early in matches, and then opponents figured out how to pass it) but had much more success and at more crucial times in the match with her little deep floater.


The float server was forcing teams to send us a free ball over 65 percent of the time when they had 15 points or more! We thought of that stat as a little secret weapon. So for much of her career we tried to figure out, with the help of our rotation information, how to get our little floater to serve with the match on the line. By the end of her career, teams around the league were so focused on figuring out the deep floater, that we could exact our offense with ease.


THE BIG BLOCKER


If your most dominant player’s best attribute is her command of the net, you are probably in for a long season. It is pretty easy to avoid a big blocker, even with below average talent. However, I had a revelation one year with a dominant 6-3 middle blocker who still holds our record for blocks in a season. We ran a pretty typical 5-1 offense with 2 middles and basic serve receive. With most teams’ big hitters in our area on the outside, she only came into play when she could get out to close the block on a third tempo set or shutting down a middle early in a match or in transition. So being tricky one day, we decided to use her as a decoy out of a time out while we were serving. We knew the opponent wanted to use their primary hitter from right side, so we snuck our behemoth blocker out to the pin and adjusted a few people around her so she wasn’t out of rotation.


It was solely to make the hitter think she had to hit over or around a bigger block, but it actually made the setter go to a really out of position and inexperienced girl coming to hit in the middle for one play. She tipped, we dug and scored again. So we kept doing it, with no intention of actually staying on the outside. We used our big blocker as a way to dictate where the ball was coming from, thus making our defense much more effective. Even when everyone started to figure out what we were doing, we just had to have her line up for one play early in the match to remind people that she would lock on to whomever the opponent wanted to run their attack through. It worked and more than anything, it frustrated a lot of good players. Ah, what fun it was to have a 6-3 blocker!


THE HEAVENLY HANDS


The best feeling as a high school coach is when you see a young player in your program with great hands. We once had a girl who was so naturally gifted as a setter that we elevated her right to our varsity team and threw her into the mix when she was only 13. She learned well, and over her four seasons dealt with a lot


of injuries, but when she was healthy, she ran a fantastic offense.


Sometimes your dominant player comes in a small, unassuming package. A few seasons ago we were fully prepared to start a tall, quick, strong setter who could block well, attack at will, and serve tough. Sounds great, right? Well, through a few matches, even though we were winning, it was clear we should be a lot stronger offensively. In practice we had noticed how accurate our new ultra-quiet 5-2 backup setter was. Even though we brought her up to learn the position for a year, we threw her out there in a tight, important match. We learned a whole new type of dominance that day. She fueled our offense to our most efficient attacking performance in four seasons. She wasn’t flashy, served lollipops and had to learn how to play defense on the fly. But our team was way better with her out there. She told our hitters where to go and the ball magi- cally appeared. All the hitters had to do was swing. Once she started to become comfortable, she redesigned our first attack to get hitters open looks, and in transition, she was so tricky that we had to remind our hitters that they had to be ready at all times. It’s a different type of dominance, especially in our area, but it’s obvious when a dominant setter walks in your gym. Look at the hitters. They will tell you how dominant she is by the smile on their faces.


THE HEAVY HITTER


On upper level college and top-tier club programs hard hitters are all over the court, but for some high school leagues and divisions, they may be few and far between. We have all coached against big-time swings who can change the momentum of a match with big kills and terminating attacks, but if you have had one of these players on your team, it can be more stressful than it should be. We wonder where to put her in serve receive, especially if she is a weak passer. We try to get matchups versus weak blockers, funnel the ball away from her on defense or send her on combo plays to utilize the big swing. However, there are a few things to consider to make the most of a dominant hitter. Chances are good that your opponents already know about your big hitter, probably more so than any other type of dominant player. They most likely know where he/she is coming from in serve receive rotations and where he/she tends to hit. We have played for the last few seasons against a very dominant hitter in our division and sec- tion. We have charted where she hits, located methods to get her away from the ball, but her coaching staff has done a great job keeping everything she does “fresh.”


Never starting in the same rotation to start the match can really mess up any opponent who tries to get a favorable blocking matchup as the


game starts. Most coaches tend to go back and forth between rotation 1 and 6 (setter in 1 or setter in 2) to start matches, but this coach often starts his dominating hitter in 4 for the first set, and then in 1 for the second set. It seems as if there is no pattern, and that is what keeps her hitting against an inconsistent block. Another thing that I have seen, again with this particular hitter, is that they will vary the tempo of her attack out of serve receive. The coach once told me that even though she hits hard, teams “time” her by the end of the match and can have more success versus her big attack. To combat that, they had this top-tier athlete hit a slide from the right side on serve receive, and then a higher attack from the outside.


She often called an audible any time she passed in the middle of court or dug a ball moving inward, to hit a first or second tempo “middle zone” attack. Mainly it allowed her to save a little energy so that she wouldn’t have to retreat to the pin each time after a dig, and never allowed opponents to gain a rhythm against her attack, seeming as if she would hit against all three zones.


The last thing that we identified as a huge importance for the heavy hitter is to mandate that this player tip from time to time, even as often as 1 out of 5 attacks. When a top player hits hard, average defenders tend to dig in and lean back in their defensive position. By tipping to open areas, the big hitter becomes more dangerous because those defenders can’t cheat to hitting hot spots; they have to adjust later in the attack, making the speed of the kill more of a deciding factor than placement. We had an attacker with a huge arm swing a few years back and due to the lack of talent around her, we struggled to get her the ball as often as we would have liked. When we did, she always swung hard and eventually teams knew that she was going to hit it hard into the back half of the court. We constantly wanted to get her to tip, even once or twice in the beginning of the match, but it was tough when she was only receiving 10 swings per set.


SET POINT


If you have the luxury of developing dy- namic players at all positions in your program, then consider yourself lucky and enjoy a level of play that many coaches can’t. However, if you are coaching in a program where you are lucky to have one or two dominant players in your coaching career, make sure you don’t lose an opportunity to create the best possible environment for that player to drive your team to success.


Structuring your team’s style of play to take advantage of a player’s ability to dominate can ensure that your players are holding the trophy at the end of the season.


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