Wisdom From Marv

Last year legendary coach Marv Dunphy sat down with myself and a group of coaches for a Q&A session. I did a little talking, but most of the moderation was done by Marv’s longtime assistant, and now successor at Pepperdine, David Hunt. I shared some of my coaching journey earlier this week, and it’s fascinating to me to hear some details from Marv’s career that I didn’t know- even though I spent time as his assistant too!

When I was a young coach, maybe 21 or 22, I attended a coaching clinic where Marv was presenting. The biggest thing that struck me was his admonition to, “coach in reality.” It really hit me that I was doing a lot of coaching to what SHOULD happen. Our block SHOULD take away this part of the court so the hitter SHOULD hit the ball here so our defender SHOULD stand there to dig it. And then reality hits and barely anything goes according to plan.

My players SHOULD listen to me, because I know the right way to pass, right? Their parents SHOULD never complain, because this new position is obviously best for their daughter. The ref SHOULD have totally seen that the libero covered that block overhand in front of the attack line so when their setter attacked the ball over on 2 above the plane of the net that was an illegal attack and we SHOULD have gotten that point which would have been game point which would have meant we would win that game which would have put us in the gold bracket which meant we SHOULD have totally gotten our Open bid right there.

Well, maybe that last one was just me… but you get what I’m saying. Coach in reality. Marv shares some additional thoughts on that topic.

My other big takeaway from this conversation was Marv’s deliniation between Guided Discovery and Mutual Exploration. When is the right time for each in a player’s career?

Here’s the link to the video. I’d love to hear your biggest takeaway in the comments. What did you learn from Marv?