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Coach of the Year: What I’ve Learned, and What I’m Passing On
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In this special edition of That Volleyball Guy, I’m joining in with UK Coaching Week to reflect on the Pass It On theme and what better time to do that than after being named Volleyball England’s Coach of the Year.
In this episode, I open up about my journey as a coach: how my mindset and approach have evolved over the years, the power of building connection with players, and the importance of staying grounded in purpose, not just performance. I share the key lessons I’ve learned through experience, mistakes, and growth and why I believe in always passing those lessons on.
I also talk about our team’s incredible journey celebrating our second successive promotion, rising from Division 2 to Division 1, and what it took behind the scenes to make that happen. From building belief to fostering resilience and consistency, I reflect on how our collective mindset helped us take that next step.
Whether you’re just starting your coaching journey or you’ve been at it for years, this episode is about sharing knowledge, celebrating progress, and paying it forward. Coaching is about more than just the game — it’s about people, growth, and leaving something behind that matters.
Connecting Through Conversation
That, that Volleyball Guy. Hello, I'm Nick Wiltshire, the host of that Volleyball Guy, and if you love volleyball as much as me, then you're in the right place. That Volleyball Guy Hello, and welcome to another episode of that Volleyball Guy and something slightly different for you today. If you're new to this podcast, firstly, welcome. Thank you for listening. Reminder that this podcast is for you, the volleyball community here in England, in partnership with Volleyball England.
Speaker 1:I always get to this point you know this is the off-season for the indoor volleyball players and coaches and I always get to this point during the summer, which is, you know, a point of reflection always thinking about the season that that's just gone and the season that's to come. And a couple of weeks ago I reached out on my social media platforms and asked you whether or not you'd be interested in finding out more about how my team, my National League team, secured another promotion and will be competing in National League Division One next year. And lovely comments, some people even reaching out to me and asking when was this episode coming? And what better way to do this episode than this week, as this week marks UK Coaching Week and the theme of this year's Co coaching week is all about pass it on. So I thought I would pass on some of my insights and some of my knowledge and learnings from this season and share that with you and if, in return, I can ask that you pass this on, if you pass this podcast on to people that you feel may listen, want to listen to it and enjoy it. Um, a reminder that, like I said, this podcast was designed um and it was a. It was an idea I had last summer, actually, that you know we need to do more sharing. We need to do more, um, communication and connection within the volleyball community, and I've had the absolute pleasure of having some amazing coaches on this show, as well as players and officials, and it's just been great, and I absolutely love recording every single episode with every single one of my very, very special guests. So, yes, please pass on this podcast. It'd be great to keep sharing it. There's some amazing insight and knowledge from some of the country's best coaches and players. So, yes, please pass on this podcast. It'd be great to keep sharing it. There's some amazing insight and knowledge from some of the country's best coaches and players. So go back now and listen to some of those episodes and just enjoy and listen to some of the stories and some of the insight from some of the amazing guests I've had.
Speaker 1:So, like I said, I thought I'd do something slightly different for you. As part of UK coaching week and earlier this year at the end of the indoor season, I was actually um and honoured, really honoured, to be awarded the Volleyball England coach of the year for adults, a huge accolade, something I just I was shocked when I, when I one, I was shocked when I was shortlisted and, two, I was absolutely blown away when I, when I won um and when I won the award this year. And, yeah, a huge, a huge thanks to those who nominated me and the selection panel who voted and selected me for, for winning this award. I mean, I don't, I'm not someone who who really, uh, shouts a lot about his successes. This is quite unnatural. And I don't I'm not someone who really shouts a lot about his successes. This is quite unnatural and I don't really like doing this sort of thing in terms of shouting about me. But I thought, as you know, it's only right that, as the Volleyball England Coach of the Year, I would share some of those insights. So, like I said, I currently coach Southampton Volleyball Club, which are based down the South Coast, and last year we're competing in National League Division 2, south Worth, noting that we were newly promoted to that league after winning National League Division 3 the year before.
