SPEAKER_03

What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Coach Chijo podcast. Real conversations about volleyball, coaching, growth, and the journey behind it all. So let's get into it. Just go. Welcome to my podcast. And we have an amazing, amazing conversation today, right? We're gonna have a great one. Yeah. So Coach Blaze. I am so honored and fortunate to be able to meet you. We're here in Vegas at Emperor's Cup.

SPEAKER_01

And we just happen to be sitting watching volleyball, I think, or whatever else we want to talk about.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, anything goes. And this is Isabella, my assistant. Yep. So she plays, um she still plays. Yep. I don't. I've had three back surgeries.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. I think that my brain still wants to play, but 25 years ago my body said, What are you doing, you idiot?

SPEAKER_03

I know.

SPEAKER_01

So I'm 72.

SPEAKER_03

So congratulations.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so I'm making it in a heart thing, but uh unfortunately most of my family members have either had major cancers or died of cancer. So I'm the only one in an extended family of 13 that uh has never had the C word brought up. Oh no. So that's kind of actually pretty good. But then again, you know who knows?

SPEAKER_03

Okay, so Isabella is here. She's got great questions.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, absolutely. Let's go.

SPEAKER_03

So from player to, well, let's just kind of set this up.

SPEAKER_01

So you've done a lot of coaching. I've done a lot of coaching, and I've done a lot of coaching both in sport and in the business world. And I was a player in Southern California growing up on the beaches of Southern California.

SPEAKER_03

Ooh, that's nice.

SPEAKER_01

When we used to play in the AA and open tournaments, and at the end of the day, the winning pair got a t-shirt. There wasn't any like performance money or there wasn't any prizes or or anything like that. So we just went down to Santa Monica Pier area or down south or up north a little bit, and we would play doubles in the beach. And you got a shirt. Well, sometimes I did get a shirt. I sometimes we won the tournament, yeah. And then from there, my love was I was a martial artist uh all through high school, and I wanted to go into a team game. So I I wanted to do some teaming aspects, and I was at LA Pierce College, and I walked into a gym, and there were these guys playing volleyball, and I went, this is cool. I think I can do this. And the person or the captain of the team at that time was Bob Clark. He's currently the head of referees for FIVB in the sand, so he sets up all the sand courts for the Olympics. Okay. Anyways, he I walk up to him and I go, How can I try out for this team? And his response was, don't bother, you're too short.

SPEAKER_03

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01

And as a committed athlete, those words kind of don't sit well with you some of the time. So you went, Really? You haven't even seen me. You don't know what I can do or not do. And you're already telling me based on my stature that I can't even try out for your team?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I tried out. Next season I was captain of the team. Yes.

SPEAKER_02

Wow. That's huge.

SPEAKER_01

And prove them wrong. I played all the positions, kind of like you. I played middle, I played outside, I played the setter. I ended up later in my career just being a setter. Okay. They didn't have liberos that time. We didn't have rally score. Right. Side-out score. It was so out score. So we participated in games and, you know, been playing for 45 minutes and the scores 1-2. Yeah. Yeah. Which is unheard of today. So the stamina of the athlete, I think, back then was amazing because you could have four hour games. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Because it's side out scoring. You could keep going and going.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I mean, it it for us, it was just like, yeah. I mean, and defense was everything because defense gave you the serve back. So there was a focus on defense, there was focus on that. Anyways, the my my first coach was a guy named Ken Stanley. He he just recently passed last year. Ken Stanley um took a rag tag bunch of guys, and he was an ex-basketball player at USC. And he had a really good relationship with Marv Dumfey, who was currently up and coming through the USA volleyball ranks to become, you know, Marv Dunfey was the head coach of the team that won the 80 Olympics. And so we got the pleasure of having Pepperdine, who was like 30 minutes away from us, come into our gym and train with us and play with us. And and Marv was helping Ken Stanley become a better coach. And uh so I had a blessed kind of development pathway. I had a really smart coach, a committed athlete coach, and a bunch of guys who would just listen and follow it. Wow. You listen to your coach? Yes. All the time? Even when stuff that doesn't make sense comes out of their mouth?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I think I do most of the time.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. It's a good thing. I always tell my athletes, they said, but but my high school coach says opposite of what you say. I said, Well, what team are you playing on? Well, high school team. Well then listen to your high school coach. Don't go, oh, some other coach, some other place says I should do it differently. I said, all it's going to do is create tension between you and your coach. And why would you want that? You don't want that. You don't want that in life or anything, especially in sport. You don't want the person who writes down your number on the score sheet to not like writing down your number.

SPEAKER_03

So yeah, you want your number.

SPEAKER_01

So you go, yeah, okay, you want me to do backward footwork? I'll do backward footwork. You want me to hit the ball low or faster? Yeah. Yeah. You got questions for me.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. Okay. So you were the Australian National Women's Coach.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

And now you're coaching 12 and you 12U.

SPEAKER_01

Fiftees and 12s.

SPEAKER_00

Wow. That is insane for me to believe. Such a different age.

SPEAKER_01

That's a big gap.

SPEAKER_00

That's a big age gap.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. It's kind of like being, okay, um, some of the lawyer shows on television right now. You're the big corporate lawyer, you're doing the billion-dollar things and things like that. And then they go what always a storyline that breaks everybody's heart is the one that, okay, I'm quitting the big firm and I'm starting a family practice, and I'm going to go help the poor people, or I'm going to go do that. Volleyball gave me a fantastic life. Now I'm just passing it on. And yeah, I could go work for some of the clubs that only have the best athletes in that region or in that locale or that sort of thing. But then who's going to coach the other kids? You're going to get a bunch of people who don't have the skill set I have, don't have the tolerance built over time. I've been doing this for almost 50 years.

SPEAKER_03

50 years. 50 years. 5-0. Everybody. 50 years of coaching.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So you go and and you say, okay, so why not help a small club that everybody else might have said no to those athletes because they weren't tall enough, or they went to the wrong school, or they lived on the wrong side of the tracks, or mom and dad couldn't can't afford it, so there wasn't a scholarship pathway for them. So I choose at this little club that I'm at to help all the volleyball players. And I don't care whether the team's good or bad. Normally the owner of the club gives me the teams that need the best coaches. Not always the most winning team. So there are times when I go, what do I do in this hurting cats? You know. But that's so in answer to your question, how does that happen? Because I feel I believe that I should give back to the sport. And I can give it back at different levels. I don't need to be at the top anymore. There's a lot of really talented, qualified people at the top. But there's not, you can't say that at the bottom. It's the here's the third team at the high school, and it's being taught by the music teacher who knows nothing about volleyball, but it's part of their contract.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And they say, I can teach you to hit the cymbal, but I can't teach you the volleyball. Yeah. So I figure that's my role now is to come in and help the younger kids who who need it.

SPEAKER_00

That's really cool and wonderful. I'm also kind of curious, like, I don't want to say like there's obviously a different skill set, but what about work ethic through like the ages? Like, do you see that change much or like at all? Or is that more a player to player no matter the age?

