Beach Week: "3 More" From World Champs Pt2

Plus a bonus for indoor players

This week is Beach Week at Smarter Volley. I dedicate the first three weeks of each month to indoor volleyball and the fourth week to the beach game. If you are purely here for indoor volleyball, most of this won’t apply to you, although I have a bonus clip for you conveniently behind the paywall at the end.

The theme of this current block of Beach Weeks is Winter Wrap-Up. Each week I’ll take a look at 1 of 3 major championships: FIVB Men’s World Championships, FIVB Women’s World Championships, and the NCAA National Championship. In particular, I’m looking at what the Triangle relationships were in these different competitions and seeing if we can draw any trends.

Earlier this week, we looked at some of the Triangle numbers for the 2022 FIVB Women’s World Championship:

Beach Week: World Champs Triangle Pt2

We’ll dive a little deeper into a few things and look at some clips as well. Here’s 3 More Takeaways + 3 Plays I Loved from the finals of the World Championships.

Takeaway 1: Transition Kills Win Matches

I’ve talked before about this idea of the dig → create → convert chain. You have to be able to dig balls. You have to be able to turn digs into swings. You have to be able to convert those swings. The lower your level, the more that you can win by just getting it up. The higher your level, the more you have to plan for Transition. Simply getting digs is not enough.

I touch on this briefly in part of my recent appearance on Coach Your Brains Out, but this is one of the biggest value-adds in beach scouting. Don’t just think, “what do their hitters do?” But think, “where are the opportunities for us to turn a dig in transition?” If you can dig and turn 5 balls in Transition, you can win games in the women’s world championship. Where are those transition kills going to come from?

Takeaway 2: Make Them Play