Speaker 1:And a challenge. It was definitely a challenge and I recall sitting down and a Zoom call which I do every year with my teams, and sort of share the plan, the goal, the aim for the season ahead. And I was very, very clear at the start of the season that the goal was to establish ourselves as a National League Division 2 team To definitely push ourselves and to definitely want to be. You know, know we wanted to be finishing in the top half of the league, but we had to be realistic that we were newly promoted. For a lot of my players they were new to national league in division three, so you know it's a big step up going from division three to division two. So the goal was was that. You know, the goal was exactly that.
Speaker 1:Um, however, something I'm going to come and share onto you is about behavioural flexibility and quite early on in the season, even after our first win, I had a good vibe, just a good feeling. We had some new additions to the squad, but we predominantly had the same squad that we had in Division 3, with a couple of new additions. Unfortunately, we lost a couple of players from the Division 3 team. People moved away, went off to university, so it was very much a. You know, there was a good core of players in that squad, but we also had some new players and I knew it would take time for those relationships and for the players to sort of buy into the culture within the team and within the club. So what I thought I'd do is just share some of my sort of learnings from last season and it would be great to hear from you. If this is helpful, you know, please let me know.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to start really by talking about something which has had a huge impact on the team's success and that's the introduction of an assistant coach. Now, this person new to coaching, completely new to coaching, but had a real passion and a real desire to want to improve. And I'm quite selective about the people I work with and I just knew that there was something different about this person um Ying is my assistant coach and she um, she has only joined, like I said, only joined the coaching team this year. But what I absolutely love about Ying is her mindset and her desire to learn and her openness, and so for me, it was also yes, it was about passing it on and sharing some of my knowledge with Ying, but it was also about me having someone else to to support me in the coaching, and I don't think I really really understood and really valued how important that was for both me and and the overall team.
Speaker 1:So what has that assistant coach and the introduction of assistant coach done for me? Well, it allows me just to have someone else to share ideas with. It allows me to bounce different ideas, think about things, and we communicated throughout the week about players, about some of the themes and some of the messaging in the training session. But, most importantly for me, it was match day coaching that had a huge impact on it. You know, when I was coaching completely on my own and independently, it's very hard as a coach to keep an eye on everything to watch the game, to watch the opponents, to keep an eye on patterns and rhythm of the game, to look at your bench and look at who's looking. Who's looking like they're ready to come on, who's looking like they want it. It's hard to do all of that. It's hard to think about when to use your timeouts and what to say in the timeout when it comes and substitution techniques and strategies. Having that assistant coach has just meant that I'm able to sort of just we don't even communicate via words, you know. We just sort of look at each other and know and we can, we can sort of connect and communicate with each other, just on a different level.
Speaker 1:So whilst Ying has been new to coaching and not necessarily led any of the training sessions or been actively involved in the match day coaching at timeout level, she's been feeding me information and also just supporting me in my role as head coach. So a huge shout out to you. I cannot wait to see her development over the next couple of years and I'm really lucky that we've also got a very good coach in our men's second team and we've worked quite closely this year about players and we've brought some players up and just having really good, open communication channels with the coaching team has been has been a huge success. Don't get me wrong. There's been times where it's been stressful. I'll share some of those in a minute with you. But ying being on the bench has also also sort of calmed me down. I'm able to sort of sit down, have a quick word with her, chat things through and then make a better decision.
Speaker 1:So the next thing is something that I talk about a lot, which is squad flexibility and depth. Now we, you know, if you looked at the rosters and if you looked at the team sheets, we had a good core of players. But what I will say is that we did have depth in our squad. If we had injuries, we didn't let that affect us. We had other players, some players obviously playing more than others throughout the season, but those, you know, when they got their chance, they they stepped up to it. We had some positions that we didn't really have like a dedicated person. So Libro, for example.
Speaker 1:We started with one of my new players to the team, a young guy who's part of the England talent pathway. He started playing Libro for me. Then, sort of sort of a couple of games into the season, we were struggling for outside hitters due to injury and I think there's some sort of family emergencies at points and this young guy stepped up to the plate, played one game as a four hitter and then established himself as a core part of the squad from that moment on, as an outside hitter, which was great. But we then had to replace him from a Libro perspective. So we had some flexibility. One of my four players injured and couldn't hit but could pass, and then swapped into the Libro position. And then later in the season we introduced a new Libro, another young guy, as part of the England talent pathway and he stepped up, but under the guidance of some more senior players. So just yeah, like you say, there's been matches where we've had different players in different positions, but we've got that flexibility, we've got that depth that we're able to do that.
Speaker 1:And finally then, before I move on to some of the mindset stuff consistency, consistency, consistency, um, consistency, consistency. And you know, consistency builds the culture within my team we do the same warm-up most weeks. Um, we, the structure of the training sessions don't get me wrong, there's always a different theme and we'll talk about that, but it's people know. But the main thing from a consistency perspective was constantly having a big squad at training. I don't think we ever had one training session this year where we had less than 14 players. And that's the joy of having a second team where we're able to call people up and step in, and we did exactly that. It does mean that we always push in.
Speaker 1:Training. People work hard, you know, I'm sure, like many national league clubs up and down the country, especially in the lower leagues, we only train once a week, so it's so important that we get the most out of it and I know that some of the teams speaking to some of the coaches in our league some of the teams would struggle to get seven or eight at training, would struggle to get seven or eight at training, you know, and therefore you can't do sort of wash based drills, um, you can't do some game-based uh drills and and learning because you just don't have the numbers. So a huge shout out to my squad they, they, absolutely, um committed. I had some of my players who, even though they were injured or ill, would come along and help out, feed balls, take the learnings, make sure they kept themselves up to speed with the changes we were making as the season went on. So I'm going to move on and talk about some mindset stuff, because that's my bag.
Speaker 1:Our season was quite slow initially. We didn't play very many games before the Christmas break and that sort of worked in our favour in ways that we were able to build and work harder in training and build on some relationships. But we knew we had a heavy programme and a heavy sort of schedule after Christmas, with quite a lot of weekends where we're playing Saturday, sunday. So, yeah, a huge sort of ask of some of the players again, especially those who are newer to the game and newer to National League. There was one game in particular, though, where I think it was our season-defining moment.
Speaker 1:We were on a bit of a uh, we were on a bit of a high, you know, as the season started, we won the first couple of games three nil, um beating t, our first match. We beat hounslow, three nil, who had done quite well the year before in division two. We had trained like three times before that match and we won that game three nil. And I remember sitting on the bench, speaking to, to Ying and going I've got a good feeling like this is a good group of guys, we're going to push them hard, we're going to, we're going to help them reach their potential. Um, and we were on a. We were on a real sort of high. We'd won and played some really, really good volleyball, and I think it was I can't remember the date, I think it was.
Speaker 1:It must've been just after Christmas we had a game against Wiltshire Mavericks who at the time were struggling. I think they were bottom of the league. I don't think they'd won a game yet and we had won all of our games. We were definitely, definitely up there and it was just a funny game. I can't tell you why, you know. Just lots of things happened the way there. One of the roads was closed. I insist that we always get to a venue an hour before the match. We still did that, but on the way there the road was closed and we had to go a really funny way all around rural Wiltshire. We got there and the opposition weren't there. The hall wasn't available. It's freezing cold. We all stood outside.
Speaker 1:When we, when the oppositions did turn up, it was like three minutes before the warm-up was meant to start and as we walked in like it was walk in and warm up and started, my players didn't get the opportunity to to do their usual pre-match routines. We normally play a bit of game of football and have a bit of a laugh and stretch and look at the venue if they haven't played there, but we just weren't able to do that and I think it was a mindset thing because I had the same team. I had players. One of my players also, um, forgot his shoes, which happens. I'm not going to call him out on this podcast because that would be unfair, but he knows who he is and it was just a funny game.
Speaker 1:We couldn't get going. The venue was quite funny, the lights were quite low hanging and we just couldn't get going and we lost the game 3-0. And I just remember looking at Ying and just going like I don't even know what's happened. It doesn't look like my team. I don't think we necessarily played like horrendously bad. I don't think Wiltshire played amazing either. It's just one of those things. We just couldn't get going, um, and for me it was a season defining moment, because I'll talk to you towards the end about how I'm on my own sort of personal development journey. But I think old Luke would have probably got the team together and just bollocked them, to be honest, would have just laid into them. And what do they think they're doing? And now, what have you done? And actually I know that doesn't work, don't get me wrong. I was direct and I was straight and I was disappointed. But I remember saying to the players remember this feeling. You know, let's learn from this because this is a season defining moment.
Speaker 1:Other teams in the league it was a three horse race throughout the whole season us, richmond and wessings, um, and I know that they would have looked at that on the website, um, as the result came in, and just wouldn't have believed it because on paper it shouldn't have happened. But that's why I love volleyball, that's why I love sport, because it's exactly um. You know sport should be unpredictable. You know it's great when you have games like that. But I really came away from that thinking do you know what? I would have normally let that result sit with me all week and really take it personally and start questioning and doubting myself. But mistakes happen. You learn from losing right. So it was back to training on Wednesday and fix what went wrong and start. You know. You know we can't go back and change time. The past has happened, the future hasn't happened yet. All we've got is the now right. So let's focus on that time and work hard in training.
Speaker 1:And the team turned it around. We then went on to win the next match, which was a huge confidence builder and we were able to do it. So, like I said, it was a huge confidence builder and we were able to to do it. So, like I said, um, it's a three horse race wessex uh, richmond. We had beat richmond early on at the start of the season at home. I think it was three nil. I think it was one of our probably our second or third game of the season, so that was a good win for us to have. And and wessex had lost to richmond. Um, so it really was all open at the top. Um, it was definitely a three-horse race between us, richmond and wessex. We found ourselves in a little patch of games which are really challenging. We had wessex away and then, a couple of weeks there, we had richmond and wessex away. Uh, richmond and richmond away and wessex. At home we went to wessex away.
Speaker 1:Um, good vibe in the team, we're feeling up for it. We've done our work, we've done our prep. Um, and it was just one of the. It was a really good game of volleyball, um, the referee even said best game of division two that they'd seen for a long time and it was probably division one standard and watching yeah, definitely watching some of the division one volleyball I've seen. I would. I would have said that was a division one game and it could have gone either way. We lost 15, 13 in the fifth and you know what. There was still a good vibe in the team that you know what we lost to that team. But it was a good way, it was a good, it was a great match and we didn't let it. We didn't let it divide us. We just again, we learned from it. We had that belief and resilience that we could do it.
Speaker 1:But for me then the my favorite game of the season was a huge game away at richmond. We knew that we really had to win that. If we, if we won that, then we sort of we had a few games left to play, but if we won that we're pretty sure we would secure second. And then the following day we would play Wessex at home and if we won that could have gone to first. But we found ourselves playing Richmond away Saturday night at Richmond, in front of a big crowd, for a Division Two match and we found ourselves 2-0 down. And I remember looking at Ying and going I like this, I could. I just remember that feeling. But I used some of my own mindset skills to recenter myself, to, to really focus on what I could do and focus on what I wanted.
Speaker 1:And then, then we made a few changes, spoke to the team, found ourselves winning the third set, found ourselves winning the fourth set and then managed to go and do a reverse sweep and win 3-2. And I cannot tell you how proud I was of the team. A huge match, a really big match, big match. And again, what I'd say is the culture within my team, the people in the bench on, you know, supporting the team. They, man, they were the ones that won it for us. They pushed the team over the line when they needed it and the coaches for Richmond came over and said you know, you did a job on us, like they absolutely blew us apart in the first two sets and then we just had to sort of work it out. But again, that mindset of resilience comeback and just character, which I hadn't seen, you know. And I really saw something.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, the next day we then had to play Wessex at home and you know, we didn't get home till probably nine, ten o'clock at night on the Saturday, then 11 o'clock the next day. A home match against another really, you know wessex, who are really, really strong and went on to to win the league and and they beat us. They beat us at home. We just couldn't perform, we weren't up for it. Um, I think the, the match the night before taking its toll. But again, a good, a good um, a good effort, a good show by the team. We'd done the hard work by winning that match the day before. So, yeah, so we ended up finishing second in the league behind uh league winners wessex, who congratulations to them. They went on and also won the national shield, so a really good Division 2 team Took a convincing win over Coventry and Warwick Riga in the Cup Shield final that I had the pleasure of commentating on, and we look forward to playing them again. Some really good guys down there at the Wessex Club and we work well together and, yeah, just a good bunch of guys. They had a very solid team. Typical with Wessex teams have not many errors, solid, you know, drilled um, and yeah, good luck to them and we look forward to playing them next year. And then I'm gonna sort of finish off then by well, two things actually the the.
Speaker 1:The next thing is about game planning and game prep. That's something that I think has evolved in my own coaching practice over the last year. Division three, you sort of I always say in division three it's the team who makes the least mistakes, but in division two there is a bit more strategy to it and that's what I said earlier about having an assistant coach has really helped that. But we we were able to watch some footage um teams that upload their their matches onto youtube and social media, so we were able to watch some footage and we made sure um that we took stats after, for, for you know, the first time we played each of the opposition um, and then, uh, me and ying we sort of met and decided what the game plan was to go into that, to that match. When we played them for the second time, especially teams that we didn't know very much about, teams that had competed in division two or the other division threes that have been promoted, just just teams that were unknown to us, like Spellform, we never played them. I don't think I've ever played that club in my coaching career.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, we just had to learn, learn from from our, from our performances, take note and at training then we would make sure we had a game plan to to beat that opposition. Sometimes it would be just, you know, trying to use our middle as a bit more of a chess piece to try and run our offense system. So some of the teams may have had a slower, a slower middle, so we try and draw them away and use our opposite lucky this year to sign um a very good player in in our opposite position, um, who strengthened our opposite position because we were already strong there. Um, we lost one of our opposites earlier in the year. He went off traveling and this player came in and did a huge job for us. But every game we weren't one-dimensional. We were able to sort of change things up depending on the team that we're playing, started to run a faster offence system as the season went on, which again allowed us to control the game.
Speaker 1:And, and yeah, so I would say to those coaches going maybe up from division three to division two or from division two to division one, just generally, all coaches, really you do need to have a game plan for the team that you're playing. Um, we had some real tactical work on our service this year, serving at certain zones, um, and I remember when I said it in the first or first couple of sessions about what our serving strategy was going to be this year. Serving at certain zones, um, and I remember when I said it in the first or first couple of sessions about what our serving strategy was going to be this year, some of the looks I got from some of the players. But it's so nice as a coach when it happens in a game and they look at you and smile. You know what they're thinking. They're thinking, yeah, well done, like they try.