SPEAKER_01

I think the work ethic comes in two phases. How much is parental driven in the young junior athlete, especially the female athlete? Um it it is it usually comes from mom and dad had an athletic career. They want their son or daughter, in this case, we'll just always speak about the daughter because we're at a girls' tournament. Yeah. So they want their daughter to do really well going forward and have the opportunities that were missed by them. So mom played volleyball, uh, dad played baseball or football, and they were cut out at some level because of performance size, expectations, money sometimes. Now the that athlete goes, okay, you know, because I have I go, do you even like this game? Some of them? And they'll go, I don't want to let mom down. Mom wants me to make the senior program at my high school. Mom wants me to be the starting setter on the club team. Mom wants me to go to the national tryouts. And you're going, but you don't even look like you like the team or or even the game. And they go, you know, it was fun at first, now it feels like work. And to me, that's a dagger in a coach's heart. Hold on. This feels like work to you? Feels like you have a job. And they're going, yeah, it does. And when you hit the college level, you'll get there soon. When you hit the college level, you'll get you know.

SPEAKER_00

See if I play college. I haven't even played high school yet.

SPEAKER_01

She hasn't even finished high school yet. Well, that it doesn't matter. I mean, you know, Henry Ford said, whether you think you can or you can't, you're right. And so if you believe that you are always going to be below average, then you that's what you know, self-fulfilling prophecy. You you come out becoming less than what you could be.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

But if you actually believe, hold on, all I can do is develop the skill sets and utilize those to my best, then at that point in time, then my if my best isn't good enough, well, what else could I have done? I gave my best.

SPEAKER_03

And it's better than where you were before you tried it.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. And there's a you know, lots of experience going forward about what does it look like to deal with failure? And that's what I do with my little 10 and 12-year-olds. You know, they they haven't been in the world long enough to understand that it doesn't happen just because they want it to happen. It happens because they went through a process to make it happen. And they have to be tolerant during that process. And it has to be, they're gonna make a ton of errors. In fact, they go, well, coach, aren't you, you know, I haven't hit one over yet. Yeah, but you're getting there because now we're gone, we've identified area one that we fixed, and now we're on area two that we're fixing, and area three is gonna be the ball's gonna go over the net all the time because you have a process to make it go over the net.

SPEAKER_00

What do you think is the most important part of the process? Or is it different for each?

SPEAKER_01

The most important part is self-tolerance and self-awareness. Okay. Yeah, awareness in the game of volleyball, you have to have, you know, kinesthetic awareness. You have to know what your body's doing. We as as spectators and coaches and parents get to watch our children play. They don't get to watch themselves play. So you feel the game as you're playing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So all I will ask you as a question, like if I want to fix your feet, I think one foot is doing something wrong. And I I believe that if we did something different with one of our feet and go there.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Okay? So I would then during training see that the tendency that your foot is always doing something wrong. I would go up to you and not try and telling it's not teaching. So I don't go up to you and say, oh, your foot has to be there. Yeah. Because you go, okay.

SPEAKER_00

And then just fix it.

SPEAKER_03

But I do cause it effect. Time out, time out. I have to admit that I have done what you just did. Yes. Like moved a foot. Yes. That's a no-no.

SPEAKER_01

Well, who has to move the foot during the game?

SPEAKER_03

True.

unknown

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01

Coaches are illegal to run out on the court and put their feet out there.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you very much for your this is this this is my lesson for today.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. So, what it as most coaches, telling is teaching, they they would say. Left foot forward, left foot forward, left foot forward. And you're I'm watching you right foot forward, right foot forward, right foot forward. And then pretty soon you end up in the scenario where you go, okay, how many times have I told you left foot forward? And you go, like to nauseium, and you go, I know. So one of two things is coming into my mind, with no disrespect, you're either stupid or I'm stupid.

SPEAKER_03

Uh oh.

SPEAKER_01

And I don't think I'm stupid.

SPEAKER_03

Uh uh.

SPEAKER_01

So so if I've told you a hundred million times to do this and you still aren't doing it, then I might as well be coaching the wall. Yeah, because the wall's not going to change structure just because I ask it to. Coaching the wall will be pretty boring.

SPEAKER_03

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

So the way that I've developed is uh what they kind of coined in, I don't know who coined it at first, but you know, Socrates was the early band of manipulation and early leadership in the Greek model. And he he basically got people to do what he wanted to do through asking a series of questions that led them to that answer. So I would ask her, what foots forward when you're when you're setting or when you're spiking? Let's see spiking. What foot forward when you're spiking?

SPEAKER_00

Foot forward.

SPEAKER_01

And and she'll go. Normally they go, I don't know. Say I don't know.

SPEAKER_00

I don't know.

SPEAKER_01

I don't know. And I'll go, good play, good volleyball players know, and then I walk away. You walk away. Yes. You turn your backs on the players. Because that's the piece of information I give her. Good volleyball players know what their feet are doing. That's the tip. So now I come back ten minutes later and I watch her spike and I go, hey, what foot forward?

SPEAKER_02

She goes, My left.

unknown

Oh.

SPEAKER_01

Because she figured you have to do something different.

SPEAKER_00

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So she goes, my left. And I go, okay. Is that the foot you went forward? I don't know, I guess so. And I go, good volleyball players? No. And then I walk away again.

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

SPEAKER_01

Now the third time I come back, then she understands cause and effect. Because she'll be saying, It's my left, because when I when I put my left there, it rotates my being a right-hander to the court. If I put my right there, it rotates my hander to being the spectator. So I want to hit it into the court rather than the spectators. And then my coaching response to her is thumbs out, congratulations, you're on your way to be a good volleyball player.

SPEAKER_03

So you develop and have this process until she figures it out.

SPEAKER_01

She gives you that answer, or you just why is he asking me to be aware? Now, at the very beginning, I'll go, why are you staring at your feet when you're spiking? She goes, Because you told me to tell me what I go, hold on, close your eyes, put your left foot forward. Okay? Put your right foot forward. Put them three inches apart. Put them diagonally by this. And I go, Do you have to look at your feet to know what you're doing with them? And she goes, No. Okay. So you have to feel your feet.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01

I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_03

So now even the wisdom here coming in. I'm all ears right now.

SPEAKER_01

So you have to be able to say to the athlete, and you coach them in the way of cause and effect so that they feel the game as opposed to being told this is what you look like. You know, in fact, most athletes are in a paw, they hate the camera. Because I just say, I just filmed you, and they go, is that what I look like? Oh my God, you weren't lying. The ball's way behind my head. Yeah. How many times have I said that? Don't run past the ball. Yeah. Okay? Those are the kind of things. So I think that kinesthetic awareness is one of the things. The second part of awareness is environmental awareness. You gotta know where you are on the court.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

Because how many times have you seen have players, we can go out there and film a million players right now standing on the back line, playing a ball that's been hit above their head? Yes. And they're standing on the back line. Yes. And then the coach will go, Didn't you know I was out? And they go, Oh no, I did not. They didn't know where they were in relationship to the court. They didn't know how far that. They didn't know which two players are supposed to be to their left or which players are directly behind them. So if they develop the kinesthetic awareness and the general court or environmental awareness, then they can make the changes necessary to become any kind of player that they want. So that's what you have to do. The hard part is how do you coach that? So you're in a gym and you got all this kind of stuff around. You know, how do you coach the idea of court awareness in that? So I have drills where, you know, they they're not supposed to touch the ball. So you have a hitter on one side and they're just supposed to say, in, out, and by how much? So the liberos and the defensive people.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

So obviously the ball's in front of them, they gotta know that. They they see the that. But the ball that's going like shoulder high and off to their left or right, before it passes them, they have to say, out. And then they look and it was in. They go, Why did I think it was out? Okay, well, put it in the memory bank. Because now that storage unit will be in a real game when the ball gets hit at that speed at that thing, they know it's in or they know it's out.

