Jamball

A drill; a game situation; a way of life

I think I’m naturally a big-picture guy. I love grand sweeping theories of world events. I’m a systems thinker at heart. And what I really love is when something scales up and down. There’s a grand narrative and yet it also scales down to smaller details.

It’s like… the same no matter how close you look man

WTF you talking about, Trinsey?

Well… Jamball, of course.

Jamball Plays

If you’ve had me for a clinic, I talk about Jamball plays like this:

or this:

And I posted a big montage in the 50-Play Friday post.

Jamball plays exist in the space between Setter Dumps, Overpass Attacks, Jousts, and Recycling. There’s an element in all 4 involved, because, by they are by definition a little undefinable. Jamball plays are mostly what they are not, which is that they are not neatly scripted plays that fit into a clear category and thus can be broken down into keys and trained in a clean drill.

Jamball Mentality

And here’s where we get to the bigger theories on volleyball. Or life, if we want to be really grandiose.

Something interesting happens as volleyball teams get better. Their good plays look increasingly clean and consistent. Hitters start taking really simple, repeatable footwork patterns. Offense tempo and timing gets real precise. Things happen the way teams intend them to happen.

And yet… the amount of chaotic plays ALSO increases. If you watch the Olympic medal rounds, you will see more balls played from way off the court, you will see more weird chicken wing contacts, you will see attackers use more unconventional contacts in order to score, etc.

Because at mediocre levels of volleyball, the ball just goes dead. Balls don’t have to get bumpset from 10’ off the court, because those balls never get touched. You never have to chicken wing a ball that just got blocked back off your opponent’s face because the balls don’t really get blocked like that. You never have to grab your libero’s legs and haul him back under the net after he dives under to save a ball because the mediocre liberos never attempt it.

The low-IQ play is the opposing middle. Just trip over him and you’ll get the interference!

So weirdly, as the level of play gets higher, you simultaneously get:

1. More precise plays

2. More chaotic plays

But yet, if you think about it, this is life. Especially if you Never Go To Applebees. When you get good at something, you generally don’t get better from the mean-outward. You get better by balancing the two extremes. My daughter is learning math. As you get more proficient at math, you both learn how to predictable, common problems more quickly (times tables, etc) but you also learn broader ways of thinking that help you when you encounter new problems. As a parent, you both learn to create predictable family routines AND how to improvise when your nephew throws up on his only pair of clothes on the way to the Franklin Institute and you can’t go home because everybody’s been looking forward to.¹

And thus, this is the Jamball mentality. Weird stuff happens in the match and we need to play through it. The ball will get dug tight to the net, will your middle panic because she’s not a middle and middles aren’t supposed to set? Or will she elevate and make a strong play at the net? When your opposite gets hit by a serve and the ball ends up with your setter near the net will she panic because she’s a setter and not a hitter. Or will she do something cool and win the point anyway?

When a block touch hangs up near the net, will you be totally Applebees and cover the ball back to your setter. Or will you jump up and bounce the crap out of it?

If you are Cuban, the answer is to bounce it. ALWAYS bounce it.

I think teams can adopt this mentality. We’re going to try to bring more of the game under our control and polish things up and be super consistent and repeatable. AND we’re going to play through and get weird and embrace the chaos that comes in high-level play.

Training It

In addition to the above, I also use Jamball to refer to a particular drill. Here’s how I set up and run Jamball-the-drill: