Elson’s Tips and Traps

HIT IT, HIT IT, HIT IT: These 6 words can be the most damaging 6 words on a junior girls’ volleyball court. Balls that are a mathematical impossibility of being hit for a winner are irresponsibly hit out by the spiker and yet the team celebrates. “Way to...

Last year I asked USA coaching guru John Kessel what would be the three most important things he would do if he ran a volleyball program in Australia. Number 1 on his list was "Red Line Volleyball". And here is the drill on video. Fantastic - thanks...

An inflammatory question perhaps. I am not talking about how many hours you spend coaching, but what you do in those hours. Can we as a coaching group get better value out of our time on the court? Many things we have to do when coaching involve modifying...

This is the second post in a series on communicating on-court. For the first part, see here.As a coach, the oft-used comment “talk it up” is just not useful.If you want your teams to communicate (“talk”) then you have to train your teams to do it. If you have not...

John Kessel kindly gave me a mention in his latest post on the USA Volleyball blog: Blogs that are Making a Difference. I'm flattered to be in such good company. I highly recommend taking a look at (and bookmarking) the other blogs John mentions in his...

Thanks must go to Hugh Nguyen for taking a great coach development session last night. Participants included three South Australian state team head coaches, coaches from the major volleyball school programs, club coaches, and even a school coach from Queensland who...

"Talk it up"Nearly every coach in nearly every time out has either said this, or has wanted to say this.At the recent Mikasa Gold Ball tournament a beginning coach asked me for some strategies to get his team to talk.He suggested his team was losing up to 7 points a...

Over on the Team USA website, John Kessel has a great writeup of his trip to Australia late last year. It was posted at the end of November, but we completely missed it (sorry...

I made a post before the Australian Schools Cup on how coaches must get "benchies" on the court in tournaments. Unfortunately, while at the ASC I heard a rumour that there was one player who paid over $2,000 to attend and was on the court for one (1)...