, I am not putting words in Joe Maddon’s voice. I am writing to figure out what I think about the subject. All interpretations and reasoning, as well as errors  are mine.

According to Maddon, he was contemplating the levels of the professional players after they have reached the major league level, these levels are results of the combination of the player’s variable emotional and maturity as they evolved through their stint in the big leagues. His epiphany came as he asked the question: “What am I seeing here? What are the big leagues about?” What each individual mentally adopts as the answer to his question places them on a defined level of emotional and maturity that are commensurate with their readiness to be a professional ball player.  He believes that there is an arc to a person’s growth when they arrive at the highest level of their profession. He categorized the different levels of evolution The Five Levels of Being a Professional:

·       Level One: Happy to be Here.

·       Level Two: Survival.

·       Level Three: I Belong Here.

·       Level Four: Make As Much Money as You can.

·       Level Five: All I Want to Do is Win.

I am renaming it more accurately as The Five Levels of Being a Developing Athlete, and The Five Levels of Being a Coach.

Characteristics of Each Level

Maddon levels are intended to identify those who have already reached the pinnacle of their careers, they are at the major league level. What goes without saying is that as each athlete stagnates in any one of the levels, they will inevitably stop advancing towards the last level, backtrack, and drop out of the major leagues.

I draw the parallel between Maddon’s chapter on those who have already reached the pinnacle of their sporting careers with developing players and coaches. Equivalently, there is a good possibility that the players and coaches can fall into a rut and stagnate on any one of the levels.

Coincidentally, Maddon’s levels can be roughly shoehorned into Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. (Figure 1 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs)

·       Maddon’s Levels One: Happy to Be Here and Two: Survival being commensurate with the Safety level of Maslow.

·       Maddon’s Level Three: I Belong being commensurate with the Love/Belonging level of Maslow.

·       Maddon’s Level Four: Make As Much Money as Possible being commensurate with the Self-Esteem level of Maslow.

·       Maddon’s Level Five: I just want to Win being Commensurate with the Self-Actualization level of Maslow.

                                   

Figure 1 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Level One: Happy to be Here.

As the name implies, the person feels overwhelmed; they can’t believe that they have achieved this level, even though this is what they have worked toward as a goal. They know that they have only managed to get their foot in the door. They are not sure how they fit into the grander schemes, and they are also not sure about how they can contribute to the group. On a positive note, they are not afraid of making mistakes because they are running on adrenaline and instinct. They also don’t know enough or are aware enough to feel that they are being judged.

As a Player

We have all had these kinds of players, those players who can’t believe they made the team, the ones that are willing to do anything because they cannot believe in their own good luck; many do attribute their presence to luck.

They can’t believe they belong, but at the same time they are too unaware of the larger scheme to question their status within the team or the organization.

The novelty will wear off as the novelty usually erodes quickly. Usually, their burgeoning confidence will take them to the next level.

As a Coach

The beginning coaches view their role  as both a mission and a torment. They understand their responsibilities to the players, and in many ways, they are fearful over how they could and would engage the players in practice, in games, and all that down time in between. If they are familiar with youth sports, they should also be in deathly fear of dealing with parents.

Those who had played organized sports will try to recall all the drills that they have ever done as a player and  work in futility to make sense of all the “Why?”, “How?”, and “What-if?” questions.

Those who are new to the sport are putting all their attention on amassing drills, tips, and any accumulated wisdom that they can find. They don’t question the veracity of what they have amassed. It is more valuable as a safety blanket, and a crutch to lean on while dealing with the vast and in their minds, unbridgeable chasm between existing knowledge and what they feel is necessary to do the job.

Neophyte coaches’ cycle through the first level as they become more comfortable. The routine of coaching will settle in and what was once new evolves into the routine and procedural.

Level Two: Survival.

Maddon warns that this is the most dangerous level, where the individuals begin to feel comfortable, but not completely comfortable. They still feel like they don’t belong; ironically, their focus is on how they can stay, but not on how they can be better, which is how they can stay. They overthink, over analyze, and overreact in response to their internal conversations, which revolves around how they can fake their way into staying.  You don’t always make it when you fake it.

As a Player

The player is now aware of and appreciates the position they are in. They like where they are, and they are focused on what they need to do to stay where they are.

This is the level where the imposter syndrome begins to creep in. Many will adopt the attitude and strategy of just treading water and staying alive while not daring to take chances and pushing themselves to get better.

They focus on doing the nots: not screwup, not calling attention to themselves, not daring to try new things because of the potential for failure, and are not willing to ask questions for fear of exposing themselves as frauds.

As Maddon points out, this is a dangerous level. This is where the player can easily and willingly get into a rut. The player’s reasoning is that it is safer to do what brought them to this point, never questioning or daring to do anything different from the tried and true; not realizing that this is the sure path to stagnation, regression, and getting left behind.

But, if the player realizes that staying the same is not a good strategy if they are desirous of another level of performance, if they dare to change and do more than survive, they will eventually get to the next level.

As a Coach

The coach has gotten over the initial adrenaline rush of being called a coach, or the immense responsibility of coaching, organizing, dealing with the players and parents, and has settled into a rhythm. They like it and they want to maintain the status quo. They want to do the familiar, they want to do what they have always done, because: why change if everything is copacetic. What they don’t realize is that people and teams are dynamic and fluid.

By choosing to not change, in the false belief that the worst thing that they can do is unnecessarily rock the boat, they are instead paving their own path to stagnation, regression, and getting left behind.

If the coach can progress emotionally towards a more mature outlook on what they are doing, they will progress to the next level.

Level Three: I Belong Here.

A Taoist quote: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”  This is the level where the individual feels that they belong, they understand where they fit in the grand scheme of things, they understand how they can contribute, what their role is, and what is expected of them; more importantly, they understand that they can perform at the expected level. They no longer feel like impostors, although no one is ever completely freed from that shadow.

As a Player

The player has developed to be an all-around presence, they understand their game, their value to the team, they feel plugged into the team social dynamics, and they are comfortable with their roles on the team in both the sports and social milieus.

Many players will stay at this level because it is easy to be comfortable and satisfied. The next level seems like a natural development for most players, but their evolving into the next level is not guaranteed. It may also be that the player skips the next level and goes directly to the fifth level.