SPEAKER_03

They're not touching the ball. And they're not touching the ball.

SPEAKER_01

The drill is not to be a passer.

SPEAKER_03

The drill is to realize balling and give it awareness of where you are.

SPEAKER_01

An extension of that is for serve receivers. Do you serve receive at all or do you want to?

SPEAKER_00

Uh I want to. I love serve receive like being in the middle. Like it's kind of hard because I'm always in the front.

SPEAKER_01

There's only you and I can you and I can play this game. We get a pin laser.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

And the servers are back there. Okay? Before the ball crosses the net, we both have to put our laser down where we think the ball's gonna hit the ground.

SPEAKER_00

That's a good one. I like that. Okay. That drills.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, and at the very beginning.

SPEAKER_03

Are you on the court or yeah, we're on a volleyball court with live servers. Okay, but you're you're you're in the court too, with the laser pointers.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I I'm at the back end and the back end of the court, laser pointer, and just point it at that. Okay. Now, I do that with my 10 and 12 year olds, and they're all over the shop. They they're not even pressing that after the ball hits the ground, they can't press it. And that's the problem. They don't know whether it's their ball or not their ball until way too late in the process. So I'm trying to teach them is it coming to me in my area of control? And what technique might I use? Do I use an overhand pass technique to receive this ball? An arm out in midpoint or an arm out off midpoint? And then they're on their way to starting to become a better first contact person. But and then for me, they go, This is impossible. You can't do that. And I'm going, yeah, okay, great. Get any server. And they go, okay, go get Susie. She's a great server. Go get that. So they go align up all the great servers, and I'm going, boom. And I'm within six inches every time. I said, because I played volleyball for 40 years. And if you don't know where the ball's going, if you don't know if years, you're lost. You don't get to be on any team.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

So that's what I would change as opposed to the, as we see like at the 10, and 11, 12-year-olds, you know, a line drill where there's one coach tossing a ball right to the player. What's wrong with that? First of all, the coach is tossing, there should be another person tossing, coach should be coaching. Second of all, is it's going right to the athlete, so we're promoting non-movement. And then we get at beginning volleyball levels at primary school and middle schools, we get the battleship formation. The kids have their arms out because platform digging is the only style of digging allowed. And they stand there in their little six-person formation of battleships.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And the ball falls right there. Yeah. And they go, was that mine?

SPEAKER_03

If you thought it was yours, maybe it was.

SPEAKER_01

Does this make sense to you guys on how you, you know, we coaches have to change drastically the way they approach introducing skill into the model. If the drill is so different than the game, then all you're teaching them to be is good practice players, not good game players. Yeah. So, you know, they say the game is the best way to teach the game. There's some truth to that. But if we let a bunch of people with no skill play a game, it's not the game that we want them to end up playing. So, you know, my 10 or 11-year-olds, you know, we we have drills designed to them to make them feel like it's their part of the game.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, got it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And so if you have six people on the court, rarely are six people involved with a contact. It's usually two or three. So drills should be formed in two or threes with lots of contact and lots of decision making. Because in a game of six people on the court, six people aren't playing the ball. Two or three people are playing the ball in relationship to each other. What are the other kids doing then? Preparing for the next contact or the inventional contact. So if there's one person who calls mine really early and you see that their arms are off midpoint and you see that their shoulders aren't dipped, then everybody over here is going, that ball's going that way. I better start going that way because Blaze is not passing the ball anywhere where it's supposed to go. But they read that because they're looking at me and they've seen it before. Yeah. So I have a dribble. Watch her pass. Say whether it's going to the center or not. You know? So the ball's in there and she's going, and they're going, nope, nope, nope, nope. And she's gonna be mad now because she's going, well, how do you know it's not going to the center? Well, look at you. Center's over there, your arms are facing over there.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, so if we're working in twos and threes, okay. Yes. You only have one court, you have 10, 11, 12 kids. Yes.

SPEAKER_01

What are all the other kids doing while the three are. No, because you have pockets of three working on specific things under different areas on the court. Okay, so you have six on, but you're No, we have twelve people on the court. Utilizing the court, both sides of the court, wall space, everything.

SPEAKER_03

Okay. But you're concentrating on, okay, I'm on something with those two or three, those two or three.

SPEAKER_01

They're concentrating on it. I'm not.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Because my eyes are over here. In fact, um, when do you misbehave? Or when do you feel that? When the coach is standing right there with their clipboard marking you?

SPEAKER_02

Oh.

SPEAKER_01

No, you don't feel comfortable there. When did she play comfortable? When the coach is over there, that side of the gym. So one of my coaching techniques is I don't look at the people right here. Because they'll say, Oh, did you see me? I just did this. I go, No, I didn't see you. And they go, you're right here. I know, but I'm looking at Jane over there. Oh. Because Jane's all relaxed and she doesn't think the coach is watching her. Yeah. So that's where we see laziness come in, not following the rules, improper technique, not communicating properly. And then Jane's always surprised, right there. So we go and and we'll say I'll say to them, like, hey Jane, that was a good one. And she goes, Oh my god, he's watching us. He's on the other side of the gym. He's watching me. He saw that. But it also annoys the people who think who perform best when the coach is right on that were watching them. So you have to blend it. Sometimes you give feedback into the localized group, but a lot of times I'm just out there looking at all the other groups. Yeah?

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Hey, that group over there, can you count to three? Because what were the instructions? Three balls and rotate. So far I've seen you hit ten. Oh, oh yeah, that's right. And then you go, okay, I thought you guys were entering high school and you can't count to three? So that that holds the accountability that the coach is always there. On my first training week with the Australian National Women's Program, we got them into the gym. We all brought them all in from the country, and they were in Perth, Western Australia, and we had very talented athletes. But with work ethic, that was questionable. So I sat down with my assistant and I said, we're gonna design this training, we're gonna get it running, and then we're gonna pretend like we have an urgent phone call from the front office and we're gonna go. Okay.

SPEAKER_03

This is fake.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, fake, fake call.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Real training.

SPEAKER_03

Real training, fake call.

SPEAKER_01

Women's national program.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Gonna be going to Bremen Cup in Germany, playing Cuba and Germany and everything else in two weeks' time. Okay. Okay. So we go in there. Yeah. It was a there was an upstairs balcony. I had set up a camera up there. Okay. Okay. And so we set it up and we do all the, we had three courts going, we had everybody in there. I took the assistants with me and I took myself and we went and had a coffee and read the paper for 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

National team athletes. Bring them all in. They had a spy because the coffee shop was down this hallway and everything else. They had a spy at the coffee shop or near the coffee shop. And on the camera, because I come back in, I was videotaping them on their training when no coaches were around.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_01

So we had started off, intensity was high, they were communicating, everything else. The minute we left, it was like club med. They all stopped, they went in there, everything else. They posted the spy, okay? And as we started.

