Volleyball Tryout Games & Drills

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2 Introduction This guide was motivated by the high number of visitors to CoachingVB.com I saw coming to read the Volleyball Try-Out Drill Ideas blog post I published some time ago. It has become one of the most read pages on the website. Not surprisingly, those visits have been concentrated during key periods during the year when teams tend to be running tryouts. August when high school teams get started in the U.S. - and some cases college teams as well is probably not surprisingly the time when lots of coaches are searching for ideas. I figured if there was that much interest it would be worth putting together something a bit more comprehensive than a blog post. Thus, this guide was born. What follows is a collection of drills and games ideas I think you will find useful. They are based on my own experience having been involved in running tryouts at the high school, Juniors, and collegiate levels at different points in my career. One of the bigger challenges in running a good tryout is managing large numbers of players relative to your space and resources. What I ve tried to do in this guide is to offer you some ideas of things you can use that involve as many players as possible with a minimal amount of waiting time. You can t assess players who aren t doing anything, after all, so might as well have them in action. I have also tried to provide you with drills and games that are flexible in terms of giving you different ways they can be adapted and different things you can choose to focus on based on your particular needs. You ll find these activities are highly player-centric. The thinking there is to keep coaches available for assessment and not tied up with ball initiation and things like that. Copyright 2016 by John Forman 2

3 Throughout the text you ll find a number of links. They are meant to provide you with more information on certain topics should you wish to learn more rather than cluttering up this guide with material that may or may be of use or interest. The one request I have as you go through this guide is that you do so with an open mind. There are some ideas here that may not make immediate sense or which go against some of your own thinking. All that I ask is that you give me the chance to explain my reasons for including a drill or game, or for excluding one or more that you might normally think to include. You may, in the end, disagree with me, which it totally fine. I just want to make sure you understand the rationale. With that said, let s get started! Dynamic Warm-up This might sound like a strange one since it s not really volleyball, but stay with me. From your perspective, any bit of information you can gather about a prospective player is potentially a factor in the decision-making process. As such, you should take every opportunity you can to observe and evaluate. That starts as soon as things get going. If you re not familiar with dynamic warm-ups, have a look at the blog post I did on the whole subject of warm-ups titled Are your warm-ups wasting valuable time? It should give you some stuff to think about in how you structure not just try-outs, but practice and training sessions as well. Watching a group of players going through a dynamic warm-up can tell you certain things about where they are physically in terms of flexibility, strength, and Copyright 2016 by John Forman 3

4 range of motion. Depending on what you re looking for, these might be useful items to note. Perhaps of most value, though, is the attitude you see. Who are the ones taking it seriously? Who are the ones goofing around? Who is just going through the motions cheating a bit here and there or not really finishing each exercise? I ve watched a lot of team warm-ups over the years. They can tell you a lot about different players individually, and the group collectively. Pepper Variations A good way to carry on from the dynamic warm-up is to move the players into some variation of pepper. For most players it s an easy progression they re used to doing already. This can serve a couple of purposes for you. One is to extend the warm-up with basic ball-handling. Another is to give you an opportunity to start building impressions of each player s skill level with regards to ball control. A third is you ll get to see where players are at in terms of focus, intensity, effort, and other mental factors. If you want, you can also start to introduce coaching to see how they react to it. Depending on your numbers, space, and potentially level of skill, there are a few different variations of pepper you can use. Basic 2-person: This is the pepper most commonly seen where players pass-set-hit back and forth. 3-person with a fixed setter: In this variation, one player is between the other two acting as permanent setter. A hits to B, who digs to C, who sets Copyright 2016 by John Forman 4

