Comparative Volleyball

I love coaching, every year I learn something new.  This was a fun season.  I was able to coach JV so I got to move up with some of my girls from last year.  I was also able to sit on the varsity bench and learn from one of the best strategy coaches.  He is also such a positive person too.  Although I coached with him last season I really felt like I got to know him well this season.  And He loved Bennett! 

He graduates this semester and I hope he will be around next season.  We also had a new head coach which is sometimes an adjustment but she did great.  Our program is really growing and I feel like we did good this year but I am so excited about how this group is just on the verge of greatness, I can feel it coming.  One of the highlights was placing in the Coconino tournament, and my JV had a winning season ending with a big win over our cross town rivals! 

Tess helped me coach about mid-season and she is an amazing skills coach, we made a great team.  Now she has me roped into coaching with her a 12’s team, which Rianne will be a part of.   It was great to see my girls get better with each practice and game. I had a great group of girls who were all very different but they worked hard and had great team unity.  Every season I seem to have one girl who teaches me something that goes beyond the court.  This season I felt like my girls had fun and wanted to win but I just didn’t see them fight to win. 

There are at least 2 elements I don’t know how you coach, timing and competitiveness.  One girl at the beginning of the season I thought had the competitive fire but the more I coached I started to notice something.  She wasn’t being competitive, but I couldn’t figure out how I saw these sparks of competitiveness but it was within herself.  Then I thought I like that inner drive to be better but it was something else and it was eating at me.  One night it hit me it wasn’t competiveness it was comparative.  I watched her for the next few practices and she was ok making a mistake as long as other girls on the team were too.  When she was the one that ended a play or killed the drill, she was great at finding someone else to blame.  When we talked about stats she was interested in where she was but more on where the other girls fighting for her position were.   She is a smart girl, and a good player but I felt like it was holding her back somehow.  Because volleyball is (in my humble opionion) one of the greatest team sports ever, she wasn’t taking on a role on the team.  I thought how can I help her and what if I don’t, maybe I could just leave it alone but then she would just become a good player but one that is easily replaced, and certainly not a clutch, true team player, they worry too much. 

 I did talk to her and I think it helped but a few weeks before the season ended I came across this poem, I have read it before. 

The Grade…

God does not grade
On the curve,
I'm sure of it.

But we sit around
Like high school students
In an important class,
Whose teacher has drawn
On the blackboard
The tiny wedges
For the A's and E's.
And the great bulge
For the C's.

We sigh in veiled relief
As the person down the row
Messes up,
Because it makes us
Look better
And probably means an E
For him, which is good,
Because while we have
Nothing against him personally
It means an A is more
Available to us.

And we secretly sorrow
When the person in front of us
Does really well,
Although we like her okay,
Because there goes another good grade,
Darn it and we're looking
Worse and worse
And slipping further down the curve.

And God, I think,
Sits at the front of the class
Holding A's enough for all,
Watching us
Working out our salvation
In fear and competition.

-Carol Lynn Pearson

my biggest fan, now 10months!

That’s when the transition happened.  Transition is key to success in volleyball, it is the movement from defense to offence and in a volley it is the key to who will win that point.  It puts you in position to score for your team.  I laid in bed thinking about this and realized I am on the defense.  Maybe its pride I don’t want to fail, or look bad.  Isn’t it enough that I’m on the team, I come to practice (go to church etc.)  I am watching and hoping we win, but not in position to help because I am looking at my team (the really good people) and worrying about myself thinking I have nothing to offer so I hide letting someone else do it because they will do it better than me, and the other team has me complacent, just going through the motions.  I’m expecting that the ball won’t come to me, surely He’s not counting on me.  I heard so clearly “whose on the Lord side who, now is the time to show.”  I know God’s team will win and I want to be in position when the ball will come to me.  Will I make it better for my team or be so worried about all the ways I don’t handle it as well as someone else that I let the ball drop?  I have been the coach looking down the bench at all the potential but who will go in and make the difference.  He’ll do the best with the players he has but does he have me?  I need to dig out of this hole I have put myself in and just do something to put my team in a better position.  Balancing being grateful to be on the team with making sure I have a spot next season because tryouts (trials) are coming.  Being one of the really good players is hard work.