SPEAKER_03

This is one of the players.

SPEAKER_01

One of the players.

SPEAKER_03

So they knew where you were.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Okay, so they needed a heads up when we were heading back. This is the funny part. So on the tape, it shows them, but they didn't know they were being taped. Yeah. So the spy was there. She's going, guys, they're coming, they're coming, they're coming. So they got water bottles, squirting water on themselves like they've been sweating and they're doing everything else. Yes. You're totally joking. No, I'm 100%. And I come in, I come in with my assistants, and I pretty much knew that that was gonna happen. I just said, these kids have been, they don't know discipline, they don't know self-discipline. They're talented athletes, but they so, anyways, I come in and I go, and they went, I said, how's it been? And they go, God, it's yeah, we're tired and we're going out. And we're, yeah. I go, okay, well, we're just gonna watch a video. Of what? The last 15 minutes. And they all got white. Oh. What do you mean the last 15 minutes? See the camera up there? We've been taping. We're gonna sit down and watch that. And the captain of the of the team came over to me and said, Don't put it in. I said, No, we're gonna put it in. I'm gonna ask questions on why I needed to film it. And then from that day on, they worked hard all the time. Not because of the threat of that, because they just saw the the you don't want to practice, and we're gonna in two weeks time be playing the number one team in the world, and this and this and this, and you don't want to go through your practice? And on there was a couple of players who said to themselves, you know, on it's on tape, they're going, guys, we you know, we don't need the coaches here to run this drill. They already know we can do this, and then the other, you know, voted out. They got voted out.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

They're voted out. Because it's the masses, it's what the masses want to do.

SPEAKER_03

What are they doing?

SPEAKER_01

Reading, playing on their Game Boys, sitting down, one was in a lounge chair like this. Important lesson though for a coach is that you need to create a training environment where the athlete believes that if the coach's eyes or somebody's eyes aren't on you, you still work hard. Because you're trying to work hard for yourself. You must be self-driven, right? Yeah, well, that's the goal, but not everybody is. Yeah? And not every, you know, there's when you hit the training environment, there'll be those who want to collect balls when the coach says collect balls, and those there will be those kids who never collect a ball.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Even if they're told to. So it and so for me, I watch those kind of things because when I select my teams, I select the people who go collect balls.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

I select the people who work hard always. I select the people who follow the instructions at the beginning and say, come in here ready and do some self-work before practice starts. And here's what the self-work looks like.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, so here we're gonna take a little time out. And for the players watching, I get this I get a question all the time. Hey coach, I got tryouts next week. Any tips? Uh I got tryouts tomorrow, any tips? How can I make a team? What what is it gonna be like? What kind of players do coaches look for?

SPEAKER_01

Okay. And the answer is be yourself. Don't try and be somebody who you're not, because it's easily observed by the selectors or whether they have a criteria or that, so you gotta be yourself. I select people who smile.

SPEAKER_03

I do too.

SPEAKER_01

You gotta smile.

SPEAKER_03

You gotta like the gate. Yes.

SPEAKER_01

You know? I select people who don't get emotional after an error.

SPEAKER_03

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

So if they make a bad pass or make a bad hit and they start getting emotional and tearing up, I go, okay, there's so much stuff there that I'm not qualified to fix. I just want somebody who doesn't care about making errors. Um, I want somebody who's enjoying the process, whatever the process looks like. I want somebody who is supportive of others. Because I can teach people how to play volleyball. I can't teach volleyball to bad people.

SPEAKER_03

Everybody hear that?

SPEAKER_01

If you're selfish, quit it. Ooh, right there, straight direct. Yeah, just quit it. Don't be selfish. It's not a I mean, it's the most unselfish game by design. You can't be a star in volleyball. The team can be a star, but you as an individual can't be a star. You need other people to make you successful. You can't in basketball, you can grab the thing and run down all by yourself and slam dunk it. Slam dunk it. And the team still gets two points or three points. Yeah. Yeah? In volleyball, you can't do that. No. Yeah? So there's no stardom in volleyball. The stardom comes from collaboration and cooperation. How do I want to cooperate? Work together to be better for everyone. So it's working together. There's nothing in volleyball that allows you outside of a serve. You can jump serve, and we just our 14s just experienced one. You know, she was a great little server. She went back and she just zoomed us and she could score six, seven, eight points until she missed her serve. So that's the only place. That's the only place I've stardom.

SPEAKER_03

Hey, so I get I get kids complain to me. They complain to me and say, I want to play volleyball, I'm on a team, I don't get to play because my coach plays favorites. Yes. Do you have favorites?

SPEAKER_01

Yes. But I don't show it on the court. Of course, you're human. You're gonna have people that you gravitate to that you like, that are easy to communicate with or less hassled. You know, look at them and you go, oh God, you know, Sigmund Freud couldn't fix this.

SPEAKER_03

So you never tell a player like Isabella, if she's on your team, you don't say, hey, you're my fa you're one of my favorites.

SPEAKER_01

No, and I never during team things at the end, it said we win and lose as a team.

SPEAKER_03

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

So I know some coaches will say, Thanks to Isabella. She was great today. You hit everything. Well, we won because of Isabella. No, we didn't. No, we didn't. But if we put her up on a pedestal, what's the only place she she can go? She'll fall off the pedestal and go down. So I'm setting her up for disaster. Because maybe she had on, maybe she was on one of her peak days, and now you know, in two weeks' time. Statistics says regression to the mean. So if I did something really great, the next contact means I'll probably do something less than really great.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, so we can't be after a tournament day giving out, oh, you get the MVP award. I hate MVP. You're the kudos player.

SPEAKER_01

I hate that. But other coaches find it and players strive for that. They want to know. For some reason, captaincy is the biggest thing at the junior lower level. Yeah. Who's gonna be captain? Well, who cares? Oh you know, everybody wants to be captain. Yeah. So I have a thing of we're all captains. We're all leader rich here. So you'll be captain on this set, and or not this set, but for this match or this day, and we're just changed captains before.

SPEAKER_03

You rotated around.

SPEAKER_01

Of course.

SPEAKER_03

Brilliant.

SPEAKER_01

You have to be. Everybody has to be a leader. Every we're leader full, not leaderless. But every and leadership is situational. So you have to be able to say there's a time on the court where the Libero has to lead. And there's a time on the court when the setter has to lead. And there's a time on the court when the outside hitter has to lead. And they we should prepare them to have those skills of leadership. So, and and what good leadership looks like and and how it can be manifested to make the changes that a leader wants. I need to go to Isabella as a player and say, as a coach, saying, Isabella, if you just make a mistake, what do you want me as a coach to do? And Isabella will go, well, don't yell at me. Okay. But that wasn't the question, Isabella. Isabella, the question was, what do you want me to do? Not not do. I want you to look at me and give me a smile. Great. Okay? Jane, what do you want me to do? I want you to throw daggers at me with your eyes. Uh not in my nature, but it'll really help, coach. Kind of outside my coaching realm. But it'll help, coach. Okay, I'll try it, but I won't be good at daggers because I don't throw daggers ever. Yeah. So you go around and players need to know. Leave somebody alone. Support them. What does that support look like? Whether it's just a pat on the back or that.