As a Coach

At this stage the coach is feeling comfortable with his own coaching style. He is pleased with his own philosophy, in terms of both coaching and team management. The difference between this level and the previous level is that the coach is relaxed enough to thing about their decisions critically and start to question his own decisions without fearing what other people may think. They become curious because they are not satisfied with what they already know and have the mental space to learn while also not having the fears that would prevent them from learning.

Level Four: Make As Much Money as You can Get as Much Recognition as Possible (Respect).

In a professional athletic context, making as much money is the bright shiny focus once they are assured that they belong, and they won’t lose their niche within the team.

In the non-monetary context, this is the level everyone is looking for esteem and respect; they are seeking to gain leverage by gaining in how others view them. One way to look translate this level is to equate monetary compensation with respect and esteem. 

The individuals at this level are confident and are assured about their abilities but now they are looking to gain recognition and approval from people other than themselves. They feel secure in their niche but need to be assured extrinsically through external rewards: money, opinions, and respect.

Their confidence derives from having achieved at a high level, their comfort with their place on the team is unassailable, and they understand their gifts well enough to be able to self-regulate.

As a Player

The player at this level closely straddles the line between confident and arrogant. Their performance is motivated by public praise and extrinsic attention rather than intrinsic desire for mastery.

This is particularly evident in those players who are being recruited for college. The motivation is extrinsic: that college scholarship. Their concern is less about the team and more about being seen by the right coach.  Winning and losing only matters if the individual is shining in a good public light.

The player’s behavior shifts its focus from being team centered to self-centered. The motivation is extrinsic and egocentric. Many players are stuck in this level, and often this is where they will stay never achieving level five.

As a Coach

The coach has evolved in ways that are similar to the player. They have achieved a level of excellence where they are self-assured and confident in their coaching abilities.

Win/loss records are a regular part of being a coach. Each coach is well aware of their own records. The difference in this level is that the coach is primarily motivated by their record because that is the most direct route to recognition, by their peers, players, and their bosses.

This focus on the extrinsic does affect the way they coach, but it takes the coach’s focus away from their players and the team. It places the coach’s own ego squarely in the middle of the radar, making recognition the center of their motivation. The motivation is extrinsic and egocentric.

One particular comment encapsulates this level of coach. This was said during a sideline harangue during a losing effort: YOU are making ME look bad.

Level Five: All I Want to Do is Win.

This level is the ultimate, it is the elusive nirvana, this is where the individual’s altruistic self  asserts their dominance. They are no longer just happy to be there. They don’t need to just survive, they are far from being uncomfortable in their roles, they know emphatically that they belong, and they don’t need anyone’s approval. They. Just. Want. To. Win.

This is where the magic happens in a team. Getting all the players to just want to win on the same page. They all are willingly sacrificing their personal glory and egotistical needs to just win. This is what the slogans come true: there is no I in team.

As a Player

The individuals are willing to do whatever it takes to win: for their teammates, their coaches, their friends, families, and for themselves. Because everything else in their hierarchy of needs has been met.

They are humble, because they know they cannot win by themselves, they want to win so their focus is on HOW to enable the team to win, they apply themselves towards improving themselves, their skill, their mental acuity, and their decision making; all to win. Indeed, they willingly subsume their own selfish and petty egotistical needs so that they can do whatever it takes, even to the detriment of their personal glory —i.e., the opposite of Level Four— to win.

As a Coach

Similarly, the coach has been freed of the ego, everything that they do as a coach is geared towards winning: all the technical, intellectual, and emotional aspects of being a leader are aligned with whatever it takes to win. Since they have proceeded through all of the other levels of development, they have those experiences to recall and act as scaffolding toward implementing what it takes to win.

The Environment

Getting all the players on a team at the same level is difficult, unless you are coaching a developmental team, where everyone is just happy to be there. It is because of this incongruency that the interpersonal relationships amongst the players are difficult to navigate.

The different levels of each individual frame of reference create a dynamic environment for the players to navigate. The blending of varying levels of skills, maturity levels, and knowledge is what makes coaching junior players difficult. A disparity in the levels is much more complex to manage than dealing with the varying skill levels, it is hitting driver: every difference between the players is amplified and exaggerated. Trying to manage the differing expectations from the level where the player resides is complex and has an infinite number of moving parts.

This is where the environment and culture must assert itself. The environment should be flexible and forgiving enough to accommodate all the players at the different levels. The culture, however, must be unified. The trick is for the coach to get all the players on the team to put their skin in this game, to buy into the culture completely, even as they occupy different levels of development.

Summary

When I first read Maddon’s Chapter 8, the varying levels struck me as the perfect categorization of the players on teams. I can identify the Happy-To-Be-Here player, the Survival player, the Confident player, the Look-At-Me player, and the I-just-want-to-win player. Each team that I have coached had each of the five levels of players in different ratios. Coaching some of these teams was more trying than others. I admit that I had mishandled the environment and culture for some of the teams. While others operated smoothly. I had never really thought about why these teams operated with the varying levels of successes in the player’s development level context until I read this chapter. To be clear, I understand how the fluctuating skill levels of the team members impact the team dynamics, I had not thought about what their mental development levels could impact the team dynamics.

Identifying these levels of players early on would have been helpful in helping me negotiate the trials and tribulations of coaching the teams. Of course, I didn’t think in these terms when I coached them. I know better now. At least I hope so.

References

Joe Maddon, Tom Verducci. The Book of Joe: Trying Not to Suck at Baseball and Life. New York: Hatchette Book Group, 2022.

 

 

Volleyball Coaching Life-We Got You

Have you ever listened to your team try to help each other out? Many of us ask, beg, cajole our teams to help their teammates in times of stress and struggle. It is difficult to teach beginning players to be selfless, to be a great teammate, to subsume their own egos for the good of the team bond. It is particularly difficult with the age of the players. Most of us coach at an age where the players are self-centered because they are at that point in their maturation process where they are self-centered, and we are trying to steer against the tide of their nature. Couple that with the societal trends that seemingly encourage selfishness, and possibly the parental influence which also encourages looking out for themselves rather than the team. It is a difficult and frustrating experience, but it is also highly rewarding when self-centered façade cracks and a genuine team emerges.

The terms that we teach them to use make a difference. The phrases that the players use with each other are more important than ever. Given the sensitivities of the psyche and mindset at those ages, everything can be misconstrued, but more importantly the usage of language can reveal the subconscious mindset.

