I first got into coaching almost twenty years ago, during the fall trimester of my senior year in high school, when my friend Erik Roth and I volunteered as physical education teachers at the small elementary school in Mitchells, Virginia, an unincorporated hamlet of roughly 1100 people in Culpeper County, about ten minutes north of Woodberry Forest. Upon graduation from Woodberry in June of 2001, I went to our new home in Valdez, Alaska for the first time, where on my first Sunday at Epiphany Lutheran-Episcopal I was offered the position of interim head coach of the local swim team and its eight members.* Since then, I have been a coach more or less constantly: one summer with the Valdez Torpedoes Swim Club; six summers with VHS baseball; three seasons of Valdez Little League; three seasons of VHS football; the first girls' basketball coach at Anchorage's Lumen Christi HS in the winter of 2001; one season of basketball at Calvary Christian School in Pacific Palisades, CA; five seasons of basketball at National Cathedral School in Washington, DC, plus four each of volleyball and softball; two seasons of club volleyball with Metro in DC; two seasons of volleyball at Holy Child in Potomac, MD, and one of swimming; two seasons of basketball with Team Endless in District Heights, MD; two seasons of volleyball at Bishop Ireton HS in Alexandria, VA; a season of volleyball at Walsingham Academy in Williamsburg; and two seasons with Williamsburg Volleyball Club, this last one sadly truncated. Forty seasons in total over nineteen years.
*"Offered" might be a generous term; I don't think Bev Coleman (mother of 3/8 of the team) would have taken no for an answer.
Volleyball accounts for roughly a third of that total, and here it is worth noting that I arrived at coaching volleyball by an extremely unusual path. My own formal playing experience is minimal, amounting to a couple of beach volleyball camps at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point, CA while visiting my grandparents, tagging along with my friend Kevin Brown (who lived across the street from them and was my near-constant playmate when I visited). I played a lot of intramural volleyball in PE class during my ninth grade year at Lumen Christi, mainly because it was the sport that the teacher, Mrs. Berkshire, was most familiar with. My memory is hazy, but I remember that despite screwing around a lot because I would rather have been playing basketball (I would frequently drop-kick my serves, for example), I enjoyed it. Woodberry did not offer volleyball, although every May there was a sand/grass tournament that a lot of boys participated in, and plenty of them were quite good (if that same hazy memory serves, a team of some of my classmates, including an ACC soccer goalie and a Big Ten lacrosse player, both of whom were roughly six and a half feet tall, won all three years I was there).
It took Pepperdine for me to really fall in love with the sport, which I have detailed elsewhere. And it took probably two seasons of me coaching it at NCS for me to discover that it was my favorite sport to coach; something about the rhythms of the sport just spoke to me. If you ask me to name my favorite team that I've ever coached, I will respond without hesitation the fall 2010 outfit from NCS, where I was blessed with talent, leadership, a bunch of truly fun personalities, and (despite a few interpersonal differences) a sense of camaraderie that made the whole season enjoyable. And here's the thing; my WVC team this year had already become my second-favorite team I've ever coached.
What is remarkable about that statement is not just that we were not quite halfway through our season when the rug was pulled out from under us; it's that I have historically been ambivalent on coaching middle school teams, and this year I had a group of eighth graders. "Nothing dumber than a middle school boy, nothing meaner than a middle school girl" is a saying I first learned from someone while at NCS, and while obviously both parts of that are massive generalizations, they hold some truths. My biggest headache of a team was easily a group of middle school boys in the summer of 2003, my second year with Valdez Little League; as a twenty-year-old with virtually no assistance (both of the other coaches - dads of players - dipped out before the season was half over), I was not prepared for thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds to show up, um, altered for a Saturday morning game. It was a lot. As for girls, at NCS I generally found that seventh graders were more coachable than eighth graders, whose attitudes were much more frequently a challenge, but at least I was not dealing with issues of sobriety. They were just frequently cliquish and mean to each other.
