Thoughts From The Road

Wilmington to Gulf Shores to Anaheim

I was hoping to have a more in-depth analysis of the PVF season up this week, but it’s a short time between the end of the season and the start of the regular season. The season analyses take quite a bit of time to do and it wasn’t in the cards for this week. We have the NCAA Men season coming up as well as the PVF playoffs. I’ll have some Triangle analysis on those two playoffs coming up. For today, I’ve got a bit of a grab-bag for you.

NCAA Beach
The NCAA Beach Volleyball National Championship is one of my favorite sporting events in the whole world. I’ve written about it plenty of times before. I had the good fortune to travel down for this event again this year. I’ve been consulting with the LMU beach team for a while now and I always travel down to Gulf Shores for the National Championship to be an extra set of eyes and ears. This tournament was again packed with exciting moments. The LMU - UCLA semi-final came down to the third set of the 5s pair, with LMU taking it 15-12 in the third to advance to the Finals. And the National Championship between LMU and TCU again came down to a 3rd set. This time it was at the 1s pair, and it’s tough to bet against the Olympians Alvarez and Moreno for TCU. They pulled it out for TCU and earned them their first beach National Championship.

Applied Statistics
Even though I work closely with the LMU program, I’m rarely in-person to see their training. And every year I love it! If you follow Coach Your Brains Out, you know that John Mayer is a big advocate of the EcoD/CLA approach to coaching. A lot of the statistical framework I’ve developed for the beach is based on giving John the info him and his staff needs to create different games and practice situations to work on the strengths/weaknesses revealed statistically. Each year I like seeing how John takes the stats and tweaks some specific games for each pair.

Other Fun Beach Practice Stuff
A couple other things they did that I liked:

7s Game - Essentially a speedball variation. 7s for the next serve, 9s on side switches.

1-Person Receive - Partner has to start off the court on the serve contact.

Balanced/Not Balanced - Servers get a bonus point if they win the rally AND the passer was off-balance.

Step-Out Approach
I’ve said before that more indoor players should develop an inside-out approach on their opposite side - right handed players on the right and left-handed players on the left. This “step out” toward their dominant hand allows the ball to get across their head. Beach players are generally pretty good at this:

Not from Gulf Shores, but I had this handy…

And with some training, indoor players can develop this tool. For many younger players, I like this to be their primary tool, whereas for more advanced players, I like it as a tool to add a different look to blockers.

Starting Practice
I then went right from Gulf Shores to Anaheim to join the USA WNT for 10 days in that gym. One recalibration from club (and even college) to pro/National team is how much slower the practice starts. In club volleyball you have 90 minutes or 2 hours and it’s like, “come on let’s go, let’s go, let’s get going.” National Team practice takes a good 45 minutes for the players to come out there, loosen up a little, meet at the board, go through their dynamic warmup, etc.

In many ways, it would be nice for high school and club kids to ease into practice a little more. You just don’t have the time. Practice can’t start before 7:30 and it has to end at 9:30. Or whatever. With the NT, whether you meet at the whiteboard at 9:00 or 9:07 doesn’t really matter and whether practice ends at 11:57 or 12:04 or 12:24 isn’t really a big deal either.

The Margins Are Slim
Getting back into the NT gym, the other calibration is the margin for error on a given touch. As the velocity of the ball increases, the touch off the arms has to be just right. There’s a lot more room on the beach for players to push or muscle the ball around as passers. Dealing with higher-velocity serves requires simpler touches and more precise contacts. Everybody at this level is good, but to me what jumps out is the players who are just a little simpler, a little cleaner in their passing mechanics.

Dealing With The Block
A big emphasis here in Anaheim has been improving the ability to deal with and exploit the block. The question that I’ve been asking a lot of coaches is: why do women’s team block more balls than men’s teams?

Look at the individual Men’s and Women’s statistics from Paris. One guy blocked 3.0 or more balls per match. 9 women did. On the team level, let’s use the Italian league.

Blocks Per Set - Men’s
2.55 - Trento
2.45 - Perugia
2.38 - Lube
2.13 - Average

Blocks Per Set - Women’s
3.04 - Vero
2.84 - Scandicci
2.76 - Fenera Chieri
2.28 - Average

The high end is higher and so is the average. This is pretty consistent once you get to a certain level of play. So why do you think it is? A few thoughts of mine:

1. Men hit the ball harder, so at the margins a few more balls bounce out of bounds than land in bounds. But wouldn’t this be compensated by their blocking also being stronger?

2. The quick/bic adds a layer of offensive firepower to the game that makes blocking harder. The test for this would be… do women block more out-of-system high balls than men? Or are those extra blocks coming in-system?

3. Men have been playing with a block-and-toolkit style of play longer than women. By U-17, the block is starting to be a factor for boys a bit more than the block is a factor girls. So this influences their play downstream. “Hit hard and straight” is more embedded in a 23 year-old women’s player than it is in a 23-year-old men’s player.

4. Offense and defense is natural cat-and-mouse, point-and-counterpoint evolution. Blocking used to have an advantage in the men’s game, but the game is at a point in the cyclical evolution where the offense is gaining an advantage. On the flip side, the women’s game is at a part in the cycle where the blockers are ahead of the offense.

I’m not sure I completely buy any of these explanations. What do you think? Leave something in the comments!