Spring Mailbag 2024 - Part 1

Standards by level, HS warmups, Excel/VS sheets

Greetings SmarterVolley readers! We’ve reached the end of the spring cycle of content. I’ll have a wrap-up post at the end of the week with a master list of all the Tuesday Toolbox, Friday Fitness, and Sandy Sundays posts from the past 3 months. Next, I have a content series complimenting and expanding on The Triangle. But first, Mailbag!

As always, if you’ve been enjoying SmarterVolley, please share with a friend or coaching colleague. This site started as a labor of love that has been, slowly, transforming into something I can afford to spend more time on. The more subscribers I get, the more time I can allocate to producing great content for all of you.

If you’re interested in checking out previous Mailbags, here’s:

Winter 2023
Fall 2023
Spring 2023

As always, becoming a Premium Subscriber is the best way to get your questions answered, because you can message me directly via Substack or comment on an article- which is limited to only Premium Subscribers

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Matt G in Getting Started asks:

Sorry for digging this old one up, but is there a good place to find different level standards? I use to be able to see it on GMS, but can’t find it any more. I would love to have this on the whiteboard day 1 with our last years stats for both high school and club.

I don’t have all these standards for high school or club. One of the barriers is that “high school” can encompass a pretty broad range. There’s plenty of conferences of high school volleyball where almost every team will be below 50% Sideout. And there’s also levels of high school volleyball that are going to border on NCAA Level.

But in order to best answer your question, I’d simplify a few things:

High School Standards
eSO = 50%
MTP = 75%
FBK = 33%

GP SO = 60%
BP SO = 50%
GP% = 50%

Service Errors <= 2 per set
Aces >= 2 per set
Times Aced <= 2 per set

So in this case, I wouldn’t have 4-6 passing grades, I would have 3:

1. Good Pass (setter can handset)

2. Bad Pass (ball in play, setter cannot handset)

3. Ace

So in this case, we have our global metric of eSO, which is the most important, but most general. And we pair that with our MTP, which is sort of our “low error” and our FBK, which is our “ability to score.” If we’re meeting MTP but below FBK, we need to turn up our ability to terminate and take some more risk. If we’re at or close to FBK, but below MTP, we need to work on cutting down errors.

And the passing simplifications will be more relevant for a high school team. Sure, there’s some high level teams that might need to differentiate C-Pass from AB Pass. If so, adjust accordingly. High school teams tend not to have the same “perfect pass premium” that a higher-level team is going to have. Yeah, you’re probably 2 or 3 points of sideout better when the ball is at 3 feet than 8 feet, but you’re not going to be 10 points better.

I like all these metrics because they are pretty nice round numbers and fit well into drill formats.

For the Terminal Serving stats (Serve Errors, Aces, Times Aced), I like the round numbers of 2 per set. Again, it’s clear and concrete and allows you build drills around and set mini-goals as a team.

This should help you get started.

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Email from a high school coach:

Joe, I recently subscribed and I love the content so far.

I've been coaching HS volleyball for 28 years. Our pre-game warm-up routine has been pretty much the same (with a few tweaks) for the last 10-12 years. Last season, I felt like my team was getting off to slow starts during the first set. As the match went on, we gradually would pick it up. I can't help but think it was due to the way we were warming up. In Kansas we do a 20 minute warm-up. 4 minutes shared ball handling, 4 minutes full net, 4 minutes off, 4 minutes full net, 4 minutes off. What would be the best way to utilize the time that we are allotted? I want to feel like we are warm and ready to play. Any ideas or suggestions would be great.

My thoughts on that are:

1. Is there any kind of non-ball warmup before the shared ball-handling? Meaning, before you're allowed to get the balls out, is there some flex time where you can jog around on the court or whatever? Or is it a situation where the JV matches ends and then 5 minutes later the refs are blowing the whistle for captains and starting the 20-minute warmup protocol? If you can get a bit of a physical warmup beforehand, then your shared ball-handling can be a little more relaxed.

2. Assuming there is NOT an opportunity for physical warmup beforehand, you need to get things going pretty quickly to get your blood flowing and get a physical warmup during those 4 minutes. I like either a 2-person dig-set or a 3-person defensive "shell" drill more than pepper. Dig-set is my favorite. If you have a 12-person high school team, I would split them into 2 groups of 6. Put 6 in the Dig-Set (2 people on, the other 4 in 2 lines waiting to come on) and run them through quickly and then have the other 6 in the back of the court doing some light plyos (jump rope, build-up 80% sprints, skips, hops, "agility ladder", whatever).

Switch halfway through. So now people should be warm and feeling a little springy and bouncy. If you have some time before the ball handling to get out there and get a little warm, then you can have everybody do the Dig-Set. But I think 12 people going through Dig-Set on a half-court is tough to get them physically warm enough to really hit in 4 minutes.

I’m not a huge fan of “shoulder warmups” like bouncing the ball back and forth because I don’t think there’s enough going on there to actually raise the core temperature. It’s fine if you have a little more time and you’re going to get the dynamic stuff going at some point. But actually getting to a light sweat is going to warm up your shoulder better than just bouncing the ball back and forth to each other a few times.

3. First 4 minutes of "Full" I'd get some fast-paced hitting lines going. If your team is good, you can toss 2 balls in at once... one setter sets the outsides and the other sets the middles. Swap setters at 1'. Swap outsides over to the rightside at 2'. Swap setters again at 3'.

4. Second 4 minutes of "Full" I'd play 6v6. Put your starting group over in Rotation 1 in serve receive and another 6 on defense. Put a bowl or easy serve in and play it out. Rotate to Setter-6 and do the same. You should be able to get through 6 points (and therefore, 6 rotations) of 6v6 volleyball in 4' with some time to spare, which you can toss in another freeball or 2 until your time is up.

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Another coach asks:

I was wondering if you any excel sheet where you keep track of the metrics mentioned in the “Getting started part 2” post. I did my own just wondering if you have one that is simpler and easier to read than mine.