Competition Time!

By Chris Beerman

Our season is off and running and Lexington United teams are beginning their competitive seasons with tournaments all around the lower Midwest.  Our 17’s and 18’s got an early start in mid-January at the Mideast Power League and our 13 Black and 15 Blue teams made the journey down to the Knoxville, TN area for a tournament hosted by K2 Volleyball.  Both battled hard and our 13’s made a great run on Sunday losing in the Gold Final in 3 close games.  Great competitive start and certainly room for improvement, and the greatest thing about actually playing is the results allow you to get back in the gym and train your weaknesses.  I have been very pleased with the overall practice vibes of our teams and feel all of the coaches have bought into what we are trying to accomplish from a philosophical standpoint.  I have been able to get around to almost every practice on every night, so I have a pretty good feel for the teams that are really getting it and likewise the teams that need a boost once in awhile.  

Our coaches have had good energy, been organized and are creating learning environments and generally happy players. Although Lexington had a smattering of club attempts in the past, nothing ever stuck, so our 23 teams represent an incredibly wide and diverse experience and ability spectrum.  This fact makes for a challenge when scheduling tournaments for teams.  We decided our Regional teams would literally play a “regional” schedule with Louisville being their farthest trip.  The fact is we have so many great tournament options within an hour of Lexington, not to mention the events we host, so it really makes for an affordable, yet competitive tournament schedule.  Regional teams will play 5 or 6 tournaments and wrap up their seasons’ in late April.  Our Elite teams play in 10 or 11 tournaments including AAU’s at the end, so scheduling is much more intensive and diverse.  We play in the Mideast Power League as well as various tournaments locally, in Louisville, Indianapolis and Cincinnati.  We will also have a few teams travel to Houston for the JVA World Challenge and of course many of our 1’s and 2’s teams will finish their seasons in Orlando at the AAU National Championships. 

All in all, I believe our parents are getting a lot of bang for their buck and our competitive goals for our teams in regard to scheduling is to challenge our teams, but not overwhelm them.  I’ve seen other clubs sandbag their teams by playing in lower divisions and claim easy victories and I’ve also seen clubs over-schedule, get crushed and take pride in the fact that they are playing against the best.  The problem with that is if you keep getting your head beat in, you’re losing your confidence and learning to lose a lot.  I think being as honest as possible in evaluating the talent-level of your team and putting them in the best position to be challenged, yet have a legitimate chance to win matches is the best approach.  On the other hand, we do need our top teams to play as competitive of a schedule as possible so we have “leaders” within the club.  Then our less experienced players can aspire to that level and our club, led by the leaders, can gradually make moves toward being a regional power and eventually a national power. 

The other focus regarding our competitive season is we want our teams to peak at the end;  to continually improve and through competitive trial and error, learn the factors in volleyball that decide winners and losers.  One factor of a winning volleyball team (I’m impressed with already in our club) is the close relationships and cohesiveness of our teams, and how much fun they are having.  It’s something I want to make sure I continue to see all the way into late spring/early summer.

Another really neat and important aspect of our club that we’ve been able to launch is our youth programs for both 6-9 year olds and 10 and 11 year olds.  Both programs run one day a week for an hour and a half and are run by myself and two very experienced coaches who excel at fundamental training.  As someone who coached at the collegiate level for 20 years and had very little experience with kids this age, I find these little ones an absolute blast to work with.  The kids are so enthusiastic and excited and the improvement on a weekly basis is incredible.  Introducing our great sport in a fun and fundamentally focused way to young kids and getting them hooked is the key to our community becoming the next great volleyball hotbed in this country.  The cool thing I’ve discovered in working with this age group is you don’t have to skimp on volleyball.  We’ve been able to run straight, modified volleyball skill training with kids as young as 6 years old, and keep them rolling for over an hour.  Too me the kids that age want to be like the big girls and learn how to actually play volleyball.  Kind of cool! 

Thanks again for following the blog. My 16’s team will be heading up to Muncie this weekend to launch our season at the Mideast Power League, so I’m excited to start competing.  As always, don’t hesitate to question or comment about anything.  Best of luck to everyone competing this weekend!

LUV the Game - Establishing Your Club's Training Philosophy

By Chris Beerman

Happy New Year!  Now that the holidays are over, it’s back to work for everyone, especially club directors.  This is the exciting time of the year as teams kick off their official practice schedules, get to know their new teammates, and prepare for the early competitions.  Lexington United has 23 Girls 12-18 year old teams, the LUV Bugs program for 6-9 year olds, and a Youth Training Team for 10 and 11 year olds and all of these are off and running.  Our coaches are doing a great job so far and there’s a lot of excitement, sweat and smiles at practice. 

The goal early on is to establish our club training philosophy, which focuses on ball control, speed, pursuit and aggressive-intelligence and then begin the process of developing roles on teams and creating systems for the respective age groups.  Constant improvement is the main foundational goal of the club: to create a positive-push in practice and make players better and more confident in their skills.  Our main club motto, LUV the Game, is always the backbone to whatever we do and how we train.  In that vein, I think it’s very important to have a club-wide fundamental training philosophy that all coaches adhere to and believe in. 

We also have established offensive and defensive terminology and set nomenclature that is used throughout the entire club and on every team.  The 12’s use the same terminology as the 18’s, which creates great uniformity and a smooth and educated transition between age groups as players get older.  The best teams and most successful clubs always have an identifiable and recognizable system in place.  The foundation of every successful system is a huge emphasis on controlling and targeting the ball.  Many clubs, teams and coaches espouse their commitment to ball control, but very few commit to the idea of targeting the ball. 

As a collegiate coach, I watched a ton of club practices over the years and saw a lot of fast moving drills with many touches that looked great, but often I saw very little regard to where the touches actually ended up!  The movement was awesome and the kids were working hard, but the ball was going all over the place.  The one thing I’ve really noticed about the past 5 NCAA champions is those particular teams had extraordinary ball control and tenacity, but where they separated from the other teams, was in their targeting focus, concentration and commitment.  Seems like an obvious part of volleyball, but I’m always amazed at how often I witness completely unfocused, random touches.  The past five NCAA champions and not to mention our 2008 Men’s Gold Medal team, seldom if ever, had a random touch.  Every first touch, no matter how difficult, was literally a competition to NOT make the setter move one step.  In today’s volleyball world, winners are in-system more than losers, so we will train that concept awareness more than any other starting with our 6 year-olds! 

I am also a firm believer in competitive fun vs. goofy fun.  We need to teach our players that the most fun they can have is when they are competing as a team and giving their best effort to win.  In referring back to my years watching practices, the teams that got most excited, with the biggest smiles when they began keeping score, I knew were going to be successful winning teams.  The teams that suddenly stopped smiling and laughing when the competition and expectation actually began I knew were going to struggle.  Loving, respecting and embracing competition is one of the key components of “LUV-ing” the Game. That attitude is a top-down model; don’t expect your team to compete with fun intensity if they don’t feel that intensity or expectation in practice.  Coaches that run loosey-goosey practices and then get angry at their teams when they freeze up, fold or don’t compete at tournaments, don’t really have anyone to blame but themselves.  There is a commitment to competing and it starts at the top. I’m looking forward to seeing all my volleyball friends again at upcoming tournaments.  Good luck to everyone as they get started on the 2012 club season journey.