Email Campaign Archive

Beating those "Great Ball Control" Opponents

-By Tom Houser



A Question for Coach Houser:

What’s the best way to beat the scrappy, hustling
defensive team? My team and I HATE playing the
teams that are short, block nearly nothing, yet
pass/dig you to death.  


Coach Houser's Reply:

We’ve heard this since the first year we started
coaching. If you coach long enough, you’ll be on
both ends of this situation. Or will you?  


Strategy #1: You Can Also Have Great Ball Control!

When my team is playing a team with great ball
control, I don’t “blame” them. I blame us for not
becoming the same kind of team.  

At Nationals in Miami, we played a few teams who
seemed inhuman with their digging and their
ability to make the incredible plays. During the
2nd and 3rd days, we were playing very well; but,
our opponents just thwarted our studly hitting
with superior digging. We were a good ball control
team, but we weren’t as freaking ridiculous as
these teams were. Therefore, we lost.

What does it take to create that great ball
control team?  

a) It takes a dedication to working on it at every
practice before all else. You must ignore the
“Coach, oh, no” and the “this is hard” and the
“more digging?” Or you can look at them and say,
“You said your goal was conference champs. Our
next team meeting will be Friday. Talk it over
between now and then and if you have changed your
mind, then we’ll alter our goals, and practices
will change accordingly.”

b) It takes the athletes to do it. You can drill
your players until the season ends, but the
athletes on your team will limit what you will
accomplish.  

c) If takes mature, experienced players. You
usually cannot become that great ball control team
with freshmen and sophomores. Sure it can happen.
But younger girls don’t read as well,  are not as
quick,  don’t have the muscular development,
aren't quite as willing to get on the floor,
go into the bench, etc.  

d) Your kid need buy into it. Well I guess they
really don’t have to. I guess you can shove it
down their throat. But, they will accept the daily
abuse better if you all agreed that it’s necessary
to be where you want to be come tournament time.
 

Strategy #2: Let Your Strong Serving and Hitting
Force Them To Succumb!

I reffed a team last year that was ball control,
playing smart, more ball control, and more playing
smart. They had average serving, average hitting.
They would attack carefully, not make many
mistakes, but not often hit the ball hard. The
first time I reffed them, their opponents beat
themselves. But the second time, the opponent
served and hit well enough that the ball control
team would have lost, regardless of how few
mistakes they made.  

Serving floaters to locations,  dumping, hitting hard,
blocking, etc. creates mistakes from opponents.
Sure they can limit their own mistakes;
but they can't stop any of the balls that you put
on the floor; and, can only stop so many of the
shanks that you can force them into!  

So when my team is playing against "Scrappy and
they don't make a lot of mistakes," that just
means our opponents are trying to hang in there
and win by making fewer mistakes that we do.
They're like the boy with his fingers in the
holes in the dike. They’re just trying to hold on.
But I want my team to put so much pressure on them
that the dike collapses on top of them. In other
words, there are enough fingers to stop all the
leaks, until WHOOOSH, they're overwhelmed by the
pressure. I love seeing it happen. I love watching
the collapse, kill by kill, point by point.  

I expect my teams to beat every team that believes
they cannot win at the net, but have to win with
their ball control. If my team serves well and
hits well, then I expect those scrappy/no-mistakes
teams to not be able to withstand our bombardment.
 

Finally:

Am I saying that those shorter/scrappy teams will
lose most of their matches? No. I had a scrappy
team in 1999 that made the Virginia state final
four out of 130 teams. Am I saying those teams
have no hope against the bigger teams? No. In 2004
my club team lost in the silver finals at
Northeast Qualifier to a much smaller team. But
that team had a passing/digging dike that we
couldn’t burst.  

You have a decision to make with each team you
coach: Do you want to put in the time to be the
best possible ball control team? Or do you choose
to use that time in other useful endeavors:
creating plays, bonding, playing 6’s, etc. What
does your team need? What will help them reach
their goals? It’s your call.



-Tom Houser
Director, STAR Volleyball Camps
Author, “I Can’t Wait” Drill Collection and Ebooks
Head Coach, 2009 Roanoke Junior 16 Nationals,
Old Dominion Region Champion
Junior National Participant-2006, 2009
www.coachhouser.com