I came across another of
the worst habits a player can have. This one is more about attitude than skill.
I can't stand it when people take on the "God's-gift-to-volleyball" attitude; like they know everything there is to know and are perfect players. Until I see you playing in the AVP tour I don't want to hear you of all people mention that you don't need to learn anything new. And even AVP athletes have coaches...for a reason. All Pro's do!! Side-note: these are also usually the players that have an outside excuse for everything they do wrong. I won't even get in to the myriad of excuses I heard last night except for the utterly ridiculous assertion from one person claiming that he hadn't hit two balls out in a row in 7 years...seriously...
I was recently fortunate enough to have a high school coach come to my rec. league to put on a mini-clinic for the night. Now, I knew there were going to be people there with the "I don't need to learn anything" attitude. Now, I could have stayed on the main court and just played all night long, but I firmly believe and loudly stated on my way over to the receiving line, "Even an expert can learn something new in a beginner's class." Every teacher and every coach has a different style, so while the overall message might be the same, the delivery itself could spark some new found understanding of a basic concept.
I'm a decent player and on occasion I've even played well enough to be considered good, but having never had the opportunity to play organized ball in high school or college I was glad to be given informed instruction on my technique. And I'll admit I was uplifted to get direct praise on some of my actions.
Getting back to new tips for the basics... a friend of mine (no, really) had mentioned to this coach that recently he's been having problems over-passing the ball to the other side of the net. Problem, his hands were too low when getting ready to pass so he couldn't get his hands up quick enough to make a shallow pass...in his mind this meant he needed to move his hands into position quicker which resulted in too much upward momentum in his arms which further continued his problem of over-passing. Simple solution: start with his hands higher while in the ready position and use his legs more, no need to move quicker b/c his arms had less distance to cover. Instant improvement to be seen by all (especially me as setter). He knew his problem(over-passing), and knew the solution (getting his arms up for a solid platform), but his method of achieving it was slightly off. Sometimes it just takes an outside perspective to draw that line from A-B.
The flip-side to the above mentioned attitude is the players that play regularly, but have no desire to improve their skills. Why bother? I don't get this attitude; if you don't want to get better then why do it at all. How is playing mediocre ball fun for people? I can understand not bothering to improve your bowling score, because you only go 3x a year and have no desire to be competitive about it; fine, great, that doesn't hurt anyone. But this is a team sport, so by you not getting better you're interfering with my desire to excel. And then getting mad when I bring better players around and don't want to play with you isn't really fair now is it. Of course you want to play on our team, we're "good" players...but we want to play with good players too. These "stale" players are the first ones to complain when another team is too strong, yet do everything possible to surround themselves with the players they perceive to be strong (which is sometimes amusing b/c their perceptions of skill level are sometimes way off). If it was possible, I would play against a better team every time I stepped onto the court, because that is what drives me to play better.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not that much of an elitist...if someone isn't that skilled, but has the desire to improve, I will play next to them every time and help them along as much as possible until only someone better than me can offer more help (to both of us at that point).
Suffice to say, all the good that came of the clinic last night will be washed away from peoples minds and I'll be forced to endure sub-par rec. ball once again. Hopefully there will be people that aren't too prideful and will take minor reminders from those of us attentive enough to soak up as much knowledge as possible yesterday.
I still think we should relegate our side court permanently to drills. Teach a few people how to run some basic drills. Winners stay on the main court, losers go for some drills and whomever has been off the longest moves back to the main court. In a few months we'd have so much improvement and the previously mentioned stale-players will be forced to get better or probably get bored and find somewhere else to play.
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