Speaker 1:There's trust, which really leads me on to the last point about trust and vulnerability. I don't mind sharing that in my in my personal work, I do a lot around team development and developing high-performing teams in the workplace. One of the things that you'll you'll read with any sort of team development research is around vulnerability and trust and human connection, and something that I've probably struggled with in my earlier and actually not even earlier recent, in my recent coaching experience is to have that connection with some of the players, people like people who are like them and I think I'm guilty of that sometimes, of really just connecting with a couple of players within the team and then everybody else I sort of leave to it. I do think as a coach, there needs to be a boundary, but I think this year I really worked hard on creating more connection with some of the players and reminding myself that you know, we're not professional athletes. We've got lives and families and students at university who are going through their own struggles and personally, I went through some of my own struggles last year too and I decided that I wanted to share some of that struggle and was quite vulnerable with my team and shared something really, really personal and shared it with them and their support was absolutely huge, um, and that meant a massive amount to me and, in return, some of their players then started opening up to me and sharing some things with me and it just helps you have a deeper relationship and a deeper connection with some of your players and being vulnerable, it didn't lose any respect. In fact, it built it right, like it really helped some of the players open up to about their pressures, life outside of the sport challenges they were facing. They weren't just playing for results, they were actually playing for each other and there was just some, you know, some lovely things that happened this year which haven't happened before, you know celebrating the birth of a child for one of our players and, you know, checking in on players that we knew were struggling and, yeah, just just a lot of love and that goes a long way. Um, it really shows you that you know to build a high performing team, you, as the coach and leader, have to really instill that culture of openness and vulnerability. So, yeah, there we go.
Speaker 1:Like I said, I've been on my own personal development journey for the last couple of years and studying mindset and studying language, and it's really helped me. You know coaching is can be quite emotional at times, right, you know, in the moment you can lose your rag. You can, you can get too caught up in it, and I've learned, you know, to be a lot calmer and to control my own emotions, um, something that I you know I'm I can openly admit I wasn't very good at doing uh, previously quite fiery, would lose it, sometimes to referees and officials, and actually my own learning and my own journey over the last couple of years has been really about understanding myself and managing myself, and as a coach is so important that if you can't manage yourself and you can't lead yourself, how do you expect others that you lead to do it? So, yeah, a huge season for us. Uh, like I said at the start of the episode, I'm really, really honoured to be awarded Coach of the Year. It's just a lovely accolade. I couldn't have done it without the amazing support and without my team. My team are huge and I cannot wait to get going again. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy the summer break, but we already start going back to training in a couple of weeks' time.
Speaker 1:Start building that team for Division 1, and it's going to be a huge challenge. We're going into Division 1, new structure in the division. We are going in as the second promoted team. We didn't win the league, we came second and we're playing three super league teams, um, that are being no two super league teams that have been relegated into division one. So and we know that we've got to finish um, the bottom two definitely get relegated, so we've got to finish in that seventh position. So it's going to be a tough season. It's going to be a tough season. It's going to be a really tough season. But I know that my team, you know, with a couple of new additions and some new talent coming into the team, we continue to build on that mindset piece and keep building a really strong and resilient team.
Speaker 1:It's really important that it's not just about you know their volleyball ability. It's about their, their abilities as a team member, um, and really making sure I get good people in my teams. So so, yeah, so I'm absolutely, uh, buzzing excited to get going and start again. So we go. That is it from me as part of uk coaching week, sharing my knowledge and sharing some of my insight from this season. It's really important that, as coaches, we share and we reflect and we share and we pass on information. So it'd be great if you use this as a bit of a connection piece. Pass this on with other coaches within your club or people that you think might benefit from it, and I just would invite all of the coaches out there to pass on knowledge. Just continually pass on knowledge.
Speaker 1:You know, volleyball in this sport is growing. Volleyball in this country is growing, um, and I think those people you know I I've got a learning mindset. I love to learn. That's why you'll find me at the conferences and coaching courses and learning more about not just volleyball-related coaching, but language and leadership, and I'm more than happy to connect and share some of that information with you. So please reach out if that is of interest. But for me then, thank you ever so much for listening. Like I said, please pass on. What will you pass on this UK Coaching Week? I hope you've enjoyed this episode, as always. Any feedback, please share, reach out to me on social media. But whatever you're doing, remember keep playing, keep supporting, but, most importantly, keep that volleyball spirit alive. I'm luke wiltshire host of that volleyball guy. Thank you for listening. That volleyball guy.
