Things You'll Need:
- To Command Respect from the players, Determination, Focus, Integrity,Motivation and Hard Work
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Step 1
Ready To Serve In SecondsHow to Become A Great Volleyball Coach
Tips for New Volleyball Coaches
Getting a Good Start, Begins With Education
If you want to become a volleyball coach, you need to become state and nationally certified. If you are not a teacher and you want to coach, then you must take a one-day class called Coaching Principles. At the end of the day, you take two tests, one for state certification, and one for national certification. You will receive your test results in the mail.
To Begin:
1. Create a Season Plan
A season plan is taking the time to write down every aspect that you would like to teach the players and prioritize them. Then you need to associate the item with a particular practice where you will cover the item. This ensures that you cover each item that you would like to teach that you feel is important. By creating a season plan, you will prioritize what needs to be taught and when it needs to be taught during the season. Remember, the purpose of practice is to prepare your kids for the games. -
Step 2
Back Row Attack2. Create an Outline for Teaching the Skills
There is a difference between playing the game and teaching it to new players. One of the strongest and most beneficial theories on learning is teaching skills (for any sport or job), in parts. Another term for this is called teaching in "digestible chunks." You have to give the kids amounts of information they can handle. If you give them too much, they may get overwhelmed or feel like it is "too complicated" or "not fun" and give up. That is what the purpose of the skills outline is. It breaks the skills down into parts that the kids can learn and build on, through progressions. The progressions aspect is building on the initial part of the skill, by adding the next step (where at the end, they put it all together). Take for example the skill of serving. You have the stance, the toss, shifting of weight, ball contact and then the follow through. These are all the various parts of the skill. You first teach them each part individually and allow them to practice the part. Then starting from the beginning, you add the next part. Eventually, they get to the end, where they "put it all together
3. Use Stats to Help You Quantify Who Can Do What
The phrase "stats don’t lie" is true. Rotations and match-ups play a factor in statistics. If you can figure out which rotations are giving your players trouble, then you can use the statistics to put your best passers in those rotations. The next step is getting to the point where you can chart your rotations, to determine their effectiveness vs. your opponent. -
Step 3
Good PassValue of Recovery and Off-court Get-togethers
4. Recovery Time: Sometimes coaches think we can continue to work the kids, day in and day out. Sometimes a coach will find the players just do not seem to have the same enthusiasm they began with. Sometimes, kids need a break, or you will burn them out (or they might get sick, because they are worn down physically). Over-training can be a serious negative factor and one our responsibilities is to protect our athletes and to look out for their best interests. Make sure you are building some break times into your practices, so that the kids can recover during the practices and make sure you allow some low-key practice days.
Off the Court Get-Togethers
5. There can be players who may not know each other very well, as in a large school. Sure, there will always be a few who know each other, maybe play together outside of the school team and get along well. But there will be some players who feel they have no time to get to know each other during practices and games. In my earlier years as a Coach I had several teams who went thru the entire season and said they felt like they were playing with teammates they didn’t know. Off court get-together, pools parties, out for a pizza together or any activity not related to the game is a great way to have the players get to know each other. Sometimes it is wise for the Coach to split up the little familiar cliques so the players can interact with others they don’t know as well.
In my third year as Coach I began a system of pairing up a JV player with a Varsity player. We called it “Little Sisters / Big Sisters”. Before tournaments, the players would match up and form small groups with other sister pairs and enjoy a meal together. They would make small posters of team spirit and hang them on each other’s locker on game days. Before home games they would surprise each other with a small gift. These events help the team to build their unity.
