CAP II CLIPBOARD
Ace in the hole: Winning with one dominant player
By Shawn Strege VolleyFX Volleyball Club / Webster Schroeder High School Girls’ Varsity Coach CAP II
f your section or division is similar to those in which I have coached, there are good teams, great programs and some that seem to be in a continuous state of fl ux. In our area, where club vol- leyball programs and junior club level teams are not as advanced as some in the Midwest or South- west, top-tier players are typically scattered throughout the county and state.
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For those teams that have an elite level player, I have always been interested in what their coaching staffs decide to be the best method for getting the most from that player. Is this player an all-around superstar that you wish could pass and then set to herself/himself? Or is this a player who can do a few things very well, and needs the play of others elevated to showcase their abilities? In all situations, coaches are thrilled to have a highly skilled athlete on their team, but in many situations they are confl icted by the big question: what do we do with her/him? The answer is dependent upon the athlete’s most dominant skill.
THE PERFECT PASSER This is probably the most valuable player, talent-wise, to have in our area due to much of the game being a serve/pass contest. Chances are not great that all of the teams will have a quality setter who can dish out perfect sets on average passes. So in our area, coaches typi- cally make their best passer either an outside hitter or a libero, depending on what she can do with her swing. When I fi rst started coaching, I had a dominant hitter whose passing skills made her a liability, coupled with a fantastic passer who was only an average hitter. These were my two best outside hitters. I picked the simple and straight up method of having one follow the setter and the other 3 rotations away from her. They would each pass their share of a 3-person serve receive and we went 8-8 on the season. A very average approach and a very average outcome.
After our season I refl ected and wished I could’ve made the better passer a bit more of a centerpiece in our serve receive and the other, the great hitter, a recipient of more sets. I spoke
with the long-time boys’ volleyball coach at my school and he opened my eyes with a very simple response to my refl ection: why not? I said that it would require people to cover for each other on our fi rst attack, a non-setter to set out of serve receive, and players would have to get used to a whole new system. Then he asked for the answer to a very simple question: how many times we were aced or forced to play out- of-system. I looked back and realized that we were aced 174 times and estimated that we ran an out-of-system offense about 40 percent of the time out of serve receive.
The following season we shifted the structure of our serve receive to a very unconventional version of a 3-person serve receive. We still always had 3 passers, but our best was always in the middle of the court (in area six) regard- less of who it affected around her; we even re- linquished an outside hitter in one serve receive. Well, it worked. Again, in our area, the serve and pass game is so crucial, and with that move we increased our effi ciency simply because a dominant passer was receiving the majority of the serves, and it allowed our hitters to focus on getting ready to hit, whereas the season before they were often scrambling around the court after poor passes.
THE SENSATIONAL SERVER When I fi rst started coaching, matches were side-out scoring and everyone knew the super
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servers around the county who could end your match early by grabbing a bunch of points on their possession. I am happy to say that the level of play has increased tremendously, and with rally scoring it is rare that a single server dominates a match in our area. However, we often get a player who can score some quick points for us with a dynamic jump serve, a tough fl oater, or even pre- cise placement to take advantage of an opponent’s weaker passer. With that solid server only being allowed to serve every six rotations, we used a few different numerical stats to fi gure out the “who, what, where and when” of serving. The fi rst stat is an easy one that we can gather right off the score sheet. How many rota- tions do we typically make in a game/set? We found that against
teams with losing records or “weaker” teams, we rotated an average of nine times per game. Against “stronger” teams or those with winning records, were making about 13 rotations, some- times even more. So that told us that our super server was going to serve once or maybe twice (if we started her in 1, 2 or 3) against weaker teams, but at least twice, maybe 3 times versus a stronger team. We used to always start our best server fi rst, unless it really messed up our rhythm, but found later it may be better to try to “guess” when that player would get back to the service line with the game in her hands. The other way of situating your super server may have more to do with her type of serve. We had a girl with a nasty topspin serve that we found was effective at the beginning of matches, but less so as matches went on and opponents were quicker to the ball. We errone- ously thought that because she served so hard that she was our toughest server.
After a few matches we looked at our stats. For this, we rate the type of serve, the effect on the opponent (aced, can’t run offense, perfect pass, etc.) and when in the game this takes place (during the fi rst 10 points, second 10 points or fi nal points, based on our opponent’s score). What we found contradicted what we had
at fi rst thought. We had a little fl oat server who had signifi cantly fewer total aces (partly because our nasty topspin server had a bunch
PHOTO: USAV
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