Against that background, imagine my dread when I moved to Williamsburg a year and a half ago and was given a team of seventh grade girls, an age group I had not worked with extensively in seven years. I must say that I had much more fun than I thought I would. Since all but one of the girls were new to the sport that year, I focused much more on teaching skill development than I think I had the previous couple of years coaching high school players, and while we didn't win a lot of matches, twelve of the thirteen played for their school teams again in the fall, and all of them grew a lot over the course of the season; for example, on the first day of practice only three girls could consistently hit an overhand serve over the net, but by the end of the season ten were managing it regularly. Also, importantly, six of the twelve were selected for the club's 14 National team this year.
This year I was originally supposed to be coaching older girls, the 17 & under regional team that had the benefit of having two of its members be Walsingham players (the school I currently coach at). However, just a few days after coaching assignments were made, the coach assigned to 14 American decided that they needed to take a step back to focus on a different role with the club, and I was asked to switch to her role. I have to admit that I hesitated at first. Summer tryouts for middle school girls are perhaps not representative of the available talent pool; many girls that age are doing other things during the summer, or have not yet played enough of the sport to make a decision on committing their time - and their parents' money - to a six-month club season, since middle school is the first serious exposure most girls have to volleyball. At the July tryouts, we had eighteen girls in the 14U age group (two were actually eligible for 13U but were entering eighth grade like the rest of the 14U girls), of whom eleven were offered a spot with the 14 National team, leaving seven for 14 American. I hesitated because I know from experience how difficult it can be to coach with barely enough kids to form a complete team, especially in a club setting where they are not simply walking in after school but have to come from different areas and with different extra commitments on the side. In the previous season, two of the club's teams had started with nine or so girls but had been whittled down to six before the last month of the season thanks to injuries and such, so starting at seven seemed very risky. I told myself that hopefully I would be able to pick up perhaps two or three more girls at supplemental tryouts in September (critically, after more girls had had a chance to play for their middle school teams), and we would have enough to put together a coherent team.
Boy howdy, did we ever. At our first supplemental tryout we had (counting the girls from July, all but one or two of whom came to get some reps in and serve as a baseline to help evaluate the newbies) twice as many 14U girls as in July, and our problem immediately went from "will we have enough to be able to field a second team in case of injuries or illness" to "can we possibly find another coaching staff for what is now THREE teams' worth of girls." After a little bit of reshuffling, 14 American had eleven players after the first supplemental tryout, and picked up one more at our final tryout a week later to complete our roster.
Here I have to say that unlike my 2010 NCS team, where I had been acquainted with all but one of the girls (a Spanish exchange student) for two to four years already, there was very little continuity with this group. Just two were alumni of my 13 Patriot team, and one had played for the 13 American team the previous year, so she and I could pick each other out of a lineup. The other nine were all playing club volleyball for the first time, and three of them were new to the Williamsburg area as well. So we had to get to know each other, although nine of the twelve came from two schools (and thus there were two small groups that were already pretty well acquainted).
Building a capable and cohesive team was made much easier by the presence of, for the first time since my inaugural team at Bishop Ireton over two years earlier, an extremely knowledgeable full-time assistant coach. I have to give a ton of credit for our success over this shortened season to Sara Dowell and her efforts with the girls (one of whom was her own daughter). She had previously coached at one of the local middle schools and thus brought to the team both a strong acumen for the sport and for managing teenage girls. Our complementary skill sets allowed us to split the girls into groups for more individualized instruction, which was particularly important when it came to back row defense, which I would say is my weakest point of knowledge in volleyball (with hardly any formal playing experience of my own, I never learned - for example - how to dive properly). I think we worked very well together, and when the season was shut down I would say that we had the team on the cusp of a mini-breakthrough.
We started the season by spending most of the first month on skill development through technical progressions, sprinkling in competitive "short-sided" (so named because you are using fewer than six players per side) games to reinforce the developmental drills; their favorite game, and the favorite game of all of my volleyball teams for the past few years, is called "Trees vs. Shrubs," which pits half of the team against each other separated by height in a fast-paced three-on-three or two-on-two game to 25.* Once the calendar turned over to 2020 we spent time on positions, rotations, and 6-on-6 play. At our first tournament, the Monument City Classic over all three days of MLK weekend in January, we were seeded last in our pool (and I think in our entire division), but won our pool on the first day before finishing a highly respectable 14th out of 32 teams. The following weekend we finished fourth at a competitive Blizzard Blast event, and two weeks later made it to the semi-finals of a one-day tournament in Richmond - with fourteen teams in our age group - before running out of gas. That tournament included our single best match of the season, a quarterfinal sweep of our own friends and school teammates from 14 National. Our last tournament before the season was short-circuited was the first weekend in March (which now feels like it was two years ago), and we beat three of our four opponents while showing serious growth in some key areas. We had three more one-day tournaments and two more multi-day tournaments left to play through Memorial Day, plus were planning on adding the regional championship tournament in early May.
