CT Adult Volleyball
In my 2 years living in Connecticut, I have had a great deal of difficulty finding opportunities to play. 18+ leagues and open gyms are scattered across the state, and often times are difficult to join because of a lack of available information. I will use this post as an ongoing listing of available adult opportunities in CT -- split among Open-Gyms, Tournaments and Leagues.
If you have additional information on any of the following Open-Gyms and Leagues, or if you know of any other opportunities to play, please leave a comment, send me an e-mail, or respond to @volleynut on Twitter.
*Disclaimer* Please double check either by web or by phone with each of the venues/town recreation departments on the times and schedules. Some of these may have changed since I last checked.
Last update: August 17th, 2010
Relevance of Physical Benchmarks
Often times as a coach, player, or fan of a sport you will be bombarded with physical benchmarks and athletic performance metrics. At the professional levels of sport you will hear about so-and-so player's vertical leap, 40-yard dash time, or bench press. Think of the NFL Combine where they have potential NFL draftees go through a series of physical tasks in order to rank their athletic potential and performance.
But that is at the professional level, where the athletes would have already developed the necessary skills and knowledge to perform at the highest level. At that level, physical traits can differentiate between a good player, and a great player.
How is this relevant to the high-school juniors level of volleyball?
AVP Tour Ceases Operations
It is a sad weekend for volleyball and the volleyball community in the United States, as the AVP Tour has officially ceased operations and cut the 2010 season short as of 8/13/2010.
This saddens me on multiple levels, as the AVP tour has had ups and downs over the last three decades but seemed to always bounce back. Popularity of the beach game soared after Misty, Kerri, Beast and Professor swept the gold medals at the 2008 Olympics for the United States and we were even seeing some prime-time television coverage of the sport.
But now where do we go from here? The majority of the athletes who compete in the AVP tour did so on a part-time basis. Now they will have to return to full-time jobs to support themselves. They may decide to join the EVP tour and play in some USAV open tournaments just to keep their dreams alive, but the AVP Tour was really the top level of volleyball you could reach in the United States.
There is so much talent in this country, the AVP Tour gave us a chance to showcase it, and now most of it will go to waste. The top pros will undoubtedly move overseas to places like Germany or Switzerland to make competing in the FIVB easier and we will never get to see them play.
Unlike in Europe and Asia, there are no professional indoor leagues to speak of in America. Our top athletes play overseas for leagues in Russia, Korea, Germany, Greece, then come together to compete as a national team every couple of years. And again, we rarely get to see them play. Beach volleyball was our sport's exposure to the country, and now it will exist primarily in grassroots efforts.
So who will our high school and college athletes look up to? For the die-hard volleyball players, they will continue to look up to the top college athletes, and the international players that have gotten publicity. But what of the larger population of volleyball players in America? Those who play the sport and enjoy the sport but never get exposed to the highest levels of play. Who will they look up to? Where will their inspiration to improve come from?
In a year where beach volleyball has just been recognized as an official NCAA pilot sport program, for the AVP Tour to shutter operations can only mean the inevitable rejection of beach volleyball as an official NCAA sport in the future.
I have been fortunate enough in the past few years to attend the AVP Tour events in Belmar, NJ and Coney Island, NY. It was always a dream of mine to attend the Manhattan Beach Open as well. But now it will never come to fruition.
Financial hardships for a large organization such as the AVP, which is a publicly held entity (at a share price of $0.02), are hard to overcome. The low profile of volleyball as a sport in this country combined with the economic recession has pushed the AVP beyond the point at which the owners and investors could afford to buoy it anymore. And it is as damn shame. A damn shame.
http://www.avp.com/News-and-Media/2010/08/AVP-Tour-Suspends-Operations.aspx
Functional Warm-ups
One of the major draws to the boys' and girls' volleyball programs at my old high school was the fact that the coaches rarely made the players run. In fact, it was one of the defining characteristics of the program which drew me into the sport to begin with. It wasn't a matter of being lazy, more a fact that running was boring, repetitive, and had no immediate "fun" factor to it.
