My first overseas volleyball experience was bitter-sweet. The sweet parts for me were the opportunities to get to know a new culture, the chance to learn a new language, and the chance to get to make some amazing friends. Even better was getting paid to improve at the sport that I loved. In contrast to these sweet memories, it is hard to forget the bitter aspects that pervaded my time there. My team didn’t respect the coach and the club was poorly managed. As a result, that season my team was an incredible waste of talent. We had the talent to win the league. Unfortunately, these bitter aspects ultimately led my teammates to disengage from the team and none of us performed anywhere near our potential.

How many of you have coached a team and had what was termed as a “big win”? Three weeks ago my team experienced exactly that. We played a team everyone assumed would be victorious against us. We prepared for this match just like any other match; we were prepared to compete. We had what we thought was a good game plan. We watched videos as a coaching staff and as a team. We were prepared, but did we expect to win? No. We were just prepared to compete. If you asked my team or coaching staff, I am sure they would have said we were as prepared as we could be. But we did not expect win. So what happened…we won in five games. The players were euphoric. We just had a big win.

Tags: process over outcome

This past weekend, unbeknownst to many here in the United States, the Wallabies (Australia) defeated the Springboks (South Africa) and advanced to play the All-Blacks (New Zealand) in the second semi-final of the Rugby World Cup.  Over the past year, these three teams have been the most dominate in World Rugby.

Tags: motivation

I was reading a fishing report a few weeks back, and it was entitled “The Dog Days of Summer.” The report went on to explain the current fishing conditions, the hot weather, how to avoid rattlesnakes, and the challenges of trying to catch fickle trout.

Tags: process over outcome

Last Thursday we played our first conference match of the year at BYU–a new member of the West Coast Conference. We knew they were very good–even better than when we played them earlier in the season. I felt like we were ready to play well and we were expecting a very competitive match. It wasn’t competitive. We got crushed in straight sets.

Tags: process over outcome

When traveling with the Men’s National Team, there is inevitably a significant amount of downtime.  I try to be as productive as possible while waiting for the next flight, bus ride or meal by reading a variety of non-fiction books that might help my coaching.  Two weeks ago while in Puerto Rico for the NORCECA Zone Championships, I read my favorite book of the summer:  Escaping the Endless Adolescence: How Can We Help Our Teenagers Grow Up Before They Grow Old, by Claudia Worrell Allen and Joseph Allen. It was a wonderful overview of a teenager’s developmental process, a historical view of how that process has changed over the last century, how some of those changes have created problems and how we can help teenager’s better transition to adulthood.

Tags: relationships

This is one of the original “articles” from our old website; we are reposting the entire series here on our blog.

This is one of the original “articles” from our old website; we are reposting the entire series here on our blog.

From a Coach: