I’m currently working on a new team building presentation for our Volleyball Coaching Foundations Clinic.  While doing some research online, I found some very interesting information on positive coaching.  After collecting some information from a swimming website, and adding some thoughts of my own, I’ve come up with a Top 10 list of things not to do when coaching club or high school volleyball.  The intent is not to sound negative.  I think these are all very common mistakes, and if they are brought to our attention in an organized way perhaps it helps us?  So, here we go….

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.

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

Late August is always an exciting time of the year for women’s volleyball. Currently High School and College programs all over the country are hard at work preparing for the upcoming season. Gold Medal Squared on the other hand is winding down another successful summer camp season.