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.

 

Volleyball Coaching Life-Heuristics

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. As the book had done previously (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2023/06/volleyball-coaching-life-five-levels.html) I started  thinking about a topic that he had brought up while reading Chapter 11:Never Forget the Heartbeat.

My take is my own, I am not trying to put 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 unless noted.

heu·​ris·​tic: involving or serving as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving by experimental and especially trial-and-error methods

·       heuristic techniques

·       a heuristic assumption

also: of or relating to exploratory problem-solving techniques that utilize self-educating techniques (such as the evaluation of feedback) to improve performance.

I have consistently used heuristics throughout my career as an engineer. One reason that people in the STEM world uses heuristics is because heuristics in the sciences are usually buttressed and scaffolded by the natural laws of sciences. Natural constraints have already been woven into the heuristics. The problem with using heuristics to solve problems that are brimming with human interactions is that human decision making is nonlinear and random, which adds an infinite order of complexity to decision making. Using heuristics in a situation that is nonlinear and random could be compared to fitting a square peg in a round hole: the solution may not only be erroneous, but more importantly, it may exacerbate the problem exponentially.

Heuristics can be described as a System 1 response, per Kahneman and Tversky (Kahneman 2013). David Epstein would call heuristics a procedural solution to a problem (Epstein 2019). Heuristics are a cognitive shortcut that we use consistently when we are faced with decisions where the there is a dearth of information and time; it is a common situation, we extrapolate what we know, what our experience tells us to shoehorn into the context and situation that exists at that moment in time. Human minds being what they are, we create rule of thumbs, truisms, and simple operational procedures to help make those decisions. In time, the heuristics become inviolate and engrained permanently in our minds; that is, we ignore the context and initial assumptions that make the heuristics true. As Soyer and Hogarth states (Emre Soyer 2020), doing so ignores two critical facts: we usually have both too little information and we have too much information. First, the experiences that we base our heuristics on is true only in that context, in that specific situation, whether it holds true generally for all similar instances is questionable, but in our haste and inability to gain more information, we do what mathematics students are often warned not to do: we extrapolate. We fill in the missing information gap with our imagination, fueled by our fallacies and biases. The convenience of that decision making process seems to justify itself, but more often than not, the decision will turn out to work to the detriment of the decision maker. We justify our choices to satisfy the need to come to a quick decision, we ignore the need to come to an accurate decision. Second, when we are inundated with information, it is natural that our human tendency to use our imagination to create narratives and stories. This is to help us remember the details of the situation, but it also conveniently fit the surfeit of information available to our subconscious mind into a familiar frame; unfortunately, this framing will always be colored with our subconscious beliefs and biases. We will add details to our narrative just to make it fit because we believe it is pertinent even when they are not. Correlation does not equal causality.

Another consideration is that in using heuristics, we are often using a general solution, something that we have cobbled together from numerous experiences into a single heuristic. Contexts are not usually considered when using heuristics. In short, we are using the generic case to solve problems that are specific and demand unique situations; that is part of the attraction of using heuristics, the assumption that good enough is good enough. We assume those pesky details to go away because we don’t have enough time to delve into the granularities.

In the pre-Moneyball era of sports, gutfeel and intuitions were the ingredients that make up  heuristics.  As such, those were the heuristics that statistical analysis was used to dispel. Analytics was the gutfeel and intuition heuristic buster.

In Joe Maddon’s case, he was an early adapter to statistical analysis. He embraced analytics, which was the reason that he was hired as a major league manager.  The analytics departments of the three teams he managed churned out reams of data for him to use. In time, however he came to the realization that analytics is just one tool, one very potent tool, but just A tool to use.

In the short time that Maddon worked as a major league manager, a relatively short tenure when compared with his long tenure working as a coach and a scout, the accepted decision making emphasis  had turned itself on its head. Because of Moneyball, managing became completely about numbers and following the algorithmic routine of processing the number, do what the number says, and never question the numbers. Those who manage had to defend every decision by reciting the all-important analytics.

One phrase that I often use to describe people’s attitudes towards sacred cows is: the biggest and most vocal anti-establishment rebels will often become the biggest new establishment dogmatist after the ancient regime has been overturned. Those who are most passionate about their beliefs have skin in the game, which make them the most vociferous and fierce about their beliefs, so much so that they become as intractable as those who they had deposed.

In many ways they suffer from the sunken-cost fallacy: they have bought into their beliefs that they feel they must not betray their side of the argument that they become zealots.  They will automatically dispense with debate and become just as entrenched and rooted in their heuristics as those they had opposed in the old establishment.  This is what I see in the debate between the analytics proponents and the intuition proponents. Because of this dedication to the sunken cost  fallacy, we have a dichotomous situation that is reflective of the ethos of our society.

Maddon has an interesting, and I believe, sane approach to all this. He thinks that the analytics department is generating too much information, information that is so overwhelming in volume while also containing too much noise. The usual safeguard, in terms of statistical correlation thresholds have been ignored because of the amount of data generated by data mining, ANY correlation is deemed significant. In other words, the decision makers are chasing after noise. His other concern is that in the flood of information, the decision maker must be able to discern quickly, and accurately; which pieces of information are pertinent, and which are extraneous; an impossibility given the minuteness of the time scale and the immensity of the amount of analytic information. Indeed, he wrote in the book that even as he is a proponent of analytics, he wants less information when it comes to crunch time: when the decision maker has the most at stake, or when the situational pressure and stress is at its maximum. He explains the reasons for his preference by pointing out the following: the sample space for the data from high pressure and stress situations are minimal, not enough to meet the statistical significance threshold for decision making; he also believes that people behave differently when under high pressure and stress, therefor any data that is collected will be uncertain, noisy, and not predictive .