SPEAKER_03

So you have to ask, as a coach, you have to ask. Otherwise, you don't know what that player wants me.

SPEAKER_01

And how many times have we guessed wrong in all aspects of life? Oh, millions of times. Millions of times. So why would I want to take the chance of doing the wrong thing at a crucial time? I need to ask them, what do you want? Get it directly from the player. And at the beginning of the day, Isabella, you still want me to smile at you. And she'll go, yeah, I do. But not all the time, coach. Just on the really bad ones. You go, okay. So you put that in your brain, and the next time there's a really bad one, I look at her and I go, give her the fonts.

SPEAKER_03

Okay. All right. So you've coached. All right, let's let's kind of give everybody the picture of what you've done. Okay. So women's national team, Australia. Yep. You've coached.

SPEAKER_01

Started off player. Player. Player at a college. Okay. JC, and then moved to Colorado and then went into the USA volleyball system where we played open men's.

SPEAKER_03

And then you're coaching. So the levels that you've coached, you've coached the National Australian women's team, you've coached college.

SPEAKER_01

College, University of New Mexico. Right. Yep.

SPEAKER_03

Today you've got players walking around while we're still recording. Yes. Saying, hey, that's one of my 12s. Yeah. Okay. So all those different levels are your favorites the same.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, because it's the people who are smiling at their plane. It's the people who don't mind making errors. Yeah. And so I reward them through my attention at any of those levels. Do I coach them the same way? Obviously, a 12-year-old doesn't need to know what their thumb has to do or not do. But the elite person trying out for the national program, thumbs might make a difference. Yeah. So if they're aware of what their thumb's doing or not.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. So that's the technique part.

SPEAKER_01

That's the technique part.

SPEAKER_03

But as far as leadership.

SPEAKER_01

And males the same way. I coach males the same way. Because I've coached men's teams. Yeah. Okay. And so it's like they always just say, you gotta coach the girls differently. They say, you know, women have to bond uh bond to to battle and men have to battle to bond. Um there is some truth in that. But I think that at the end of the day, if you're dealing with an athlete, you treat them like an athlete, and gender's not important. Okay. You know, if she was a young male right now, or or or you know, and they're both and they're in today, I'd I'd train her the same way that I do a boy or a girl. I'd just train them to be what position? Middle? Okay, great. You're gonna have to have really good awareness, you're gonna have fast feet, you're gonna have to adjust to a two-step or three-step approach, you're gonna have to learn to hit balls that are different spots on the net, and let's go after it. And here's the drills I want you to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

But the type of player that falls under your category of my favorites, the the ones that you want to take on your team.

SPEAKER_01

Enjoy and love the game of volleyball, which Isabel says that's why she plays.

SPEAKER_03

So that that applies all through the different levels you've got.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. Absolutely. Amazing, beautiful. You know, and if you ask Karch probably now, I mean he's moved from the women to the men at the national program, at the Olympic program. He himself, as a player, you know, went through that. The one thing that when it became a job is when they said had declination of skill. Are you your best when you go to work? Obviously you are because you've chosen a work that suits who you are. But if you sat in an office punching a machine, would you be the best person you could be at that? No. No, you wouldn't. And you would hate your job, probably. You would probably find ways to go, well, my boss sucks, this sucks, the light sucks, everything sucks. And elite volleyball players, we've heard of burnout before, and we I see it. I've seen who comes in smiling, energetic, and at the age of 14 hates volleyball. Have you been burned out? Oh God, a couple of times in my career, where you know, you get there, you know. I sat down there and I declined to be the national team coach for Australia to go to the Olympics. They offered me the Olympic position, and I said, No. Because I was recently married and I was away ten and a half months of the year, and I went, I didn't get married to get a divorce. Why would I? So I went to my wife, sat on the chair, and just said, Would you mind if I wasn't the national team coach? Because there's some financial aspects to that that's gonna affect the family finances.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And and she goes, Do what you want. And I said, I just want to, you know, I I said I do, I want to be married. Three days later, I was hired through the Australian National Training Program to write leadership materials for them and develop a sports leadership model for Australia, competency-based training. And I went into what would be like a junior college system. They call them TAFES, technical and further education systems. So I so I wrote the documents for all the other sport coaches that were going to be developed in Australia. I wrote that and developed that, and and that's what I did until I moved back to the US in 208.

SPEAKER_03

When was the time when you came home from doing something volleyball? Coaching and working, and you just wanted to cry.

SPEAKER_01

Um not not so much cry, but asking yourself, have I chosen the right path? Do I want to take another step forward? Because you you know, human nature sometimes is like, I'm entering the tunnel. How long is the tunnel? And damn it, is there a train at the end of this that's gonna mow me over and you know wreck who I am as a person? Or actually take my life. I mean, coaches die of stress all the time. They have bad eating habits, they have really poor sleeping habits, they're not good to themselves. They teach everybody else around them how to stay safe and healthy, and they basically don't follow their own advice. Right. Yeah. So y you go, this is this is important now that I need to reflect. And players, I always ask, I just said, do you still love the game? And if if you are losing love for the game, is that in your control to change? When I do leadership training around the world, that's what I ask the senior managers is you hate your job now, but you're tied to the check. Is there anything that you can do differently to make you re-love your job? Because at the beginning you loved your job.

SPEAKER_03

I did love my job, but there were times I would come home and I actually just wanted to cry. Yes. Like I just wanted to hole up, nobody come near me. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

So that's the apple, that's the apple thing. Apples, the whole life problems. It's so And if you try and eat the whole apple, you die. But if you take small bites of it, pretty soon the apple disappears. And so you need to say, what is the biggest thing in my life right now that's creating this emotion in me, whether I'm a player or a person or support, yeah. What is the emotion right now that I need to control of? And then you have to ask the question, are you in control of it? You know, when they say, Well, Isabella's being so mean to me and she's just correcting me, I don't want to go. And you're going, okay. Can you control Isabella? No, I can't. She's a mean person and she's always gonna be mean, and I hate her, and she smiled at me and she laughed at me when I don't want her to smile and laugh at me. And and you go, okay, what can you change? How Isabella affects you. So she looks at me, she smiles at me, and she has that valley girl eyes, and she she's being really mean to me right now. I'm just gonna fluff her off. I have control over that.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, there, but there are other times I don't feel like I have control of anything. I've had parents get so mad at me. Oh, of course, cuss me out, of course, make their player say, You're not playing for this guy anymore, and take her home. Yeah. And I just want to go home and say, give it up. Was that your problem?

SPEAKER_01

I mean that the a parent's expectational issues and problems. Like I said at the very beginning, some players are playing not because they love the sport, because their best friend loves the sport. Or their parent, one of their parent group, loves the sport and it has the expectation on that. So for you, it'd be like, Yeah, uh, you know, I'm sorry you feel this way. Um, thank you for the input uh uh about you know me being able to utilize or misutilize your daughter or your son. At the end of the day, you just go, yeah, they're just a parent. And but you know, but if you take everything on board for every parent that wants you to play their daughter in a certain way or in a different way, or or do this, or you know, then y you'll never satisfy anybody. It doesn't matter what you do, 30% of the people is so bad.

SPEAKER_03

I've had players quit and think I'm the worst person in the entire world when in the world. In your chart, I'm trying to do what's best for the kids, any way possible, coaching from the heart. Yeah. And then there's the dagger of no, you're mistreating me.

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to life. Thirty percent of the people you involve with are not gonna like what you do or how you did it. Some will be tolerant of it, some will even understand why you did it but disagree with it. It's hard.

SPEAKER_03

Of course you can. I just want to cry.

SPEAKER_01

And that's why not everybody should be an elite junior sports coach or even sub-elite. Because it's like if you don't have a skill set, could I go into a classroom and teach kindergartners? Heck no, because they would drive me nuts. But there are people with a skill set and a tolerance that love the kindergarten environment. Yeah. And so I'm glad that they're kindergarten teachers and I want my kids in their class. Yeah. Not everybody's got to be that. But do I want a kindergarten teacher teaching advanced economics at university? Probably not, because she can't balance her checkbook. So people will have different skill sets for different, and they're developed over time. But at the end of the day, you never get a hundred percent. Okay? When I give talks in Australia, people would come back at that time for the Australian Institute of Sport. And I would go up there and speakers and everything else and sit in front of three, four hundred people, and it it'd be a presentation over a topic and then open question and answers, similar to what we're doing. And then we go in there, and everybody goes, Oh, big claps at the end, and oh, those are great, and everything else. Then I go to the toilet, and there's one or two people in the men's stall. You wouldn't know what that looks like. You have never been in a men's bathroom, hopefully. Talking about going to the toilet. Okay. Yeah. Sure. Okay. Going to actually going to the toilet. Okay. And I'm in the stall, and you walk in and you hear the people, well, you're not around, you're not around, and they go, God, that guy's so up himself. He's just like, uh, uh-oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. There's haters even away. And you come out, and you come out and you look at them and you go, hi guys. And they go, oh, great talk, great speech, because they don't, they're convert at first. They don't want to say what they actually say. Your players will do that to you too. And as a coach, they'll say, Am I getting the best of you in training? Do you like the training design? And then, of course, they all go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Until they go back in their car on the way home with their dad and go, and I hate trainings because uh he makes me work too hard. Or you know how many times we jump today? We jumped 300 times. I'd like to jump like 20 times. So there's a sense of truth that you get from it, but also a sense that you have to go and experiment, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And so instead of telling a coach, I tell all my coaches that I deal with, I said, I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna give you a questionnaire, and I'm gonna want you to say, and give it to your players. Coach should do less of this, the same amount of this, or more of this. That way there's no good, bad, or indifferent. There's no I hate the coach or that. Wait, say that again. So of the questions that I have, behavioral questions, okay, do less of it? Okay. Yelling. That would be question one. Yelling. So the player has that, and they said, You're my coach. Do I want you to yell less, same amount or more?

SPEAKER_03

So the players are grading it, giving you advice. Giving me advice.

SPEAKER_01

For this. And so that at the end there will be a circle, and then at the end it's where you're outside the circle or inside the circle, and it's all about they're telling you for me, I need you to do more of this. I need you to no perfect. You're doing a perfect amount for me. Or you got to do less of this. So less talking, more touching balls. That's one of my questions. Coach talks less, you touch balls more. Should your coach do the same amount, less of it, or more of it? And that way you know, because time's precious. You're gonna go into a gym for two hours. Yeah. And if the coach talks for an hour and 45 minutes, because they think telling is teaching. They think that if I tell you that before. Of course we have. We all have. You know, and so you go in there and you say, This is what I want. You know, uh, I need to understand what the players want from me, and they need to understand what I'm able to give them. Like when this said, one said, I want you to throw daggers at me, I said, It's not my nature. I'm not a dagger thrower.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, let tell me tell me your your advice on something that I do in my practices. Okay. Again, I watch the practice and I won't I don't want to say anything or stop anything unless there's something that's happening that we need to correct overall, not just one player. Yes. I take I walk into the court and I go like this.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_03

So my team knows it's a timeout. Timeout. Yeah. And I use the club timeout for 30 seconds. Yeah. And I talk about one thing. Yes. And then I get off.

SPEAKER_01

So what's wrong with that? I don't know. Is that cool? Absolutely. Is that what you're gonna have in competition?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So you have to you you have to train. So we we train them to compete, so why don't we train you to give information in 30 seconds?

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Or actually 15 seconds, because 15 seconds they gotta be drinking some water.

SPEAKER_03

I know. You got the coming off the court, water, getting on the court.

SPEAKER_01

And which is the priority? Your your words are the priority? Is that the first thing when they come off the court you talk to them, or is the very first thing something else?

SPEAKER_03

I for me it's just timeout, literally a timeout. Just take a little break.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, breathe. Cool. Breathe. So, what's the best way for them to do that?

SPEAKER_03

Sometimes I just uh take a timeout and I I go like this. This is my signal, and they just get together. Okay. My assistants.

SPEAKER_01

Very first thing out of timeout, go get your bottle whether you're thirsty or not. Take two sips. Oh, oh. Because they're individualized and they're collecting their thoughts about if if they need to voice something to the team or to a certain teammate, yeah, what might that look like? If we just speak, then sometimes it's like, oh God, I wish I had that switch back. I didn't mean to present it in that way to her. But I was short on time, so I was just like, go out. So the very first thing is, time out. And you don't even have to say get together. It was like, time out, and you train them in that during their dreams. Go get a sip of water.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, my girls, even my 11s and 12s, they go, uh, time out, and they all go line up at the drinking fountain. I go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Where's your water bottle? Well, we're not in competition. Water bottles for competition. No, no, no. You bring your water bottle. And when I say time out, you go to the chair where your water bottle is, and you have a couple of sips, and then you come into me, and then I might say five words, ten words, and then we get back at it. Yeah. But you train them to receive that, and more importantly, you train the coach to basically shut up.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Because coaches will be like, I I think of myself in my early coaching days where it was almost like an auctioneer. You know, he'd be like, time out. Okay, you gotta go to this, you gotta go to the chair, you gotta go to this, and we all gotta do that, you gotta go to the ready, go! Guilty be calm!

SPEAKER_03

Guilty right here.

SPEAKER_01

Of course we're all guilty because we think our job is to give them all the information that they're required. And you've already said the most prophetic thing, which was my job is to give them one piece of information that might make a difference. Because if I give them five pieces of information, they'll won't do any of them. Right. Overload. Give them one piece of information. And if the whole group doesn't need it and only a certain player does, so take Isabella out in the middle and we go, Isabella, how many times has she hit the ball that way? And Isabella would go, yeah, I'm getting tired of it. Ever thought of blocking her that way?