*Here are the basics. One side serves or a coach enters a free ball, and the point is played out until there is a winner. Once the point is over, the losing pair or trio gets replaced by a new set of girls from their side and a new ball is immediately entered. It's rare for one group of girls to last more than four or five consecutive points, so everyone gets a lot of action, and they get very competitive in the drill.
Because this was such a fun group to work with, and because we had such a promising season cut short, I want to talk a little bit about each of our twelve players and what they meant to me and this team. I honestly never thought that I would have this much fun coaching a middle school team, and I hope that when restrictions are lifted we can find a time to get everyone back together to play some volleyball and enjoy the company of people again.
I will start with AJ, one of our middle blockers. In a remarkable small-world coincidence, I learned shortly after supplemental tryouts (during which AJ was unable to participate, having broken a bone in her foot at the very beginning of the middle school season) that her mother had grown up a basketball and volleyball player in Valdez, and that her aunt (who is roughly my age) had been an awesome middle blocker on one of the most dominant high school teams I had ever seen (four college players - two of them bound for Division I - at the small-school level in Alaska was simply not fair). AJ herself was fairly new to the sport, but she showed plenty of promise as a middle blocker herself. She is a good enough athlete to beat me in a footrace, and when she dialed in her focus was quite effective for us. Even though she is talkative and can appear nonchalant, she put in the work. In December she could not get her serve to the net, let alone over it, owing to her penchant for only using one piece of the kinetic chain at a time; by March she was consistently getting more than two thirds of her serves over, and very few of them were net-scrapers.
Aliyah was another middle (and right side hitter) from an athletically talented family who was new to volleyball herself; her oldest sister had played for WVC through high school and is now on the club team at UVA, while their middle sister runs track. Aliyah is a quiet one, so much so that I'm not entirely sure I could pick her voice out of a lineup. But she is a natural athlete who quickly learned the timing of blocking at the net and was steady and productive at every other skill. She was among the best on the team at hitting on top of the ball rather than underneath it, although Sara and I were continually pushing her to hit harder and more aggressively.
Brooke was yet another girl who was fairly new to the sport, having played school volleyball in seventh grade but not in eighth due to changing schools and having to compete against an absolutely stacked talent pool in her grade. She has a strong arm (particularly for one of our smaller shrubs) and good hands; we were working with her on improving her defensive instincts. She was a capable enough server to come off the bench cold and get a couple of big aces at a critical juncture of an elimination match, and while she initially seemed quiet, in fact turned out to be quite talkative and engaging.
Jacqueline played on 13 American last year, but never in a tournament with 13 Patriot, so I had no real prior experience coaching with her. I cannot say that I expected her to be one of the primary engines of fun on the team, but she was, with the ability to be both observant and irreverent in the huddle or in tournament breakdown discussions (and in relating her numerous highly dramatized stories). She too honed her serve with a similar ethic to AJ, and was regularly knocking over three quarters of her serves by our last tournament. Jac also impressively displayed the confidence to ask me if she could play a front row position that she had not yet practiced at for a tournament, and found a good home for herself there.
Jade was one of my two returning players, a shrub who wholly embraced her role. In fact, she talked her parents into getting her a practice shirt that simply read "#SHRUBLIFE" in large font across the front. We made her the only libero for most of the season (she had been one of two last year), and she took to it like the proverbial duck to water; for two years Jade has shown that she believes she will get to every ball, an important mindset for the position. A year ago she was prone to over-pursuit and a high percentage of overpasses; this year she added control, especially on defense and in free ball situations, where she covered half the floor and allowed us to turn almost every free ball into an opportunity to score with a kill. Everyone who saw her both years remarked on the growth in her game.