One phrase that is often used is : you got this. Pretty innocuous and it expresses confidence in the person. Usually, this phrase gets used  when something has gone awry: shanked passes, blown swings at the ball, errors of all kinds. Ideally this comes at a dead ball and the teammates gather to pull themselves out of a negative point. The intent is fine, it may even be appreciated after a negative result. It is what is left unsaid that demonstrates the mindset, whether this is conscious or not. The implication is that this is your issue to fix, that I, nor any of the rest of the team members, have anything to do with this error. You own it.  This may not be what is intended but it could be construed that way — consciously or unconsciously. The person at the receiving end can interpret it as: I need to fix this by myself, which is not the ideal situation in a team sport. While it is true that the individual needs to upgrade their game to eliminate that kind of error, the reality is that the whole team and the team game suffered from that error. Which can be extrapolated to mean that a player who caused the team to suffer is singled out for blame, not a good sentiment if we are playing as a team.  Individual errors are things that need to be fixed in practice but not worked on individually while in the heat of the game.  The loss of a point is a result for the collective, the team. The problem word is you. It directly points at the person.

A better response might be: I got you. It means I am being a good teammate; I got your back. I am here to work with you to accomplish our team goals. It is a powerful thought. It tells the person that she is not alone, that there is power in being in tandem rather than being alone, that the dynamism of two individuals together is greater than two individuals alone

If we extrapolated the previous idea, we get the best response: we got you. This unequivacally that we are a team. Our fortunes in this game, this match, this tournament, this season is dependent on us. We have each other’s back. We decide how this will transpire.

This idea is not original, it is a familiar sentiment; all coaches preach this mindset, but even as the coaches talk this talk, how often do the coaches walk this walk? How many coaches dig into the granularities of team communications and the mindset behind the actions of communicating? How many coaches try to change the subconscious mindsets of their players?

This sentiment might seem cliched in our older and more cynical mind, but those youngsters that we are coaching and teaching see what we do —acting and reacting — will absorb the lessons as we teach them to live the lessons.  If we coaches don’t walk the walk, they may intrinsically interpret that talking the talk is all it takes, that commitment to an idea is not a necessary part of the overall execution of the team.

There are many ways that coaches use to demonstrate the concept of the team. In the end it is the difference between being involved and being committed. I like to use my favorite example, of breakfast food: the chicken is involved through the eggs but the pig is committed through the bacon or sausage. Just as if the coach just talks the talk, they are involved, but if they lived their lessons about the team, they are committed. 

This is a small thing in the grander scale of a volleyball season, a tiny snippet, a grain of sand amongst the big rocks; but as Bruce Springsteen sings: from small things big things one day come.  Changing the way the team express themselves while in support of their teammates is a small conscious change, but it could later burgeon into THE team. All it takes is a small butterfly flapping its wings.

Volleyball Coaching Life-Watching the Women’s CBB Final 4

 I don't usually watch the NCAA Women's Basketball Final Four. I watched the Iowa Vs South Carolina game mainly because of the publicity that Caitlin Clark and the South Carolina Gamecocks have garnered for the tournament. Both have brought the game to an excellence that is remarkable; it was a well-played and hard-fought battle.

But it is what happened after the game that made me think. I first thought about the difference I observed because of the women centered leadership and the difference that it made how I perceived the game. Caitlin Clark had a 41 point night, and she had a hand in all of her team's points in the fourth quarter, whether as points scored or as an assist. Her play and the way her game flowed were eye opening and she certainly deserved all the accolades that she is getting and will get in the future. Yet, when she was interviewed by  Holly Rowe of ESPN, she happily deflected the attention that Rowe tried to focus on her individual accomplishments to her teammates. She framed the night in a way that any coach wants to hear from their players and she did it naturally; no false modesty and no pretentions. She emphasized that the success of the team came from her team; they seem like, first and foremost, a team that loved each other unconditionally and they lived and died as a team. Holly Rowe, to her great credit, did not pursue her original line of questions.

As for Dawn Staley, she was obviously disappointed. Her team was the defending national champion, and they had a 42 game-winning streak. She is a great coach and trains her team to play at a very high level. South Carolina also has a team ethos for success, they played  and sacrificed for each other. They just ran into a buzzsaw that's named Iowa. The remarkable thing about Coach Staley’s responses was that she did not flinch when faced with the questions, she did delve into what went wrong; reporters had to ask, because even with South Carolina’s body of work, the reporters had to ask what went wrong. Coach Staley answered those questions, but she also told the press that she had to get back into the locker room because she had to go take care of her team, talk to those individuals who will no longer for the South Carolina Gamecocks because their time with the team is has run out. This is something that we don't hear too much of in sports. Post game press conferences focus on what the teams did or did not do, and on their successes and mistakes. But her focus, even at the end of a loss, was on her players. It was vital to her  to rush away to address her player’s mental welfare post loss ahead of everything else.

I am very sure that most coaches do go through that process internally. I am sure that there are many great coaches who think line Coach Staley. Very few think in terms of these players who were just becoming adults and how they were handling what might be the biggest and most public failure in their lives up to this point. Even if it seems natural to only focus on the failure, is that the right thing to do? Should we not be more concerned about the human beings that we are coaching rather than the results? Collegiate sports are highly competitive, obviously, especially revenue generating sports. The reality is highly competitive and highly volatile for the coaches and their jobs. For a coach to say right now my main concern is my players, especially in that arena with that amount of attention, that is remarkable to me.

The two observations seem to align  with the trite saying: women bond to battle while men battle to bond; that the relationships between players and coaches plays a more significant role in the successes of the teams than we are led to believe. Although the reason I believe the saying is trite is because it is so true. The relationship between players and coaches is a large part of the bonding. It is a natural part of the team experience to build that symbiotic relationship for athletes and coaches. The process of creating a team ethos is an infinitely iterative process of using competition to build relationships and conversely, building relationships to foster competition. In the aftermath of Title IX, I believe that the divide employed by that saying has eroded away and the two conditional statements has become a single biconditional statement which affects everyone: people battle to bond and bond to battle.  

Returning to my original thought: were the two observations I perceived an example of the difference women leadership can make? I don’t know. In my experience with very limited data and considering my completely subjective observations, I believe there is something to it. Although I have no tangible proof.