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, so this this has been amazing. Okay, I feel like we can just keep talking until my battery runs out.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, so maybe we'll do this again sometime. That's fine. But I got one thing that I would like your help in relaying to some coaches.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_03

I feel that there are too many coaches early on in their career quit because of drama and they don't know how to deal with the stuff other than the volleyball part, right? They've played volleyball, maybe they played high-level volleyball. They know volleyball, they can teach the skills. But all the other stuff, yeah, what I call drama. Yeah. So, like the times when I'm sure there's coaches saying, hey, there's days I come home and I just want to cry and eat ice cream. Yes. Okay. But they have potential to coach. Yes. What what do you tell them to convince them to get through it?

SPEAKER_01

You have to be a coach has to be somebody a little bit altruistic and has to be in it for them, not you. And I I suss this out at the very beginning. If we go ask all those coaches down there playing, all 300 that are down there now or whatever, and we ask them, and just ask them about their team. And if they go, my team, my team, my team, my team, that means they're coaching for themselves. If they go, the team, our team, the team, our team, they're coaching for the team. And that's the biggest thing I can say to the viewers out there, is that you need to be you coach for them. You're their coach. They don't play for you. Wow.

SPEAKER_03

Okay. Does that help you at all? That that's golden. I wish you would have been there when I was starting, and I would have saved myself a lot of grief.

SPEAKER_02

Oh.

SPEAKER_03

That's true.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, but we all start, and we're never, it's kind of like, you know, I I tell them that the players as they start in the error process, I said, no one was born, even the best in the world was not born the best in the world. They had to learn to become better and better and better. So if you think that just coming to one session or going to one volleyball camp is going to fix the problem, the answer is no. But it's going to help you understand what the problem might be and certain pathways to help you remedy that. And a coach is the same way. I mean, I look back in my early coaching days and I go, oh God, how did the player survive? Because if I wasn't sweating as a coach, if I wasn't hoarse as a coach at the beginning time, I didn't think I was doing my job. I did the same thing. So who's learning how to talk? The coaches. Who's learning how to hit balls everywhere? The coaches. Unfortunately, the coach can't play. So it doesn't make sense. And once I got that, you know?

SPEAKER_03

So coaches, altruistic, our team.

SPEAKER_01

The team or our team? Our team. When they say my team, then that's already defining. They they define it as I own this team. It's mine.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

You play for me as opposed to I coach for you.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, I know we're guys, but I want to hug you for that. Sure. That is amazing. And that's you know, and it's okay. I'm not gonna say I'm gonna cry on public, but like this this is emotional for me. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I'm glad that you can affect that. I mean, there's so many other people out there, and and everybody's gonna have a bad game. Everyone's gonna do this.

SPEAKER_03

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

I remember when you know UNM was playing BYU and we were playing them for the first time, and I had worked so hard on my middle player, and she was excited. I didn't write her number down on the score sheet.

unknown

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01

And how would you feel as a coach when one of your prime players who you spent the whole time with everything else comes to you, and you have to go, you can't play today? And she goes, why, why, why? Because your coach is an idiot. I didn't write down the number 11. And so, sorry. And I asked them if there's anything I can do, and they said, No, not now. So 11 S's it.

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

SPEAKER_01

So you're gonna make blunders and you're gonna do things. Was it purposeful? Was it spiteful? I hope not. I hope you're never out there going, I'm gonna get her and I'm gonna get him. You know? But at the end of the day, it's like you just go, okay, players play great, and then they play less than great. How do I treat them in both settings? Do I put them on a pedestal when they're great and do I demean them when they're not great? The answer is no, you should treat them like a player and just say, you know. Now, if they make the same error for time and time again, it's not their fault. That's my fault. If I allow her to hit the ball into the net 400 times in a row and on her jump serve, then I'm I haven't done my job. Okay.

SPEAKER_03

So I've asked enough coach stuff. We do this for the kids, for the players. Yes. So I would like to wrap up and ask Isabella, what's your one big takeaway as a player?

SPEAKER_00

My one huge takeaway, like what kind of take, because there's like a lot of things like from this conversation, like just as a whole. It's just like hearing from you as a coach being you understand that the like you coach for the player. Like that's so huge for coaches to understand. Cause I've had coaches where they're like, oh yeah, I'm gonna yell at you, and then you're gonna you're gonna do this. And no, you have to let them grow on their own. Like, that's another huge thing that you said. Like, they have to learn what they're doing in order to change it, and like they need to feel it like in the game itself, and you need to practice like you're playing the game and always work hard, which is a huge thing that I'm so focused on. No matter if my coach is there or not, I'll go there early, I'll start hitting against the wall. Like, I'm trying my hardest to be like the best that I can. That's a huge thing that people sometimes they don't focus on it. They just want to, oh yeah, you tell me this, and I'll just do it. Like, no, they they need to do it for themselves too.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so on the final note, players and coaches and everybody else, behavior is a function of people in the environment that they're in. So people are constantly changing, so is the environment, so behavior's constantly changing. You have to know why you're doing and saying, or not doing, or not saying certain things at certain times, and it has to be strategic. And the higher level that you go up, the more that thought process has to be in there for both player and that. I find that, you know, legacy things. I hate pepper. I do not let my teams play pepper. And yet it's part of the it's almost like the initial right of a volleyball player. The very first thing they do with mom in the backyard or dad in the backyard or their brother or sister who plays is they play pepper. And I hate pepper for a number of different reasons. It causes long-term damage to them. So every time that we see players that the ball gets hit and they dig the ball and it goes back over the net, that's pepper. Every time that we, do you want to play pepper with me if I can't hit it at you? No, you go find Isabella who hits it at you. So what does it teach us? Never to go get the ball that's hit away from us. Yeah, what do we train all of our hitters? Hit the ball away from them. Don't hit it at them, hit the ball away from. But she'll go in to the gym for 20 minutes with her partner and she'll play pepper.

SPEAKER_03

Hitting to the defender.

SPEAKER_01

This is just digging over the net.

SPEAKER_03

This is just blowing my mind.

SPEAKER_01

So there's certain legacy things, and and you know, my girls go, well, what's the alternative? I give them the alternative, but whenever they get a chance, they will go play pepper. What if you hit it away from them? Then the other person doesn't move and goes, I this is supposed to be, this is not pepper. Pepper is you hit it at me, I dig it, back to you. We don't call it pepper, but you hit it away from the defender. They won't do it because they it's not considered a drill. They'll do it in a drill, but they won't do it when they're on their own turn.

SPEAKER_03

Right, because they want to keep the ball in play. Yes.

SPEAKER_01

And so there's been times to introduce the third man in the middle, which is the dig it to the third man, third man set you, and that. But still, and also, are you jumping at full time? Are you getting an approach when you're hitting in pepper? No. You're standing on the ground, so what are we producing? A bunch of people standing on the ground hitting at people on the other side of the phone. I'm slapping myself in my bald head. And I'm going, but it's it's so entrenched in the volleyball community that would you remotely say, we're gonna warm up in a different way, or I ban this warm-up, or I do this. They almost be as coming, well, where's the spaceship? What spaceship did you land on? Because you this is this is pepper pepper is part of volleyball. And I'm going, well, it shouldn't be. And if we eliminate it, and those coaches who are brave enough and those players who understand why there's alternatives to pepper, it's like hitting against the wall. How should you hit against the wall?

