Archetypes
How ancient mythology helps us make better scouting reports.
This week is Beach Week. Typically I dedicate the first 3 weeks of each month to indoor volleyball and the fourth to beach, but I’ve rearranged the schedule slightly to synch up with the NCAA Beach Volleyball National Championship, which takes place this week. So this is April’s Beach Week. And I’ll pull forward the May Beach Week to next week. Two Beach Weeks in a row. Coaches who only care about indoor: see ya in a couple weeks!
This has been an exciting week at the NCAA Beach National Championships and today (sending this out on the morning of Day 3) promises to be another good one. There’s already been five matches decided 3-2. Highly-seeded UCLA and Florida State both needed to pull out 15-13 3rd-set wins on their final pair to pull out first round victories, but then both advanced in the second round. Florida State plays USC and UCLA plays Cinderella story Georgia State, who, as a 10-seed, upset #2-ranked TCU yesterday.
This is a particularly fun event for me, because this is essentially the only NCAA beach volleyball that I get to see live all year. This is my fourth season working with the LMU program, but almost all of my work is done from I distance. I watch the video, put together some stat reports and scouting, and send to the coaching staff.
I’ve mentioned before what an awesome event this is, but it bear repeating. It’s a uniquely cool few minutes when matches in multiple courts are all at 18+ points at once. Everyone’s eyes are darting back and forth between the court they are watching and the big scoreboard that shows the scores for all the courts, doing mental calculations on which courts they need to win to either stay alive and force 3rd sets or to finish the match before courts start going to 3. The best are the duels that come down to one court and everybody migrates to that court to watch those two teams decide the match for their schools. Put next year’s event on your calendar right now!
Matchups
As I mentioned, my role here is primarily scouting and match prep. When you scout an opponent, it’s never in a vacuum. You have to be viewing them through the lens of what your team is capable of doing. It’s not relevant that this team is weak against a crosscourt spin serve if you don’t have players capable of hitting that ball, etc.
That’s a simple example, and things naturally get more complex when you think about all the different skillsets you see on the beach. These few days have got me thinking a lot about archetypes and how important those are in your program.
Here’s what I mean by that:
The easiest players to play against are your teammates. You practice with them, you play against them all the time, you know them well. Of course, that advantage is neutralized because they also know you. So maybe I should say that the easiest players to prep for are your teammates. You don’t need a lengthy scouting report because you already know what they like to do and how you want to play against them.
I could also see this in the Athletes Unlimited league. By Week 4, many of the players knew each other so well that you barely even needed to say anything. We’re all ready for that Sheilla Castro wrist-away line. (Doesn’t mean we’re actually going to be able to dig it, but at least we’ll be less surprised when she kills the ball.)
The next easiest plan is to play somebody who is similar to somebody you know well.
He’s got that short poke like Bob does, be ready for that.
It’s like playing against Susie at practice, be ready for lots of dig-overs and on-2s.
Let’s take this one step farther.
Volleyball IQ
I grew up with parents who were coaches.
I heard the term volleyball IQ a lot, but it took me a while to get what it meant. Mostly it seemed to mean a way to criticize players when you couldn’t quite figure why they had screwed up. Must be low volleyball IQ! Also, whenever you lost to a team from Hawaii… obviously they just have higher volleyball IQ. Nothing we could have done!
As I’ve gained experience, I translate volleyball IQ as being relevant pattern recognition. And these patterns layer on each other. When I’m the defender, and my partner picks up a short ball, a base part of volleyball IQ is understanding that, if they dig the ball straight up near the net, I’m going to be in pretty good position to attack that ball on 2. The next layer of volleyball IQ is my partner understanding that I’m in a good position to attack on 2, so as they are digging the short ball, they lay it up for me to attack. The next layer is my opponent recognizing that that situation often leads to an on-2 attack, so they are ready to block me. The next layer is me knowing that my opponent is going to be ready to block that ball so if I approach hard I’m going to pull the blocker and I can poke short along the net while the blocker is up and the defender is still getting into position.
And so it goes.
As coaches, we can and do help players learn these pieces of the game.
“Hey, in that situation, here’s what’s happening and what you can do.” etc
But there’s something we can add to this to help players both learn the game and also be better tactically in competition.
Archetypes
Scholars of mythology like Joseph Campbell note that there are common themes in stories told across different human civilizations.
