medpbuch

Hi Janet, Congratulations on your success! I too am coaching for the first time in a long time, a group of first year 6th graders in Athens, just north of Springfield. I was curious where you were in central Illinois? Our athletic director decided that we would only have intramurals this year so we have 30 girls and have only played against each other so far. This Saturday, the AD has scheduled a jamboree and we will be playing three other schools. The girls are really excited. I just want them to learn the fundamentals and basics of volleyball. They've been doing very well so far. That's great you are looking at coaches clinics and camps. I wonder if any of the local high schools in your area are doing volleyball camps? If not, just sitting down with other coaches can be invaluable. What works? What doesn't? How to motivate? Drills? This site has really helped me with drills and other ideas. Our new goal is for all of our girls to be BALL HOGS! They couldn't believe I told them to do that but I think it's starting to sink in. Good luck to you and again, congrats! Mary Ellen

Hey all, my 6th graders had their first games this morning. We have 30 girls on our team and two coaches. It was decided that we would only do Intramurals this year (not my decision). We broke the girls into four different teams. We came up with four team names and put cards with those names in a hat. Then each girl chose a card without knowing what was on it. My co-coach and I did the same thing. This way, no parents can come up after the match and say "Why did you put 'Sally Jo' on that team? She's much better than 'Jeanie Jo'"? Ridiculous that we had to worry about that, but we did. Anyway, we played two full matches of two out of three games to 15. Earlier I had posted about 6th grade (11-12 yr olds) serving overhand. We did the toss over the net to determine if they could make it but some of the girls just demanded they could serve overhand. Well, for the game, my co-coach and I over ruled them and EVERYONE served underhand. It worked out okay. We've got some really little girls, who we allowed to move up to to about the 15 ft. line. The two highlights of the two matches were two different little girls who could not even come close to serving it underhand each made it over the net. The second one actually served out the match point. This girl is really short and wears hearing aids and I wanted her to take something positive out of the match. Well, serving match point definitely did that for her! It certainly wasn't "pretty" volleyball and they only really set up a bump/ set/ spike a few times. But they tried and they talked and they encouraged each other and they even hit the floor going after some balls. We were really proud of them. We made the two teams that weren't playing at the time shag balls during warm ups for the other teams and also sit behind the bench and cheer them on. So, all in all, it was a good morning. Thanks for letting me share. Mary Ellen

Hi Bert, 6th graders are generally 12 years old. And for most of them, this is their first real exposure to volleyball. I believe someone tried to run a two week session last year with them, but I really don't know much about what they did. I am hoping to run a clinic/camp for 4th/5th graders at the end of our Intramural season so that eventually, younger girls can start in the program. Those girls would be 10 or 11 and I would have the same question for them. Thanks. Mary Ellen

Thanks for your responses. I like the idea of having them throw the ball over the net before they start serving overhand. Sounds like a good test to see if they are strong enough. I will also try to get a tape line up on the wall for them to practice on. I think we'll start out with serving next practice, after warmups of course. I'm a big believer in getting it over the net, whether it's overhand or underhand. I actually talked to them about that before serving for the first time. I asked them if it was game point in a match, and they knew they could get it over underhand and they weren't as sure for an overhand serve, which way would they serve? Most said underhand, but then once we strarted serving practice, they all wanted to do it overhand. I'm not real sure what you mean by the butterfly drill. I've been out of volleyball for a while and things are just now starting to come back to me. Again, thanks for your help. Mary Ellen

Hi all! Brand new to this forum but I have been playing volleyball almost 30 years (Zoweeee, did I really just say that?) Played at collegiate level and have coached a bit here and there. I'm now coaching 6th graders, the youngest I've had. The athletic director has chosen to do only intramurals for this year, not sure why, but we're going with it. So we have about 30 girls, two coaches and a fairly small gym. I assumed we would start with underhand serving, but apparently not. I struggled with shoulder injuries throughout my career from over and misuse, so I'm very sensitive to young bodies and things they should and should not be doing. Do most girls at this age really serve overhand? I know that control is the key but some of these 6th graders are smaller than my 4th grader and I'm not sure what to do. We made them each serve 10 balls underhand from the middle of the court, then moved them back to the end line. Once they did that, we had them move back up to the middle of court and try the overhand. It was chaos and my co-coach and I weren't quite sure where to go from there. I was coached with a lot of mental imagery and "mickey mouse drills" and I think I might go back to that route. See it in your mind being done the right way and then go out and do it. I saw somewhere on this site, someone mentioning not to say toss the ball but rather place the ball. I will definitely start using that terminology because the tosses were horrible. I also tried to pull girls out and take them to the wall to get their form correct. It just seemed they were so concerned with hitting it as hard as they could, they couldn't stop to listen and "hear" what we were saying. Of course, this was only our second practice, but I really felt that they had been listening well with everything else we went through. Serving was just kind of a shell shock for me that night. My last coaching experience was about 10 years ago and most of my 8th grade girls served underhand. We worked on overhand and as they became more comfortable we started using it in the game. Also, do you have any particular serving drills that would work for 30 girls and one net? Wow, this gym seems to get smaller and smaller when we're all in there. I'm having a blast and hope that by the time my 4th grader gets to the program, we'll have things ironed out a bit more. Thanks in advance for your responses. Mary Ellen