Karen was half of the set of twins we had on 14 American who had recently moved to Williamsburg but had never played club before. She took immediately to setting in her first real run with it this year, quickly developing a strong sense for spreading the ball around to different hitters and for knowing when to change the rhythm of the game and dump a second ball over the net. She was an outstanding setter for us and six-rotation player, but she's an even better passer than a setter. Karen and her sister both were a little clumsy at times off the court (surprisingly for such good natural athletes), which resulted in playing a little banged up at different points of the season.
Karli was a rarity, a six-rotation left-handed hitter whose presence made it possible to get creative with different lineups, because she could hit from either pin and was one of our very best passers as well. Her serve was incredibly consistent and never appeared to be above the height of the net apart from about five feet on either side; that lack of visibility for passers made her one of our top two serving weapons. She is still learning how to really get on top of her hits and drive the ball down, but she has a compact, repeatable swing that generated the most kills on the team.
Aside from her elite ability to find any situation funny and collapse in a heap of giggles, Malia played several different positions over the course of the season, culminating in getting her first taste of in-game setting during our last tournament in early March. Not only does she have good hands, but she took me up on my challenge to our girls to run some quick sets in game play for the first time, setting a perfect "C" in her first set at the controls. Her serve was very consistent and she played strong defense at a couple of different spots as well, and no one cheered her teammates more enthusiastically.
Maria was my other returning player, an energetic force of nature who never seems to get tired from playing three school sports and club volleyball (so that she will bounce off the walls less at home). A year ago she was a right side hitter, but this year because of her athleticism and quickness (not to mention a little growth spurt between seasons - she was definitely a tree this year) we moved her to middle blocker. Maria has always had a strong serve, although she is prone to changing her routine and toss frequently, and she made huge strides this year in becoming a better and more consistent hitter. She is a non-stop chatterbox and a bit of a goofball, but she always wants to get better, and is a source of energy that teammates respond to very positively.
Sophia was the other half of the "Setting Sisters" act, and like Karen was learning to set for the first time. Sophia dealt with some illness and injury issues that cost her a good chunk of December (our first month of practice), and Sara and I thought that as a result of that we might have to bring her along more slowly. However, by the end of the first day of the Monument City Classic in January, she had firmly established that she was both our strongest server and strongest right-handed hitter, and absolutely indispensable to the team. She could dominate whole sets with her serve, and her 67 aces were more than three times as many as ten of the eleven other players on the team. By March she had developed a good topspin jump serve to complement her jump float, and was a defensive asset as well.
Tatiana had played school volleyball for the first time in the fall, and had been much more comfortable as a front-row hitter although she is barely five feet tall. Despite some trepidation, Sara and I (mostly Sara) taught her to embrace the shrub life in the back row, and her passing improved over the course of the season by some orders of magnitude. She also developed a quality serve that was consistent, in one match making all twenty of her serves to help deliver a big win. She hated the early start times of most tournaments; apparently getting her up before noon on a weekend all but takes an Act of Congress, but she always made it.
Lastly, Taylor was our only player with previous setting experience. She has terrific hands, but also a habit of sending over second balls anytime a pass put her within three feet of the net. Her serving was solid for us, and she was a good passer (albeit loath to hit the floor in pursuit of a ball). The aspect of her game we were working on improving the most was getting some air under her feet when hitting; she has a powerful arm, but a tendency to not jump and get under the ball resulted in a lot of her attempts sailing well out of bounds.
At this point, we still don't know when sports in any form will be able to resume in this country. Major League Baseball is apparently aiming for an early July return (without fans). The only state that I am currently aware of that is planning to go forward with fall sports as scheduled is Indiana. If states and associations determine that pushing back start dates is the right option, volleyball could potentially become a spring sport for a year, since there are no indoor court sports in the spring in most places. Hopefully we can return to the courts and fields on time, but the current inability by this country to provide adequate testing and tracing of the virus does not inspire confidence. High school volleyball tryouts in Virginia are a little more than two months away, and ideally all twelve of our "Cans" are able to start their high school careers on time. This was a fun season while it lasted, and both it and the previous season have totally re-calibrated my expectations when it comes to coaching at the middle school level. I am sad that we were robbed of the opportunity to make the second half of this club season as special as the first. Go Cans!
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