The NCAA D1 Women's National Championship bracket was announced last Sunday. As always, some interesting decisions by the selection committee on teams, matchups, and match locations.
You can find the interactive bracket here
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Crook County Cowgirls
For five years we have been lucky to have Rosie (and Jerry) Honl attend coaching clinics with us in both Washington and Malibu. She has done a wonderful job with her teams, but this year was a special year for her, her players, and the school. She was kind enough to send us a short summary of the season:
"This past year in May of 2009 the school district announced all sports would be cut. The volleyball team got together and started their goal to tie the state record of four state championships in a row. Five players moved away to different schools for different reasons; parents lost their job, all electives were taken away with a 29-member reduction in staff. Two twins that left played in the championship game in Idaho where they moved.
With 8 players on varsity we worked all summer turning in over 60,000 cans by hand, BBQ's, dances, car washes, and many other little fundraisers. We made it and then took on the task of taking our 4th state championship in a row. The team consisted of 2 starting seniors, 1 junior, 3 sophomores and 2 starting freshmen. We went to all the big tourneys and beat every top team in the state except the top two teams in the 6A championship. We were outsized and outnumbered playing in all their playoff games but ended up in the championship game facing #1 ranked team Summit with a front line that didn't have a player below 5'11. We dropped the first game before our small (tallest player at 5'10 freshman) team came back with three wins in a row to take our fourth state championship in 5A. Their school population numbers have dropped so that next year we will be 4A.
This team runs the GMS ideology to the ultimate and I as their coach have gone to the GMS Coaching Clinic for 5 years in a row...each year picking up something I didn’t take home the other times. I am a work in progress, as are my athletes, but we are indebted to Carl, Chris and Jim for years of support. This year I called Jim before a big match to ask him a question about a tough jump-server we were going to face. He was in California playing Stanford. He took time to call me back and answer my question....we followed his suggestions and won again!"
Congrats again to Rosie and the Cowgirls - we are so proud of her and her team, and humbled to be a part of their program.
"This past year in May of 2009 the school district announced all sports would be cut. The volleyball team got together and started their goal to tie the state record of four state championships in a row. Five players moved away to different schools for different reasons; parents lost their job, all electives were taken away with a 29-member reduction in staff. Two twins that left played in the championship game in Idaho where they moved.
With 8 players on varsity we worked all summer turning in over 60,000 cans by hand, BBQ's, dances, car washes, and many other little fundraisers. We made it and then took on the task of taking our 4th state championship in a row. The team consisted of 2 starting seniors, 1 junior, 3 sophomores and 2 starting freshmen. We went to all the big tourneys and beat every top team in the state except the top two teams in the 6A championship. We were outsized and outnumbered playing in all their playoff games but ended up in the championship game facing #1 ranked team Summit with a front line that didn't have a player below 5'11. We dropped the first game before our small (tallest player at 5'10 freshman) team came back with three wins in a row to take our fourth state championship in 5A. Their school population numbers have dropped so that next year we will be 4A.
This team runs the GMS ideology to the ultimate and I as their coach have gone to the GMS Coaching Clinic for 5 years in a row...each year picking up something I didn’t take home the other times. I am a work in progress, as are my athletes, but we are indebted to Carl, Chris and Jim for years of support. This year I called Jim before a big match to ask him a question about a tough jump-server we were going to face. He was in California playing Stanford. He took time to call me back and answer my question....we followed his suggestions and won again!"
Congrats again to Rosie and the Cowgirls - we are so proud of her and her team, and humbled to be a part of their program.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Stop #3 - Montrose, CO
Forgive me for not posting in a while. Life has been kind of crazy on this end but all is well and we get to continue looking back on our summer travels now.. yay for summer!
So here we are in Montrose, Colorado where we had a fabulous time and spent all of our time exploring beautiful canyons and mountainsides when we weren't in the gym. Speaking about being in the gym, these kids competed harder than any kids that we had seen up to this point. Their coaches love the GMS system and have worked hard to implement it... and I must say that they have done quite the job. We loved every minute we got to spend with them.
Upon finishing each day our fabulous hosts took us to a variety of unbelievable places including Black Canyon, which is a mini Grand Canyon and absolutely breathtaking. I found that the canyon walls are composed of volcanic schist, predominantly black in color, and as the gorge reaches depths of over 2,000 feet while often being only 1,500 feet across, sunlight illuminates the walls only briefly, hence the name 'Black Canyon'.
Wednesday we headed to Ouray which was my personal favorite of our little trips. My favorite author, Ayn Rand, spent time here in this small mountain town and ended up basing her famous Galt's Gulch from Atlas Shrugged on it. So you can imagine my excitement as we arrived... not to mention it was absolutely beautiful!!
It was hard to say goodbye to these fabulous people here in Montrose. We had a great time and look forward to seeing them next summer.