He makes the point of saying that he mostly manages with his instincts during the most critical situations because he does not believe that more data is helpful, instead too much data is more detrimental than helpful. This is where he makes an interesting observation. He thinks of his instincts as thinking in advance; that is, the accumulated experiences with different situations, in different contexts, and with different people are all a part of his thinking in advance. I suspect that the thinking that he does prior to a World Series game has been scrubbed of any heuristics from his experience as he is mindful of their presence and the fallacious decision that may result when he employs those heuristics. He states that he prepares for those situations by reviewing the strategy and tactics that are unusual and unexpected, just in case.

The other part of his explanation is that the manager does not and should not operate in a vacuum when it comes to the humanity of his players. Part of his knowledge and experience comes from his interaction and history with his players. He should understand their psychological makeup and he has experienced their lives during the time that they have worked together while under the glare of competition. Maddon emphasizes that he makes a point of knowing and understanding all his players. His “instincts” about the humans that he is working with are worth much more than the reams of soulless data because decision making with data is just data, coaching a team of people is an art. This art is the expression of human instincts when dealing with other humans. Indeed, he makes the eloquent point that analytics and instincts should be used and applied according to the situation and context. Data guides strategy, and the art is belief in the human element, the best solution needs to be both. The magic is in the proportion of each and how they couple and synthesize into new knowledge.

I remember when I was learning about coaching, a wise mentor made a distinct point: we are not coaching volleyball, we are coaching people, volleyball is just the context. That statement has a myriad of meanings. In one instance, it is an admonishment for the coach to remember to treat people as people while coaching; in another instance, it is an admonishment for the coach to trust the human ability to execute the actions and make the decisions no matter the circumstances.

Volleyball Heuristics

This part was actually fun. I thought about some of the heuristics that I had experienced either as a coach or as a spectator. These heuristics are not completely false, nor am I insinuating that these heuristics cannot be true under the correct context and situations. They are heuristics because they have been true under specific circumstances, but they are not true generically.

This is obviously not a definitive list.

In Training

·       Players will always get better when they play more, so just let them play more and never work on fundamentals.

·       Players can only get better by doing an infinite number of identical reps without variation.

·       Beginning players can only get better by doing an infinite number of completely random reps without seeing the same conditions twice.

·       Players should be able to figure out: strategy, tactics, technique, communications, VBIQ without feedback.

·       Drilling with no stated goals is the best way to give players reps.

·       Players should only practice their assigned positions.

o   Liberos and DS should never hit in practice.

o   Middles should never get practice time on setting or passing.

o   Setters should only set.

·       Extended scrimmages starting from zero is good preparation for play.

·       Extended scrimmages with the same scrimmage partner is good preparation for play.

·       Introducing extraneous distractions into drills prepares the players for play.

·       Slapping the ball is a good starting cue to start the rep, especially for hitter timing.

In Competition:

Many of our competition heuristics come from our need to use some statistical measure. Usually, we use intermediate metrics since using the score as a measure is too broad and too final. The problem with using intermediate measures is that we are measuring an action that is only a part of game action. We are diverting our attention from the goal, which is to win at the end of a set or a match. We instead let ourselves get head faked into chasing measures that are merely indicators and never predictors of success. For more on this please see Coach Jim Stones excellent article (https://jimstoneconsulting.com/if-coaches-dont-know-goodharts-law-they-should/) as well as my own explanation: (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2022/07/stats-for-spikes-goodharts-law-and.html)

·       The teams will always win when team passing scores are above 2.5.

·       The correct serving ace to errors ratio hovers around 1.

·       Number of service errors are the best predictors of service aggression.

·       Regression to the mean predicts that the trend will immediately correct itself to the positive result after a string of negative results.

·       A definite and predetermined distribution of sets to hitting positions is necessary for success.

·       Always run middle on a good pass.

·       Always set the pins or backrow on a bad pass.

·       Hitters should only hit their position.

·       Never run a set play off of a dig.

·       Never run a set play out of system.

·       Only run slide plays behind the setter.

·       Setters should tip the ball only on bad passes.

·       Setters should always dump the ball immediately after the opposing team gets a dump kill on your team.

·       Never serve the Libero.

·       Always serve the substitute player that just came in.

·       Serving and passing are the only things that matter in the women’s game.

·       Blocking and hitting are the only things that matter in the men’s game.

·       Defense wins games.

·       Playing against weaker teams helps team confidence.

·       Playing against stronger teams helps team teaches resilience.

In Summary

Every coach has their own heuristic, they are reflections of our beliefs and personal philosophies. They are heuristics because every coach has had some form of success based upon their heuristics. Heuristics only become detrimental to our coaching when we ignore the basis context of how the heuristics became heuristics. There is a time and a place for every heuristic-based decision that we make. If we mindlessly follow our heuristics, we will usually pay the price. We need to challenge every one of our heuristics consistently and constantly. It is even better if we had other coaches challenge them for us, either on or off the court. Professional poker player Annie Dukes, in her book Thinking in Bets (Dukes 2018), talks about having a committee of other poker players who will sit with her and go over every hand that she plays just to avoid all the fallacious thinking that exists. It would be interesting and beneficial to convene a panel of coaches to demythologize all the personal heuristics. Just saying.

References

Dukes, Annie. Thinking in Bets. New York: Penguin, 2018.

Emre Soyer, Robin M. Hogarth. The Myth of Experience: Why we Learn the Wrong Lessons, and Ways to Correct Them. New York: Hatchett Book Group, 2020.

Epstein, David. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. New York: Riverhead Books, 2019.

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

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking Fast and Slow. NYC: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.