5 to B, who hits to A, who digs to C, etc. Change setters after some amount of time or successful repetitions. 3-person rotation: Here, instead of one player staying as setter, they each take turns. A hits to B, who digs back to A, who sets back to B, who hits to C, who digs to B, who sets to C, etc. The setting player follows their ball and goes behind the player they just set. Note that you can do these 3-person variations with additional players, perhaps up to 5. I d only suggest that if you are really short on space, though. Adding players means less ball contact for each player involved. 4-person partners: Put two players on each side as partners and basically have it work like doubles. Each pair plays three contacts. One player digs the ball coming from the other pair, their partner sets them, and they hit it back across. This can be a good alternative to standard 2-person pepper if you have a limited number of balls. In an ideal world you d have all the pepper going on over the net. I realize that isn t always possible in a try-out situation (Several times I had to manage 20+ players in an area barely more than the size of a single court). If you can get the net incorporated, though, you can pretty easily adapt the multi-person pepper variations above. Here s what you can do. Follow-your ball: In this variation when a player makes the 3 rd contact to send the ball over the net they duck under to the other side to become the setter. Meanwhile, the setter from their starting side backs off the net to receive the next ball coming over. Player A digs to B, who sets A, who Copyright 2016 by John Forman 5

6 hits/tips/rolls the ball to C on the other side, who digs to A now on their side of the net while B has moved back to receive C s 3 rd contact. Fixed setter: In this variation one setter sets for both sides by ducking under the net after each set to be able to receive the next dug ball. After a certain time, setters are switched. Stay on your side: Here there is no switching sides. This requires at least 4 players. In this case the setter and digger/hitter switch on their own side when the 3 rd ball goes over the net. So A digs to B, who sets A, who hits/tips/rolls the 3 rd ball over, with A then staying at the net to set and B moving off to dig the next ball. These over-the-net variations can also incorporate additional players. Again, though, be careful not to go too far as you will quickly start to severely limit contacts for each player. Cooperative Games Pepper is essentially a cooperative game in which the objective is to keep the ball in play. You can make it an actual game by introducing a scoring element. That allows you to start to see who is competitive, how players interact with their teammates, etc. Here are a couple of ways you can turn pepper into a game: X in a Row: The pepper partners/groups must achieve X number of good dig-set-hit sequences in a row to finish. The first group to do so wins. Points per Sequence: Rather than having a winner decided by X in a Row, you could have each set of partners earn a point for completing an X in a Copyright 2016 by John Forman 6

7 Row sequence. The winners would then be the team who reaches a defined point total first, or the ones with the most point in a given time. Again, being able to do this over the net is preferred. Small-Sided Games The kind of cooperative games described above are probably better done with younger and/or less experienced players. For those at a somewhat more advanced level it will be good to see them actually playing (which isn t to say you can t have the less experienced/skilled players playing as well). A great way to do that is with small-sided games. Because they feature more contacts per player, these types of games give you lots more opportunity to evaluate each player inaction applying different skills. Here are three very useful variations: Winners: Also known as King/Queen of the Court, this game features at least 3 teams per court. One side of the court is designated as the winners side. Each rally is initiated with a serve from the non-winners side. The winner of that rally goes to/stays on the winners side while the losing team comes off to be replaced by the next group. Speedball: This game retains the Winners concept, but takes out the side change element. You have at least four teams, equally split between the two sides of the court. On each side one team is on the court, with the rest off waiting. After a rally is played out, the losers come off and the team waiting on their side serves immediately. Copyright 2016 by John Forman 7

8 Player Winners: In this variation of Winners the focus is on players rather than teams. The player movements are a bit more complicated, but easy to pick up. I ll refer you to this web page for a full explanation. The nice thing about these games is that they can be adapted to a number of purposes. For a try-out they can be set up to be anything from 2 v 2 on up, depending on numbers and space. If you keep score of how many rallies each player/team wins, you have a good objective measure to use in your evaluation process. You can also put in parameters which encourage or require certain types of actions if you want to drill down on certain things. For example, if you want to see quick attacks you can require the non-passer/digger run a quick. If you go with smaller numbers you can actually run two or three games simultaneously on one court. For example, half a court is plenty to be able to run Winners or Speedball with teams of 3, and if the players generally have enough ball control you could have them playing doubles on one third of a court. Being able to have multiple courts (full or mini) going at the same time allows for the potential to move players up and down the courts based on their performance and not just based on subjective coach analysis. Consider the case where you have three courts of Winners going on. After every 10 minutes you could have those players/teams with the most rally wins move up a court, and those with the fewest points move down. Eventually you will have all the best on the top court and the weakest on the bottom one. That tends to provide a very objective assessment of players one which can easily be pointed to come team allocation time should decisions be challenged. Copyright 2016 by John Forman 8