Black Canyon
Black Canyon's Painted Wall
Ouray
enjoying the gym
the crew
the final scores for the JV team at the end of the week
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Stop #2 - Historic Anaconda, MT
Anaconda, Montana: American Town
500 miles north of Salt Lake, we find ourselves surrounded by foreboding mountains in the heart of a shrinking former industrial center that was once home to one of the biggest copper smelters in the West. The town comes with everything one would expect to find in a former up-and-coming city whose most promising days were in the 1950's and 60's; an art-deco movie theater, the likes of which you will never lay eyes on; a public square that hosts baseball games in the Summer, and is flooded and freezed-over for ice skating in the Winter; and a tree-lined main street replete with restored circa-1900 mansions. (Many of said mansions are said to be haunted - and our hosts were kind enough to let us stay in one of them)
The story of the closing of the smelter and the presumed vanishing of Anaconda, however, we found to be premature. The kind people of Anaconda, while ever-decreasing in their numbers, were energetic, optimistic and great to work with. Gold Medal Squared was in its 11th year at Anaconda H.S. in 2009, and we had a terific turnout of athletes experienced and inexperienced.
Like most smaller schools, the volleyball players of AHS formed the nucleus of most of the school's other teams, as well; softball, basketball, track, etc. These athletes had an insatiable appetite for sport. One day, after finishing camp at about 4:30, the girls raced to a summer-league softball game which lasted until about 7, then back to the gym where they had spent the entire day for basketball open gym which ended at 9.
500 miles north of Salt Lake, we find ourselves surrounded by foreboding mountains in the heart of a shrinking former industrial center that was once home to one of the biggest copper smelters in the West. The town comes with everything one would expect to find in a former up-and-coming city whose most promising days were in the 1950's and 60's; an art-deco movie theater, the likes of which you will never lay eyes on; a public square that hosts baseball games in the Summer, and is flooded and freezed-over for ice skating in the Winter; and a tree-lined main street replete with restored circa-1900 mansions. (Many of said mansions are said to be haunted - and our hosts were kind enough to let us stay in one of them)
The story of the closing of the smelter and the presumed vanishing of Anaconda, however, we found to be premature. The kind people of Anaconda, while ever-decreasing in their numbers, were energetic, optimistic and great to work with. Gold Medal Squared was in its 11th year at Anaconda H.S. in 2009, and we had a terific turnout of athletes experienced and inexperienced.
Like most smaller schools, the volleyball players of AHS formed the nucleus of most of the school's other teams, as well; softball, basketball, track, etc. These athletes had an insatiable appetite for sport. One day, after finishing camp at about 4:30, the girls raced to a summer-league softball game which lasted until about 7, then back to the gym where they had spent the entire day for basketball open gym which ended at 9.
On Wednesday afternoon, Joe, Anaconda's Head Coach, took us to play golf on the recently completed Jack Nicklaus golf course. The course is one of only a few in the world with special sand in the sand traps. This 'sand' is actually called 'slag' which is the bi-product of smelting copper ore. It is balck as night, but not at all dusty or dirty. Lucky for me, my game is tailored to playing in the sand - I had become very familiar with the slag sand traps before the day was through.
Welcome to Historic Anaconda
Where Main Street meets the Mountains
The Beautiful Washoe Theatre
Our humble abode for the week
Dinner at Lost Creek State Park
... in the rain
Joe - the happiest man you'll ever meet
Old Works Golf Course
Check out the Slag behind Taylor
Team Building Warm Up Games
Thursday, October 29, 2009
First Stop... Haggerty High School
Hi there folks! I'm excited to take you on our journeys around the States as Gold Medal Squared camp coaches. My husband, Taylor and I have been coaching for GMS for 3 summers now and have loved every minute of it. When Tom asked me if I would be interested in doing a photo essay of our travels I jumped at the opportunity because I knew that it would be interesting and a lot of fun. We've been just about everywhere from Montana to Arkansas, Colorado to Boston, and a lot of towns in between. I hope that you enjoy the ride as we go from one end of the country to the next over then next couple of weeks.
Stop #1: Haggerty High School in Oviedo, Florida with Head Coach Corey Radford and friends.
Taylor wasn't able to join me on this first camp because he was taking the LSAT this week, so I got the chance to start off the summer with Brock Hutchins and my former teammate from BYU Janvier Beaumont La Barbara. We had a great time. We stayed in a beautiful Lake House and enjoyed good home made Italian food, great company, boating and jet skiing each day after camp.
I forgot how hot and humid Florida was in June... wow! The days in the gym were a lot of fun and the girls each got a lot better individually and collectively. Each of them worked hard and when the energy in the gym was a little too low coach busted out "bumping beans" or "blocking beans" to give everyone a little boost.. oh ya these so-called "beans" were skittles! That's just one reason these camps are so much fun.. you learn something new at each one of them :)
So this being the first trip of the summer you can imagine how I pretty much took pictures of everything: the lake house, boating, jet skiing, sunsets, our boat breaking down in the middle of the lake, the team BBQ, the wonderful family we stayed with, all the coaches, the kids doing their drills and warm up games, etc. They were awesome! Well... I forgot to back them up to my back up hard drive and lost them when my regular hard drive crashed about a week after I got home. You can imagine how upset I was... OK so it's safe to say that I was pretty much beside myself. Frantically trying to figure out what to do, I remembered that Corey had his camera in hand as we were doing demonstrations and what not, so I sent him an email and explained the situation that I had found myself in and I'm happy to say that he saved me. So please give all the credit of these pictures to Corey Radford. I am happy to say that after this small stupid incident I immediately backed up all the rest of my pictures from our summer travels. Thanks again Corey.
