Volleyball With 5th Grade Girls

A few months ago, I was approached by good friend, Lou, and requested that I help her out with volleyball. Her daughter, Grace, developed an interest in volleyball, and now wanted to play CYO volleyball. Before I continue, let me give you a little background.

Coach Lou has basketball running through her veins. And so does Grace. They're hard core basketball aficionados, and have participated in various leagues and tournaments both in and out of CYO. Grace never played any other team sport, and Lou coached nothing but basketball. Last year, some sort of record was set in the Oakland diocese CYO program, wherein the championship match in the 4th grade girl's division was between two St. Joseph teams, from among 120 other teams in the diocese. This was a rare and extraordinary feat. Grace played in one of these teams, which Lou coached.

Also last year, during the boys CYO volleyball season, Grace had a chance to watch a few of the games, particularly those of the 7th/8th grade team which I coached. As a result, she became interested in the sport and wanted to play this incoming school year. This was when Lou approached me to help her out with a team that may be formed. This was one of those requests you couldn't say no to.

From what I understood, there was one 4th grade team last year and there was quite a big number of players. For this year, I suggested that 2 teams be formed, and that we keep the number of players low, preferably no more than 10 per team. This would allow for more playing time, and make everything more manageable.

After all the registration forms have been turned in, there were 18 girls that signed up, enough to form 2 teams. We had our first combined practice this afternoon at St. Joe. With Lou and I coaching one team, the other would be coached two other parents. I purposely made sure that I would be able to attend this first practice, so I could get a first impression of the resources that would be available to us. In other words, I want to see who the potential players would be.

Being a hard core volleyball enthusiast myself, I wanted everything to go the way I want it, including how the players would warm up at the start of every practice. It is important that these young girls know the relevance of everything we would do and how it affects how they would perform during practices and during actual games.

Since there were alot of girls, we had to randomly divide them among the 2 sets of coaches. Each coach did what they felt the girls needed at that time. From what I've seen, there were other more important things the players collectively would need to know, like the basics or fundamentals of the game, including posture and stance, before doing anything else. I don't care if they've played the game before. The way they passed (or hit or bumped) the ball tells me they didn't learn much or learned correctly. If you cannot get the most basic skill required in volleyball -- to pass the ball, then you cannot do anything else until you have mastered it.

Then, there is this other issue of varied coaching styles. From what I witnessed today, our coaching styles differ. If you ask me, I think my methodology and technique had proven itself for the past so many years. I had hoped that before the day ended, all coaches would sit down and divide the team as equitably as possible. Personally, it didn't make sense to prolong having a combined practice where the players hear different (and possibly, contradicting) ways of doing things. They'll just get confused.

As the practice progressed, I managed to pick out the girls I would like to have on my team. I compared notes with Lou, and we pretty much had the same choices. I pushed her to get the other coaches to agree on a selection at the end of practice, so we can all plan our practices accordingly. Fortunately, that was what happened. And we were able to get 7 of the 8 girls we wanted. The pool of players was reduced to 16, when 2 players quit even before practice started.

Now that we have our team, we can proceed with developing these girls to be the best they can be. Challenging would be a good description of what to expect. But it would be boring if otherwise. Wish us luck.