There are also archetypal characters that occur over and over again: the Mentor, the Trickster, the Guardian, etc. This is probably because they illustrate shades of humanity that are contained within all of us.
So wtf does this have to do with scouting reports?
Well, a lot actually! You might say that there are volleyball archetypes as well. The fiery defender, the crafty veteran, the young and raw blocker. More specifically, there are archetypal ways that teams try to sideout and defend that, if understood, can help our players chunk concepts into that so-desired volleyball IQ concept.
Maybe you’re discussing an upcoming matchup with one of your pairs. You might say that your opponents have an active blocker that likes to show and take. She’ll set up on the line and jump into the cross or vice versa. She’ll try to show her block and then pull at the last second or vice versa. The defender is juking to try to get you to shoot a certain way so she can run it down. Explaining all of this can get pretty confusing. But if you’ve chunked these concepts into an archetype, you might say something like:
Hey, these guys are a smoke-and-mirrors team. Remember how we play against a team like that?
And, if you’ve taught your players well, they might understand that you want to focus less on looking at their side and making calls based on what they are doing and more on hitting high and hard into the heart of the court. With a blocker that’s diving sideways, she’s going to be less penetrated and the defender is more likely to be off-balance. The worst thing you can do on a team like this is start trying to out-guess their jukes; you’re playing right into their hands.
For my indoor coaches reading these, these archetypes are good to know when you’re scouting hitters. In the AU season, you saw the legendary Sheilla Castro playing what I’d call the archetype of a “2-ways hitter.” Hitters like this like to avoid the block and cut the ball around. They’ll hit true line and sharp cross. So your line blocker has to avoid reaching back into the seam because they’ll get beat down the line. Your middle blocker needs to stop and get across on the sharp angle, even if it means leaving a seam in the block at times.
On the flipside, another opposite in the league, Falyn Fonoimoana, was more the archetype of the “narrow fan hitter.” She’s going to play less of a horizontal game and more of a vertical one. She’ll pick an angle of approach and generally keep the ball on that angle. If she sees the seam in the block, she’ll bounce it and if the block is closed she’ll go high off the hands. So middle-back defenders need to stay disciplined and if the block is closed, be ready for the deep deflections. Middle blockers need to close the seam, even if it means reaching, because otherwise, she’s going to bounce it and we won’t be able to dig it.
Trade-Offs
Shusako Endo said that, “every weakness contains within itself a strength.” Well, you also might say that every strength contains within itself a weakness. The Achilles’ Heel trope is similar to this. When you’re teaching your players these volleyball archetypes, this is what is important to communicate. Your opponents can’t get something for nothing. Economics teaches us that, “there are no solutions, only trade-offs.”
When you play against a team with a particular style, what problem are they trying to solve, and what trade-off does that create?
To use the example of the smoke-and-mirrors team, the problem they are trying to solve is: running down shots is hard. If they have this style, and they are any good, they are absolutely going to juke you into shooting one way and they’ll run it down for an easy dig and transition. But the trade-off for this is that the defender is rarely balanced. If she’s always on the move, she’ll be less effective at digging hard-driven balls. If your players understand this, it helps keep their morale up. Some players want to get clean kills and they get frustrated if the defender is touching everything, even if they are still getting kills.
As a blocker, am I blocking against a two-ways hitter? If so, he’s going to cut the ball away from me at times, but he’s probably going to have less heat, because he’s more wrist than shoulder. So I can make some late moves and dive into some angles, because I probably don’t need to be quite as pressed. On the flip side, if I’m playing against a power hitter, I need to pick an angle and get pressed across. He’s probably not going to cut the ball away from me, but he might blow my hands up and tool me if I’m weak and late on the block.
Here on the LMU team, we won our round-of-16 matchup with Hawaii to advance into the 8-team double elimination round. We lost to Florida State to move down to the loser’s bracket, but then beat Florida Atlantic to stay alive. We play the loser of UCLA and Georgia State in an elimination matchup. When I’m scouting these matches, I’m looking for archetypes that can chunk things and make them simple in the minds of the staff I’m working with, or for players at clinics, etc. Getting the data is the first step, translating the data into an effective story helps retention and speeds up decision-making. Hesitation is death on the beach, so anything that reduces that is a good thing.