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?
Venting Frustrations
Note: This is a rant, not an instructional post, and thus will lack any semblance of proper grammar. Enjoy my run-on sentences and ill-conceived thoughts.
There are a few main points I'm going to be venting about in this post, so if any of them interests you then by all means read this post. Otherwise feel free to glaze over and browse my past postings which are a lot more relevant to player/coach development...
- Geographic difficulties and frustrations
- Over-confident yet unsuccessful coaches
- Unwillingness to change
- Idiots
Champs vs Chumps
I've always believed that the quality of a coach comes from a combination of things such as:
- Experience (coaching and playing)
- Exposure to quality coaches
- Self-study
- Ability to relate to players
- Ability to adapt
But I personally believe that the most important aspect of a coach is belief. The belief that, in time, they can improve any player.
I've recently been exposed to a coach that I will refer to as "he who cannot be named". He might end up being a recurring theme on this blog as an example of what not to do as a coach of high school players. Within a private conversation with him after a high school practice, he muttered a comment to me that he found particularly humorous, and I found to be particularly heinous.