Consider a broader scope of inquiry, is it possible that the difference in the team culture cultivated by the coaches is the reason for the successes of their teams? Is the difference due to the fact that we have coaches who are more empathetic?

Empathy, as the ability to actually feel what another person is feeling — literally “walk a mile in their shoes” — it goes beyond sympathy, which is  a simple expression of concern for another person’s misfortune.

Even though I have known empathetic men coaches and completely unempathetic women coaches; they are small samples which offers counterexamples to the generalization about men and women. Do those counterexamples completely negate the original hypothesis that women leadership is the difference in what I perceived? I don’t know. I do know that I want to believe in my original hypothesis.

Is empathy a salient characteristic of teams that are led by women, as the head coach of Iowa is also a woman? Is it that empathetic culture which explains how Caitlin Clark is so team oriented? Or is it that she was so empathetic that she thrives in a familiar and welcoming culture? Which raises another question: is the team culture a necessary part of winning? Or turning that question around: is winning a fortunate byproduct of building an empathetic human centered culture?

Winning and losing is the basis of all sporting activities. Coaches do all that they can to prepare the players, they teach and prepare them for the necessary requirements to win tactically, technically, strategically, and physically. Should they also do so personally? Coaches absolutely want to win, but should they put their personal relationship, their mutual trust with their players in the competitive context? Should the coach-player relationship be transactive? Is winning the driving force for their relationship with their players or their teams?

I have seen many coach-player relationships become something that is transactional: I will build a personal relationship with you, if and only if, you do as I say and help us win; with winning taking precedence over the personal relationship. This is my personal observation over years of coaching. I have seen that transactional relationship happen with junior club coaches, with high school coaches, and with college coaches. My caveat is that my perception is exactly that, perceptions; I am not privy to the behind-the-scenes relationships between players and coaches, I can only surmise through my own observations, all based on decisions made and without context.

I have observed coaches make decisions for the benefit of their team results rather than what is best for the player.  Is that the right approach? Is that the wrong approach? For the team? For the individuals?

In terms of my observations of Caitlin Clark and Dawn Staley, we are essentially asking the which came first, the chicken or the egg question: is winning a function of established culture? Or is culture a function of winning? In the short term, do you, as a coach, do what is best for your culture and your relationships with your players and expect success? Or do you lead the team to get the best results at that moment and hope the culture and relationships thrive?

Just some extemporaneous wanderings.

Volleyball Coaching Life-"Sandbagging"

 sand bagging

To deliberately perform at a lower level than you are capable of

A lot of discussions have been started and proposals made on how we can stop “Sandbagging” in the large tournaments. This seems to crop up every year around the same time when teams are trying to qualify for Junior National Championships. The accusations are that teams are maliciously playing below their potential, in an attempt to qualify for Nationals by hook or by crook. Their playing in a lower competitive level indicates that they are:

1.     Depriving a more worthy team who is playing in the correct level of competition of that chance at the bid.

2.     These teams are maliciously and deliberately cheating to get into the Nationals.

The first point smacks of entitlement while the second point is based on subjective and biased judgements.

Those who accuse teams of sandbagging often act as if they are the aggrieved team; more often than not, they are the team that gets knocked out of contention by a stronger team through competition, other times they are on the sideline looking thinking that if it wasn’t for that team, or all the other teams who are sandbagging we would be qualifying for nationals. That belief is false.

Remember, the divisions are structural not factual: The divisions are a convenience not a definition. It is a means of giving the USAV a means of organizing the large numbers of team participating. It is NOT a definition to be assigned to teams. Using the division definition is the tail wagging the dog. The teams play into the division definition by the body of their work AFTER having played the season, not before the season, not during the season. The determination can be made a posteriori, even that assignment to a division is dodgy.

The intent of dividing the field into divisions is both logistical and practical.

·       An unlimited division would entail many more matches in pool play to so that the field can be winnowed down to manageable brackets.

·       Bracket play would be untenable and last well beyond a weekend, and detrimental to the health of the players.

The tacit assumption is made by those who cry sandbagging that each team, as they are formed each season, have an identity ascribed to them. They are an Open team, we are a USA team. How can you tell?

To follow the logic of the complainants about “sandbagging”,  a clear definition of what each division means, and most important to them, a way of identifying these teams. These arguments are usually made to determine the definition in their minds.

·       The Eye Test. They look good: they are big and athletic.  What is meant: They are at least bigger and more athletic than my team, therefore they are “sandbagging” when they play in my division.

·       Competition Test. They have won matches in the higher division, they are therefore playing below their level now. Which is to discount the following:

o   The players they have available: There may be players on the roster that are missing from the tournament on the weekend that they play in a lower division.

o   The level of competition at each tournament is not homogeneous: The tournament on the weekend where the team played at a higher division is composed of generally weaker teams, ergo, they played better.

o   The path to bracket play is different for each tournament, subject to chance. Even though the tournaments are structured identically and all the rules are the same, each tournament is an independent event. The teams may find that they match up better against the opponents along their path in one tournament than the other tournaments. The components: teams, pools, and brackets change with each tournament. It is anything but predictable.

One proposed solution is the sliding qualification argument: if your team performed “well” playing at a higher division, you should stay in that division and not be allowed to move down.

Which leads to the idea that those teams who did well in a preceding qualifying tournament at a higher division will dominate in in a lower division for the next qualifying tournament This deploys a well-known fallacy: post hoc, er·​go propter hoc: after this, therefore because of this: because an event occurred first, it must have caused this later event—used to describe a fallacious argument. Each tournament is an independent event, if that team performed well at a higher division previously, it does not automatically mean they will dominate the following tournament at a lower division, all the arguments stated previously still holds. One would expect them to, but it is not guaranteed.

Examining the reason for “Sandbagging”, and I know there are teams that try to qualify at a lower division after having played and not succeeding to qualify at a higher division.

·       Maybe they aren’t good enough to compete at that level?

·       Maybe their coach and club misjudged their potential at the formation of the team?

·       Maybe they were better off playing in the lower division in the first place? A bitter dose of reality.

Now examining the reason for those who are upset at “sandbaggers”.

·       Maybe the adults making the decisions are not aware of the quality or the numbers of teams that play in their chosen division. They didn’t know what they didn’t know.