9 If you are struggling with the space or equipment to be able to set up multiple courts, USA Volleyball has a guide that offers a lot of ideas. Full-Team Games Because players can sometimes go long periods without actually touching the ball in a 6 v 6 situation, full-court and full-sided games probably aren t your best choice for assessing players in a try-out situation. This is especially true if you have lots of players. There are times, though, when you simply need to see how players react in that sort of situation. You may have to see them playing their specific position, for example, especially if you have to decide between players at that level of granularity. If you have the time and freedom to run normal games, then certainly you can do that. You may want to consider, however, a twist on that idea. For example, you could do a wash type of game to concentrate on certain elements or to increase the intensity level. You could vary the way the ball is introduced to create specific game situations so you can see exactly what you need to evaluate. You could also introduce bonus points to encourage the players to do certain things during play. Focusing on Specific Skills While it s hard in a pepper situation for players to avoid certain skills, in games they can sometimes position themselves so they don t need to perform in a certain role or at least don t have to do so very often. For example, a player in Winners may skip the serving line or never go in at the net. At other times it simply makes sense to see players in a more controlled situation where you can Copyright 2016 by John Forman 9

10 evaluate certain skills. In those cases you ll want to have drills which isolate your areas of specific interest. There are a couple of considerations when thinking about drills that can work in this role. The first is minimizing the amount of player inactivity you have. If players are standing in line they aren t executing any skills and thus cannot be evaluated (at least from a playing perspective). It s boring for them and it s time wasted for you. The second consideration is trying to make assessments as consistent and objective as possible. If you can rate (stat) each skill execution it gives you a clear comparison between players. That may help to avoid any number of biases which might creep into the assessment otherwise (assuming they can be kept out of the scoring of each rep, of course). It also gives you something concrete you can use in discussion with players/parents in trying to explain decisions. Finally, the third consideration is efficiency. Better to combine game elements as much as possible. This will let you do more analysis and assessment than if you only have one skill going on. That means you save time and potentially can get more stuff in. It also serves to make things more game-like, which is always a plus. To that end, here are a couple of ideas: Serving & Passing A 2-sided serve & pass drill is good for keeping a lot of players active. It features three passers (or however many you favor) and a target on each side of the net, with the remaining players as servers. There are a number of ways you can move players through this drill (e.g. passer becomes target, Copyright 2016 by John Forman 10

11 target takes ball to serve). One idea that can help the evaluation process along is to have players stay in reception until they get 2 good passes (however you define that). This will tend to mean the weaker passers will be on the court longer and pass more balls, which in and of itself is a way you can objectively assess players. Amoeba Serving This one doesn t fit the efficiency consideration, but players tend to have fun with it and you can perhaps see some of their competitiveness, personality, etc. Divide the group in half and put them on the end lines. Each side designates a first server. That player serves a ball, and then (assuming it lands in the court) goes over and lays down where the ball hit. The objective is then for each remaining player to get over to the other side by serving a ball that hits a teammate. If they do, they go and lay down touching one of the others to extend the chain (and by extension the target area). The team getting all their players over first wins. This game tends to see the weakest servers be the last to get across, which can help in the assessment process. Cooperative Cross-Court Hitting (setting, hitting, digging) Think of this as expanded pepper. Set each side up with a setter in position 2, and other players in positions 4, 5, and 6. The teams then cooperatively dig-set-hit, with all attacks going through 4, looking to reach some number of good repetitions. It s up to you how you want to count that. With a higher level group it could be a dig-set with hands- solid attack (non-roll shot) with a certain number of consecutive repetitions as the target. At Copyright 2016 by John Forman 11