SPEAKER_00

You should jump and hit the ball, but I how far away from the wall should you be? You should act like there's a 10-foot line.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, and do you hit straight down?

SPEAKER_00

I don't. I hit at the wall.

SPEAKER_01

At the wall. Good. You're doing the right way.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks.

SPEAKER_01

Good, but most players go against the wall and hit like this, hit like this, hit like this, hit like this. I hit to the floor.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So I'm the idiot here. No, you can hit to the floor, but you need to be 25 or 30 feet back. Oh, right. Okay. Still use the wall, but you're using it a different way. Okay. And those are all the kind of tricks and trades that you learn over time that were introduced to you other things. But you know, it's like as a coach, as a player, it's your game in the future, it's not mine. Yeah. So you need to be able to say, God, if I did this and then bring that to the coach, I'm really good at doing this. Is it, first of all, do the rules allow that? And if the rules allow that, then can I have the right to practice that? You know, where did the slide come from? Men don't run the slide. Why don't the men run the slide? Because the men blocked like four and a half feet over the net, and it doesn't work in the men's game. But in the women's game, the slide ran there. How do they run the slide? Because they started to get taller athletes who were basketball players. And basketball players are a one-foot jumper. Yeah, Leah. So they took basketball players and they said, okay, we're gonna set the ball there, and there's the there's the hoop, and you hit it. You do a one-foot takeoff, and then all of a sudden the slide's here. Now everyone's got to do the slide, but everyone's not a basketball player. So you you have to understand why and how, and it's a science, but there's also the non-science part of the game, the human side of the game, the behavioral side of the game. And since things are constantly in flux and changing, so should you. Now, some people and some coaches, you know, I know of coaches who have their training book and they've run it the last seven years. Doesn't matter who their athlete base is, they just have their on day one, these are the drills we do. On day two, these are the drills we do on day three, and you're going, okay, how long have you been doing that? Oh, this is my my plan. When has it worked? Well, it worked on the first time we did it, but the second and third time it didn't work, and the third time, because the team would look like the first time it worked, and and you're going, so you don't adapt, you don't change based on who your athletes are or who you are, or what how the rules have changed, or you know, and for a lot of people, they just get into their rut and and they go. Me being 72 years old, I don't like to go to new restaurants. I like to go to the restaurants I know. I don't even need to see the menu. I order what I like. And is that good for me? Probably not. I'm probably missing a lot of great restaurant experience because of my opinion that I already figured it out. This is all I have to do.

SPEAKER_03

But we need to keep adapting.

SPEAKER_01

So for me, changing. Why do I coach the 12s? Because I'm 72. And 12-year-olds know all the latest technology, all the latest language, all the latest everything else. So I get in I get educated by them. I go, okay, 6'7, okay, I got that. What's about this? What about that? What about this? You know 6'7. Oh, God, yes. Because you have to, you're dealing with talks, you have to speak to mind. I know I know. And they have all the euthanism, you know, and I can't teach them a three-step approach, but they can put the TikTok thing out there and design these dances and go nuts in 40 seconds. Yes. And do it repeatedly. And I'm going, okay, how can you learn that in 40 seconds? And yet you can't do a three-step approach with your left foot forward. Ever. And they go, and I understand why, because there's the importance of it. That's just some part of something somebody else wants me to do. This is self-creation. I'm doing this.

SPEAKER_03

So it's this helped? This has totally helped. I gotta tell you that there were some emotional times where you've helped me kind of understand things. You've inspired me to do things that I just never even would have imagined doing. Even after coaching, I mean, you've coached 50 years. Yeah. I've coached 33 years. I still have stuff that you know that I've never even seen yet. And so this is inspirational for me to know that I got more to look forward to. I want to keep going.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And I think as a young player, the sport is yours to develop. So when people start saying, Well, we gotta do it this way, you can challenge that. But know how to present that challenge to your main instructor, whether it's a coach or a club owner or whatever, you can just say, Well, what if we did this? What if we did that? I mean, I have one more story if you have time. Um, I just had uh about three months ago, I had uh lunch with Terry Pettit. And Terry Pettit was a Nebraska head coach before John Cook was there. In fact, taught Cookie everything he knew. Cookie might not appreciate that, but Pettit was a way better coach than than Cook. But they have a picture or statue of John Cook in front of the arena now. Yeah. So um, and and Pettit was saying, and we were having lunch, John Kessel, Pettit, and myself. And and he goes, I remember you, Blaze. I go, you do? Out of all the people that you coached at Nebraska and everything else, he goes, No, I remember you because you brought that ragtag New Mexico team down here, and you ran a reverse offense. And I went, Oh, you remember that? He goes, I remember getting beaten thoroughly by you because you ran the offense from the left, not the right.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

And I went, yeah, but you know why we did that. And he goes, Yeah, I figured it out after we lost, because I had five left-handers.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, okay, okay. Now I get oh yeah, I get it.

SPEAKER_01

So we were really outclassed as far as athlete base and things like that. But we developed a new system. It was just unique enough to Nebraska blockers where everything's going different ways, different speeds. The lefties are just that six inches, different angles, and and we won. We had to play well, but we still beat Nebraska. We had no reason to beating Nebraska.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

And Cookie said to that day, he goes, We went back into the gym and we practiced against that. And it made us a better team because then when the ball was set from the right hand side or the left-hand side of the court, their right hand side, um, we could deal with it because you gave us that opportunity to go to that.

SPEAKER_03

Awesome. Okay, so coaches that keep asking me, what's your favorite go-to defense? What's your best service pattern? What's your best offense that you like to run? I I don't know how to answer. I said it depends.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. And that's the proper answer is who's the opponent you're facing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

How is it important that you win? Because you don't want to disrupt the team just to get one single W.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So if I wreck the team and the T dynamics to get a W, well, the W should be the last game of the season. Yes. Otherwise, why would you do that? So you know, and it's more of a collectively, what do we take your strengths, your partner's strengths, everybody else's strengths. You add that to the coaching staff's strengths. Yes. And then you go, okay, this is how we're gonna play volleyball. And if we do it well, the chance of success is high. If we do it average, the chance of success is a flip of a coin. If we do it poorly, why are we doing it? So it's just like, so you should always just be 50-50 at worst. And then the rest of the time is you devise it so that this is how we're gonna use Isabelle in the middle. And does the does Isabel's opposite, the other middle on the court, does she have to play like Isabel? Or does Isabel have to play like her? My answer is no, they're different people. So we're gonna set Isabel differently. We're gonna ask different things out of her offensively and defensively, and her other partner. Why would I why would I want two Isabelles out there? Unless the beautiful face and smile.

SPEAKER_03

Well, coach, thank you. Hey. I can't thank you enough. High fives all around.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, triple high five.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, good. Thank you. Appreciate you being here today. Keep learning, keep growing. And remember, let's play volleyball because it's fun. And we'll see you in the next episode. Just go.