·       Maybe their coach and club misjudged their potential at the formation of the team?

·       Maybe those teams who are upset just aren’t good enough to compete with those teams at their self-identified division? A case of the Dunning Kruger effect.

·       Maybe they were better off playing in the lower division in the first place? Again not knowing what they didn’t know.

·       A bitter dose of reality, which turned into bitterness which turned into an exercise in the  sunken cost fallacy: we have committed the season to a selected division, but because we misjudged, our solution is to ignore our initial error and instead blame the “sandbaggers” for our team not being able to qualify.

The purpose of club sports is to have an opportunity to compete against all kinds of teams. You learn more from losing than from winning. I do agree that getting thumped mercilessly is not enjoyable, but that is part of the lessons of competition. Coaches pontificate brilliantly about resilience and grit. They are consulting with experts, reading books, and listening to podcasts to look for the magic potion that will make our players grittier and more resilient; yet, when our teams face any kind of headwinds, like a strong opponent in a competition, we balk and accuse others of malice. It can’t never be because our team are not performing or that we, the coaches, are mistaken.

Sometimes we coaches need to learn how to do what we constantly teach: suck it up Buttercup and play ball. As my friend always tells his teams before playing a tough match, strap on your crash helmets, this is a rough ride.

Although there is always the Patriot division if you want to go to nationals that badly.

 

 

Volleyball Coaching Life-Specialization

I had the good fortune of having one of the junior players from my club in Saint Louis reach out to me. We had a frank discussion on Facebook and on Messenger about the state of junior volleyball, as she saw it. I promised her I would address some of her concerns and thoughts.

 A little background first. She was one of many talented players on a very loaded team. She played for us as a junior and a senior and we did very well in the GJNC. She ended up being a two-sport athlete at a Power 5 conference school; she participated in both volleyball and track, she was a hell of a high jumper, which obviously spoke to her hops in volleyball. Her chosen path was very challenging physically and mentally. While she had stellar collegiate careers in both sports, she felt she had better success at volleyball than she did at track, and she admits that she favored volleyball with in college. I also remember her telling me that she was in a constant state of fatigue and pain, because when she's in season with volleyball, she's in the offseason with track, and then when she's in the offseason with volleyball, she's in season with track. She experienced double duty year-round throughout her four years in college.

 She graduated from the university, did the adult thing: got a job, got married, and had three kids. She didn’t start to get back to playing volleyball until quite a few years later because she said: “that was how long it took for my body to recover”, she was playing sand instead of indoor ball,

 Now, twenty years later, she is looking at the sport of volleyball as the doting mother for her children, because she wants her children to love the sport as she did when she was younger; because she wanted her children to learn from the same experiences that she had so loved as a teen. At the same time as she was telling me her desires for her children, she is telling me about how horrified she is by what she had learned about the evolution of junior sports, and junior volleyball specifically.

 It is interesting to hear her perspective, because she had been away from the junior volleyball scene for about 20 years. Junior volleyball has evolved to a completely different animal, so much so that she doesn't recognize much of it, although the sport had not changed so drastically.

 During those same 20 years, I experienced the evolution firsthand but from a less compressed point of view than hers, the time variable was not a consideration as I watched junior volleyball evolve as my life was evolving; because of that, I didn't notice how drastic the changes have been, at least not enough to be alarmed. It wasn’t until I started to look back on it from her perspective as well as my own self-limited coaching time as I had stepped away from coaching club ball in the last two or three years, that I see the evolution.

 The following is a transcript of our conversations on Messenger. I edited some of it for readability, correcting some grammar and spelling mistakes, and made it clearer, I hope. Any misinterpretation is my fault.

I did both Volleyball and Track, which are not a very common combination of  two sports in college. Volleyball and track are very comparable to each other and different seasons (fall versus spring). In high school I did volleyball, basketball, and track and by my junior year, I quit basketball because of club volleyball. I find myself completely saddened by how athletics have changed. Some things might be better, but a lot are so sad. Kids at a very young age choose their one sport and stick to it. You don’t find many multiple sport athletes. Or clubs allowing other sports to occur. Now having children of my own, I want to allow them to do many sports.

 

….the same body repetition leads to early injuries, and not to mention burnout. Some clubs like travel soccer don’t allow the athletes to even play on their high school team, it is 100% club or nothing. It’s just sad to me. I was a well-rounded athlete in multiple sports, I just wish it wasn’t about the money but now it truly is. Not only the clubs making money, but now it’s the college athletes making money, which is even more of a driver to being a one sport athlete. All around sad.

It’s a tough topic. I see both sides. Specializing in a sport and being the best in that sport versus being a well-rounded athlete. I was great at both sports, but I couldn’t give track a fair enough shot while doing volleyball. So, parts of me wishes I did pick one or the other. Multiple sport athletes are well rounded and help with overuse and repetition. But now with players being able to make money as soon as they get into college. It makes you want to specialize, but I feel like the sport is changing and makes me sad. I would have loved the portal to transfer, and I probably would have, but I chose the university I chose so I could do both sports which many other schools had said no to. There are so many variables and factors. Just makes me sad for my kids playing sports now. Where is the love for the game instead of the business/money aspect?

It is, indeed, a very tough question. Even though her perspective is not surprising for those dinosaurs like myself who have been around club volleyball for so many decades, I believe the most recent changes are the most salient. Club sports for juniors in general has burgeoned to the point where specialization and year-round sports seasons have become seemingly inevitable, even as many clubs and club  coaches are diligently repeating the mantra of the value of the multi-sport athletic experience, especially for the young players starting in sports; yet many are also lamenting the fact that they don’t have the athletes full time for volleyball training because of their other interests. Indeed, many clubs are leveraging the year-round volleyball experience for increased revenue opportunities. High schools are also jumping into the fray, not wanting to lose ground to the clubs. The result is not just year-round volleyball but multiple periods of overlapping athletic activities, which can lead to harm, physically and mentally.

In many ways, we are victims of our own success. As more players are aspiring to move onto the collegiate stage, the rush to recruitment has made the large convention center tournaments and college showcases the norm. In the earlier days, clubs and coaches, in an effort to entice the parents and families to spend more money, evolved the central purpose of club volleyball from skill development to college recruitment. A narrative was evolved to convince everyone involved that the larger, and longer club experience was the only way to ensure that the players ended up playing in college, dangling that college scholarship as the carrot.