12 lower levels you can loosen things up (allow bump sets, not require consecutive repetitions, etc.). Another variation using back row attacks is the hard drill. The simplest way to run this is to have players rotate each time their side sends the third contact over the net. This allows you to add extra players who can be part of that rotation as well (e.g. after you set in position 2 you rotate out with the new person coming in to position 6). If it suits you better, you can specialize this drill by having fixed setters, fixed liberos, etc. You can also shift things around to mix up the angles (attack 4 to 1, 2 to 1, 2 to 5). The advantage to this drill is it s very game-like, players get lots of touches, you can see which hitters can attack consistently with direction and power, you can gauge digging ability, and you can judge set quality. You ll notice I haven t included blocking in any of the drills above. That s because at the most basic level you can figure that out by looking at height and jump reach. If you wanted, you could incorporate some footwork into the warm-up to have a look at that. For anything more advanced, though, you need to see the players in game situations where they have to read, react, position themselves, etc. Any of the game stuff above will accomplish that, and there should be more than enough reps for you to get a decent assessment done. The same could be said about defending. You can hit balls at players to gauge a basic digging ability, but in order to really assess their overall ability you need to see them read, position themselves, and react to the ball. Notice - no hitting lines! Too much standing around. Plus, they take too long for players to get a reasonable number of reps and don t really tell you what a hitter Copyright 2016 by John Forman 12

13 is like in an actual game situation. The only player you get a good consistent look at is the setter, and there are better ways to accomplish that. Concluding Thoughts You ll notice I ve included very little of what could be considered individual player reps. Just about everything above involves integrated multi-player activities. The philosophy behind that is a simple one. The bottom line is how good a player can execute a skill or make a play during a game, not how well they do it in isolation with no communication, reading, or other elements required. This doesn t just apply to more experienced players. It s just as important to see how the less experienced ones act and react when on court with others. The idea of this guide was to provide you with a flexible set of tools which can be adapted for a number of different types of tryout situations. I hope you feel like that s exactly what you go. I love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Don t hesitate to send me a note at john@coachingvb.com. For more ideas and recommendations to help you run effective, low-stress tryouts, check out: Volleyball Try-out Tips, Tricks & Tools for Coaches and Club Directors Learn More Copyright 2016 by John Forman 13

About the Author John Forman authors the Coaching Volleyball blog at CoachingVB.com. Over the years he has run numerous tryouts for Juniors clubs and school teams.

The bulk of John s coaching career has happened at the collegiate level.

14 About the Author John Forman authors the Coaching Volleyball blog at CoachingVB.com. Over the years he has run numerous tryouts for Juniors clubs and school teams. He has also worked national level youth tryouts for both USA Volleyball and Volleyball England. John holds USA Volleyball CAP II and Volleyball England Level 3 certifications. The bulk of John s coaching career has happened at the collegiate level. He s been a head coach for a highly successful university program in England and an assistant coach at NCAA Division I and II programs, as well as for an NJCAA school. John coached at the professional level in Sweden, and has worked with men s and women s professional teams in Germany. He founded and ran the biggest club in his home state of Rhode Island. These days John is the Assistant Coach at Midwestern State University (NCAA Division II). Along with his blogging, he is a principle in the Volleyball Coaching Wizards project, for which he gets to interview some of the world s best volleyball coaches. Copyright 2016 by John Forman 14

Using Mini Games as a Teaching Tool Tom Hilbert, Colorado State University

Using Mini Games as a Teaching Tool Tom Hilbert, Colorado State University Many coaches today have varying opinions when it comes to controlled high repetition training and teaching vs. Random or game