Mini-Mailbag

Practice Stats and New Programs

I’ve had a backlog of mailbag questions that I’ve been working on for a while. I was hoping to put them out as a big mailbag in the May Odd Week but then… VNL happened. So rather than keep trying to finish off that big mailbag post, I’m going to start dripping them out over the next few weeks a couple at a time. I usually put the mailbag behind the paywall, but in the interest of using the recommended Substack technique of free content previews to drive subscriptions sharing more content, I’ll put one in front of the paywall and one behind.

Emailed question from a youth coach:

I just listened to Coach Your Brains Out podcasts 153 and 154 titles Rethinking Volleyball with Chad Gordon from Volley Dork, and he talked a lot about stats and when to use or not use them. The thing I kept thinking the whole time that he never addressed was what stats should your program be keeping in practice if they have to do it by hand? He had some great ideas that I am going to use about the difference between an ace and a 1 and the difference between an attach that puts the other team in and out of system: I will for sure use both of those in the high school season. But day in/ day out, if I am building a google sheet of fmy practice stats to track growth, what are the 3 or 4 I can realistically manage / should shoot to measure consistently both for player competition and player growth?

I think the answer might even be, "no stats," if it's just you and you can't film practice, etc. You need to be coaching, not keeping stats, so you might not be able to do anything.

But if you have the ability to keep some stuff, I think the top 3 are:

1. Serve In %

2. Ace %

3. Make Them Play %. How often, when the ball is served in, do you hit the ball in the court. So you can't get aced, can't send a freeball (sometimes I call this Make Them Really Play), can't hit the ball in the net or out the back. This is the most important stat for youth volleyball teams.