As it turns out, the clubs were preaching to the choir. No one needed to try very hard to convince the parents. Even though, a simple calculation would show that the investment made in junior sports development  is better spent being invested in college funds; a more stable and better outcome than hoping for a scholarship. Even with the numbers staring them in the face, many parents eagerly invest in their progeny’s success in sports with the college scholarships as the center of the attraction.

But that couldn’t explain the number of families  paying for club sports. While many parents are realistic about their progeny’s potential as a college athlete, they see many other reasons for participating in club sports; all the traditional reasons: teamwork, ability to work with others, the sheer satisfaction of accomplishing goals, improved confidence, learning about leadership, self-sacrifice for the greater good, etc. But, because the focus and raison d'etre  for club sports has shifted to the scholarship angle, the accepted wisdom has become: play large convention center tournaments; play as many of these tournaments as possible; train players for better tournament  performances, sometimes at the expense of improving their skills; and finally, insisting that the players specialize on one sport at a very early age, before their bodies have fully developed and while dropping all other sports, indeed all other activities.  It is the tail wagging the dog when we compare it to the original purpose of club sports: to improve player skills during their high school off-season in preparation for competing in high school. Even as I am lamenting this evolution, I am not so naïve as to think that we can reverse that trend, the horse is out of the barn, it is too late.  I am also not hypocritical enough to say that I don’t enjoy the large convention center tournaments, they are very useful and exciting. The talent levels does flow towards the correct level, but it has been my experience that it usually take two or more days of play out of the multiple day tournaments for most teams to settle into their level of competition. In the meantime, the top-level teams are not challenged during the first few days, while the lower level teams are getting pounded into oblivion. There is certainly great value in playing better opponents, but the benefit comes from being able to compete against those opponents,. There is no benefit in losing by scoring in the single digits, especially with inexperienced players. The sport suffers because we lose players’ interest.

The positive consequences are that we are getting better players that are excellent advanced players because they are exposed to better competition and are highly trained to compete and win. The negative consequences are that they are coerced into being focused on just one sport, denying themselves opportunities for other sports and other activities. We are creating a general populace of future adults that are less well-rounded, who are hyper focused on one chosen activity and are unable to understand that there is more to being a well-rounded human than being great at one sport or activity.

Unfortunately, most of the junior athletes are stuck on this merry-go-round because they have no choice in the matter, the goals of training are created by adults, adults who are ostensibly motivated by what is best for the athlete. As the state of junior level sports evolves, the emphasis will be on those who are looking for college playing opportunities, which also means more large convention center events and showcases, less single day events or local events. As it is, my clubs’ regional and local level teams are having to scramble to play enough tournaments to fill their desired playing opportunities. The small and local tournaments cannot compete with the big tournaments, so the regional teams have to look forward to playing competitive matches after the first few days.  Coaches and clubs who field regional and local level teams will, more likely than not, subtly apply peer pressure on the players to convince them to specialize at a much earlier point in their lives than before, it is a reflexive move, what is good for the goose is also good for the gander. Increased scheduling conflicts between high schools and clubs drives the schools and clubs to compete for the players’ time, with neither side giving because they are fighting for “their” players. An inevitable result is rising incidences of overuse injury and possibly burnout.

This is why we see so much attrition at the 18 and under level. At this level, many have decided one way or another. The great pipeline that fed the junior sports slows down to a trickle at the  18’s level, which hurts volleyball because there is now a break in the continuum of playing. Those that stop playing at 18 may or may not return to their sports when they go to college, some will just walk away, defeating our intention: growing the volleyball habit into a lifelong sport. It is my impression that the adult membership in the USAV has dropped precipitously in every season that I have been involved with junior volleyball, even as there are large number of  junior players feeding into the system. I don’t have any data about the number of former club players playing in college intramurals, college club teams, or in rec leagues, I would guess that the attrition rate is considerable, i.e. the difference in the junior club membership during the 16’s level, which is the highest number of memberships the last time I checked, and the number of new adult memberships six years hence would be an interesting and imperfect gauge.

In view of the most recent development of large businesses purchasing the large volleyball clubs and plans to host massive convention center tournaments, my imperfect extrapolation is that the interests of the regional and local teams will erode even further, until junior volleyball will become ever more upper rather than just middle class.

Another, more subtle yet persistent message for developing junior players and future human adults is that putting your best effort into any activity is to be the best, whether they are capable of “the best” or not. A commitment to an activity is only validated by becoming the very best, no matter the level of the player’s ability. If the player does not measure up, then they should find something else to invest their time and effort in; it doesn’t matter how they feel about the activity: if you cannot play for the national team then you are wasting your time, try something else. The idea of doing something for the sake of self-improvement, no matter the outcome, is what dies in that persistent and pernicious belief.

There is an often-told story by the author Kurt Vonnegut.

When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you “ questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I didn’t play any sport. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something that I will never forget, and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “win” at them.”

What did that story have to do with sports specialization?

I am and was a horrible athlete. I was short, uncoordinated, and overweight. I somehow fell in love with volleyball, I tried to play club volleyball in gradual school. I was the third setter on the second team or the second setter on the third team, I don’t remember. They let me play because I was older and could procure the post-tournament celebratory libations. I played, no matter that I knew I was going to lose and often humiliate myself, but I didn’t care. Most of the people I played with didn’t care, we loved the game and we played. Later, as a means of making myself a better player, I turned to coaching, and I fell in love with coaching volleyball. There is some kind of perverse masochism intrinsic in me that drives me to pedagogy.

While I was evolving as a coach and as a teacher, the experience that I gained through coaching, and the myriad other parts of my multifaceted life has served me well. The cumulative experiences I garnered while just trying things out and performing at not at a very high level has enriched my life. My experiences with volleyball have benefitted my endeavors in other things, and vice versa. It has made me who I am.

In our insistence to service the adult desires in sustaining an economical system called junior volleyball we are influencing junior players to specialize both directly and indirectly. In so doing, we are depriving them of the chance to accumulate experiences that nurture their generalist nature, a nature that is vital for the development of future adult human beings.

In the end, I am not sure if I was able to answer my former player’s concerns about her young children, but I am pleased that she sees the situation, one that she was once a part of, with clear eyes and discerning judgement. I hope that she can successfully navigate the very complicated, ever changing, and turbulent seas of junior volleyball with her children, just as she had in a bygone era.