But this wasn't the reason why we rarely ran before or during practices. No, the reasoning was much more logical, and wouldn't be revealed to me until I began to coach under them a few years later.
The fact of the matter is, especially at the high school/juniors level of competition, that running provides very little benefit. You can even consider it a complete waste of time. If I haven't already blown your mind or completely offended you, please hear me out...
Coaching with conflicting philosophies
The situation: You're assisting with a struggling high school volleyball program. The head coach has been there for 30 years with varying levels of success over the years. The full-time JV/Freshman coaches have minimal coaching or volleyball experience and follow the head coach's philosophy and teaching methodology verbatim.
Your background: You've been coaching for under 10 years, but have been working with perennial state championship contending high school programs, top ranked collegiate programs, and international coaching staffs. Your philosophies on how to teach the game from the ground up, as well as general theory, have been built upon a foundation of winning.
The question: How does one go about subtly changing the way things are run for the betterment of the struggling program?
The Correlation of Effort and Motivation
As a player, it's inevitable.
You are playing against lesser competition.
You get bored. You lose focus. Your effort level drops.
You play down to your opponent's level.
You make mistakes you normally wouldn't.
You don't get to balls you normally would get to.
It happens as an individual. It happens as a team. It happens just because.
Why, all of a sudden, when you normally play at a high level, do you slack off?
Competitive nature is what drives any athlete, in any sport. This innate need to out-perform those around you, to better your own game, to prove to the world that you can lead your team to victory.
And yet there are times when it seems to fade...
Virtues of Consistent Setting
Perhaps one of the most under-rated characteristics of a good team (or maybe I am biased because I'm a setter) is consistency of setting.
You see a lot of setter changes with competitive teams at the juniors level as well as in adult recreational open-gyms/leagues. Sometimes a coach decides to run a 6-2 simply to get more players involved in the game (rather than for proper strategic reasoning.) Other times at a recreational (however competitive) league, teams may decide to run a 6-2 or just rotate "middle setter" to keep more players involved or to "keep it simple."
I need to whole-heartedly disagree with the notion that having two drastically different setters splitting the touches, or changing setters upon every rotation, simplifies the game. I'll touch upon both points (6-2 and "middle-set") in today's post as well as the general concept of how having a good setter can clean up the game.
Coach the Player, Not Yourself
Take a random sample of volleyball players and ask them for a list of what they think makes a good coach. Some will say experience, others will say intellect, and everybody else will list something different. And yet, they will inevitably list many overlapping characteristics.
Depending on their strengths, coaches can be specialized as good team builders, good tacticians, or good technical coaches. It is the latter that I want to touch upon today.
I firmly believe that regardless of what sport you are coaching, there is one defining feature of a good technical coach - The ability to coach for a player's specific style, not to change the player's style to conform to the coach's own playing form.
Basic Attack Timing/Adjusting
For beginning volleyball players one of the hardest things to learn is proper attack timing (and adjusting their approach accordingly.)
Actually, let me rephrase that statement -- For beginning many volleyball players one of the hardest things to learn is proper attack timing.
And as such, I figure I might as well jot down a few quick tips that could help if you are having problems with hit timing and adjusting to sets.
Lifting for Volleyball
This is not the most common of topics when discussing volleyball, but I've been asked by enough people to warrant a brief post on the subject. The question at hand? "What can I do in the gym to improve my game?" (Or some variety of that. Usually it's more like, "How do I increase my vert?")
In general, I don't stress my high school athletes to spend hours in the gym "getting huge, brah." But maintaining an overall, well-rounded, fitness regimen in addition to their volleyball training is important. However, there comes a time when a player desires increased performance and has the drive to do everything possible to improve in their game. Improving upon your pure physical capabilities is certainly one way to improve on-the-court performance.