Volleyball Coaching Life-On the Experienced Retiring

 A friend of mine told me in the middle of the volleyball season that we should be seeing many experienced and well-known volleyball coaches calling it quits at the end of this season. He said in very strong terms that many people have just had it and are burnt out and they don't feel like they can do the job correctly, or as they perceive to be doing it correctly.

A person posted a list on  VolleyTalk along with his opinion:

Tom Hilbert, Hugh McCutcheon, Marc Rosen, Joe Sagula, Dave Rubio are the big names, but Chad Callihan also retired from Wyoming. Suzie Fritz, Kent Miller, Mike Sealy and Ray Gooden may not have left on their own terms but they are certainly well-known coaches with good records and are they trying to get back in?
Add in Shelton Collier from D2, Jenny McDowell from D3 and Bob Bertucci, who left the men's game this past offseason. Last year we lost Russ Rose, Cathy George, and Fran Flory...
There's a lot of significant people who aren't in the game anymore. There may be more (there always are) but I don't think we need to speculate about who else might leave - we've lost more than enough people to call this prophecy "true."

We can surmise that they are also tired of the grind required in order to keep up the pressure: from themselves, from their staff, from the players, from the administration, from their own families, from the parents of the players, and from the general fan base. According to the Jobs Thread on VolleyTalk, at the end of the 2022 season there are 34 Division One head coaching openings, 22 Division Two, 216 Division 3, 37 NAIA and 9 JUCO. Of course not all of those are people quitting, some are coaches getting fired, some are coaches who are transitioning to new jobs and other coaches are moving up in the food chain.  

We know we've gone through three difficult years of transitions coming rapidly, especially within the volleyball/athletic landscape, one may call the confluence of events the perfect storm. There is the COVID pandemic, and the way the powers that be chose to deal with the great unknown. There is the NCAA’s decision to give those athletes that are affected extra years of eligibility; which no one would say in the name of fairness, is a bad decision. The problem is the way they chose to ignore the unintended consequences on the rosters, scholarship limits, and effects on future recruiting classes. The combination of the COVID eligibility and the transfer portal  made a difficult situation nearly impossible.

As I reflect upon the realities of college volleyball,  I — inevitably — started to draw a comparison to my other life as an engineer. I start to think about the ebb and flow of careers and the relative attributes between the younger and older employees in the work force.

When I was working as a mid-career engineer, i.e. I wasn't wide eyed, innocent, and willing to try everything just because I could; nor was I decrepit, stubbornly set in my ways,  and cynical because I've seen it all, done it all, and knowing that there's nothing new under the sun. A newly hired HR person, who was fresh from the campuses stepped in front of the assembled workers at the work site and declared that the company needed to get rid of all the older workers and hire newly minted engineers because they are the ones with the bright new ideas, the initiative to break new grounds, and get things done. She followed up with the thought that all the older workers do is take up space and bring down morale with their skepticism, and they don't really add any value to the organization.

I took offense to that, as did most of my more experienced colleagues. There is an old joke/story which tries to make light of the bias for the new and young. A machine started to malfunction at a manufacturing plant. The workers and managers were at a loss, and nobody knew how to fix it. The head of the plant got in contact with the old manufacturing engineer who's been retired many years. He arrives unceremoniously, looks around the machine, asks for a hammer, and  whacks the machine three times in the middle of a panel with the hammer. Lo and behold, the machine sputters to life and starts to work smoothly anew. The retiree walks away saying: “you guys will be getting a bill from me”. A few days later, the bill arrives with a single number: $10,001. The corporate CFO blows his top, and calls the retiree screaming: I don't understand why I should be paying you, this is an outrageous amount of money when all you did was whack the machine three times with our hammer. I need an itemized bill. Another bill arrives a few days later, it's itemized. It says: $1: Hitting the machine three times, $10,000 for knowing where to hit the machine. And that, to me, is the essence of having experience: knowing how to use the experience to diagnose the problems, knowing why the machines were not working, and how to fix it.

Realizing, of course, that not all experience is great or useful. My friend Al’s favorite saying was: do you have 20 years’ worth of experience, or did you just have one year of experience 20 times? I have known many people who are very limited in what they have experienced, what they have observed, and what their experience can do for them in application. But, when it comes down to it, I would rather have experience because experience is not something that can be learned or memorized from a book. Experience is sentient information, connected to learned knowledge filtered through the prior experience into more knowledge.

The advantage that the inexperienced have is that they are not cynical because they have no pre-conceived notions. In their minds, there are no highs too high and lows too low because they have no experiential reference. The main mission of young engineers, actually all engineers, are to wreak havoc, create problems, propose outrageous solutions, experience as much failure as they can, but also to learn from them; that is how one accumulates experience, rather than having the same experience repeatedly.  

The spirit of making mistakes, experiencing failures with every challenge is the first thing that dies as the engineer gets older. The hard limits set on the inexperienced engineers come from both the employer’s conservatism, they are after all, paying for those failures; far more insidious is the engineer’s tendency to self-censor in deference to the employer’s anticipated response to failures. Not all engineers wither under the employer’s expectations, some are able to keep their curiosity and spirit of fresh perspectives alive.  

The  chief engineer and a bunch of other engineers at one of the companies I work for were sitting around having a beer after a really good technical discussion, I asked him: how much money do you think you've cost the company over the years by your failures or errors in judgement? He ponders the question a bit and he says: $2 million. We were stunned by the number and started questioning him about how he got to that number. He replied: if I didn't cost the company $2 million, then I wouldn’t be trying hard enough  and I wouldn’t be contributing enough with all of my ability, because failures and mistakes comes with the art of engineering.

This is what young engineers bring to the party from the beginning. They should have no fear; because there will be enough experienced engineers around to check their ideas and avoid the truly outrageous and predictable failures and mistakes. Of course, corporate managers and the engineer’s natural proclivity towards being safe and conservative can and most often does kill the spirit of invention that are the most desirable trait for the newly minted engineers. Management will often whack the new young engineers on the nose with a figurative and proverbial rolled-up newspaper when they make any mistakes, which effectively cures them of any initiative and creativity.

Reality of course demands something in the middle: engineers with creativity, courage of their convictions,  and the spirit of invention while also having experience and the ability to think critically to avoid making the nonsensical, predictable, and egregious errors.

As I am on the downside of my engineering career. I have been taking a 20/20 hindsight at my career. Regrets and lamentations are the natural reaction while looking back at the painful mistakes, miscues, and missteps that are vivid in my memory. There is no sense in crying over spilt milk. I judged myself as being too deferential as a young engineer and too cynical as an older engineer. I deferred to my experienced and elder colleagues when it comes to ideas that are untested and original, and I self-censored those same type of ideas later on in my career because: ”That will never work.” I was fearful of exposing myself and suffering from the  vagaries of corporate politics.

I have rediscovered my motivation to be aggressive, to try things, and to make mistakes after I moved on from the corporate world. Why did I? Why am I so much more open to it? The main motivation, as far as I can figure it, is that I no longer have that sword of Damocles of being employed in the long-term hanging over my head. Partly because the subjects of my study are topics that I find curious. The general feeling is that if I happen to contribute, so be it.

Getting back to experience, I look  at the amount of experience that are cycling out of volleyball coaching from the people who are retiring, getting out of the game — either voluntarily or forcibly — and I think about the significant, deep, and broad body of knowledge that will be disappearing from the state of the game; a pool of knowledge that can’t and possibly won't ever be taught or  repeated because the knowledge is  resident within that person. I also think about the parallel loss of knowledge in engineering that disappears with engineers that are made redundant and retired. I wonder if all that is lost forever, whether all the knowledge lost throughout history is also lost forever. Do we lose a volume of knowledge that is an equivalent of the library of Alexandria with every generation of retirees? 

Of course, not all the experiential losses are equally valuable for posterity. Engineering and coaching evolve and mostly improve as the arts advance over time. Analytical methods are improved upon by numerical methods bolstered by computational capabilities. Coaching methods are improved upon by the integration of psychology, human mechanics, cognitive sciences, and motor learning into known paradigms. The question is whether the body of knowledge lost is valuable.

Why talk about this? Well, it just occurs to me that we are losing knowledge and wisdom in the form of intangible, undocumented, and unorganized experience. I am sure that many of those who have left the game, both in volleyball and engineering, will be documenting some of their knowledge in the future. Hugh McCutcheon already has a new book published recently in conjunction with his transition from coaching players to coaching coaches. That is not the knowledge that I am concerned with; my concern is with the intangible knowledge, the extemporaneous decision-making basis of the retired coaches and engineers.

It seems that we are in the midst of a changing of the guard, coaches who are of a certain generation are leaving the game, realizing that coaching volleyball at the highest level of competition in the US is a young person’s game. While younger coaches are getting their opportunities to sit in the big chair, it is the natural course of human endeavors. My recognition of the ebb and flow does not mean that I cannot lament and wonder about the loss of wisdom, just as I lament and wonder about the loss of wisdom in engineering as I watched my mentors and icons retire and pass away.

My hope is that we take advantage of these coaches and engineers, to use them as references, sounding boards, and resource. My hope is that we actively seek out that wisdom rather than waiting for them to volunteer their wisdom.

Given our society’s current preoccupation with Artificial Intelligence, I hope we are perspicacious enough to indulge and invest in natural intelligence that are the retired coaches and engineers.

Volleyball Coaching Life-Santiago Ball

Volleyball people have been trying to doodle with the traditional scoring for ages now. The volleyball playing rules today are far from Dr. William G. Morgan’s mintonette game.

We have evolved from nine players on the court to six players on the court. We have incorporated a service rotation. We have gone from sideout scoring to rally scoring. The changes have evolved over the years, many of the recent changes in the rule have been motivated by people wanting to make the game of volleyball attractive to television broadcasters, obviously to get our beloved game shown on television.

The legendary Dr. Jim Coleman had experimented with applying tennis rules to volleyball, having the teams play best two out of three sets but each set is scored like tennis: the winner has to win at least six games of 15 points with a margin of two games in each set. I saw it when the USPV was barnstorming through St. Louis during their inaugural season. I don’t remember much about the match, but it all felt kind of weird to watch because of the novelty.

I was talking to my friend Santiago Restrepo about alternative scoring for volleyball earlier this week, he said he has his solution to getting more television exposure. It seemed kind of interesting, so I will present this version of Santiago-ball for consideration. See if his confidence in his rules is justified.

·       Play best 4 out of 7 sets.

·       Each set is rally score to 15.

o   The intent here is to play the last 15 points in a 25 point set and do away with the first 10 points because nothing is on the line for the first 10 points anyways.

o   This works out to playing 2 to 3.5 sets in the regular scoring.

·       Each team plays their best rotation every set. They can play setter front row if they want, very unlikely, or they can play setter back row. Players don’t rotate, front middle stays front middle all the time, setter sets from wherever they want for every point. No overlap rule. No out of rotation calls. This is like the Chinese 9-man rules.

o   Keeps the stoppage to a minimum and keeps the best players at that position playing at that position the entire match.

·       No substitution restrictions, you can sub entire platoons every point if you want. I remember watching Lindenwood under Ron Young play against Stew McDole’s Graceland team, Stew was trying to stop the bleeding and subbed six at every stoppage, I believe that NAIA had no substitution restriction. In that case the subs  still had to be recorded in the scoresheet, which slowed the game down; whereas in Santiago ball the players just run in and out of their positions in the rotation, so that there are no added stoppage for subs.

o   The intent is to put your best attackers and defenders on the court all the time against the best attackers and defenders from the other team. The players can just: “Go at it hard.” They are also playing that one position the entire match, which should keep them in the flow.

o   If your #1 middle stinks it up, just sub her. If your leftside hammer’s shoulder is hanging on by a thread, sub her. If anyone in the back row is shanking balls, sub them.

·       There is one designated server. They serve every serve. It could be anyone playing the backrow, but if that position gets subbed out, it is still the player playing that position that serves.

·       Each team gets two timeouts each set, for 30 seconds. Minimizes stoppage time.

·       That’s it. All the other rules are the same.

Some downside is that the teams are much smaller because not much playing time to be had. Which makes it unpopular in college, club, and high schools. But we are living in Santiago world, so no one cares.

Now. I am awaiting with great antici-pation for counter arguments, counter proposals, and  alternatives.

What says you?