Enjoy!!!
Question: Mental Toughness?
From a Coach:
Do you have any advice when it come to developing mental toughness in the HS female athlete? I could really use some, we have some unbelievable talent and play a very intense style of volleyball. If we keep it together I don't think there is a team that can touch us, but we seam to go flat and make mistakes for runs of 4-5 points at a time and I am worried this might be our downfall. Any advice/drills you can give that work on this would be greatly appreciated.
Our Reply:
As for your question, it is one of the hardest issues you face as a girl’s coach, no doubt. I find that even at the college level we aren’t where we want to be from a mental perspective. Our BYU team (where I am the volunteer assistant this year) just lost our second 5-game match to in-state rival Utah this year. The season would be a success if we went 2 and whatever, so long as those two wins were against Utah. And we lost them both in heartbreaking 5-game losses.
After the match, I was talking to Chad Lewis (a former All-Pro Tight End for the Philly Eagles – he is a BYU guy and his wife played volleyball here) and he asked me about being up 2 games to 0 and losing three straight. We talked about the need for the very thing you asked about – mental toughness. I told him that while the girls on the team were wonderful kids – respectful, hard working physically, invested in the systems and the feedback they get – they simply weren’t killers, that it doesn't feel like they want to destroy the other teams. At times it seems we are happy to just let the game play out rather than try to control the outcome. Does that make sense? In other words, we haven't yet developed the level of mental "toughness" to which you allude.
That having been said, here is what I think it takes. This is simply my opinion and you probably know these things, but here is what I have seen as a player and a coach:
Experience and Reps
First off, it sure helps if your kids have been in a LOT of matches, so they have a lot of game experience. There isn’t much you can do with this other than try to get your younger kids playing a lot of volleyball so by the time they get to their Junior/Senior year, they have a lot of match experience and they don’t tighten up. I heard a Ph.D sports psych guy talk about the need for confidence, and he went on to say that the biggest factor in increasing athlete confidence is successful experience. In other words, if I perform a task well a lot, I begin to have a lot of confidence in my ability to perform that task well in the future. No big surprise there - I don't think you need a Ph.D to figure that one out. So we need to give our kids a lot of opportunities to perform well, and that means we have to start young and play a lot of volleyball.
Practice Environment
You need to create a practice environment where a) there is a high level of accountability between teammates, and b) there is a lot of competition.
a) the kids have to know that part of being a good teammate is when I am on the other side of the net from you I am trying to beat you as badly as I can. This isn’t because I don’t like you, but because I like you so much I am giving you my best effort as a practice opponent. And I am doing everything I can to come to practice every day in a position to play hard and play great against my teammates, because by doing so I am making the team better. So I work hard in the weight room, I get a lot of sleep, I have good nutritional habits, I am a happy, positive person, I study hard in school, etc. – I do everything in my power to bring my best self to practice every day. This is an overwhelmingly difficult concept for kids to grasp – so you have to talk to them about it all the time, reinforce it, praise it when it happens, etc.
b) practice has to have a lot of competition (you keep score), and the results of that competition has to matter in a way that the kids regard as significant. As you know we like using the Cauldron to manage this aspect of practice.
Match Preparation
If you have a good, solid game plan against your opponents you can help your kids rely less on their intuition and concentrate more on simply doing a task. “Serve player X” is easier to process and execute than “serve great”. “Ignore the quick hitter in rotation 4 and get loaded on the outside” is easier to process becuase it allows the player to go be great at a specific job without having to read very much. The fewer things a player has to process the better they can be at the tasks they need to do, and therefore they will have more success at those tasks. And as I said before, more success = more confidence/toughness. So developing and presenting a good (simple!) game plan is very helpful.
That might be about it. I think there are some things you can do in the pre-season with your team to talk about the purpose of your team and sports in general, but this gets into an area where I don’t have as much experience. Come to one of our Level 2 clinics and we talk more about it.
I hope this helps. Best of luck through the rest of the year!
Chris
Do you have any advice when it come to developing mental toughness in the HS female athlete? I could really use some, we have some unbelievable talent and play a very intense style of volleyball. If we keep it together I don't think there is a team that can touch us, but we seam to go flat and make mistakes for runs of 4-5 points at a time and I am worried this might be our downfall. Any advice/drills you can give that work on this would be greatly appreciated.
Our Reply:
As for your question, it is one of the hardest issues you face as a girl’s coach, no doubt. I find that even at the college level we aren’t where we want to be from a mental perspective. Our BYU team (where I am the volunteer assistant this year) just lost our second 5-game match to in-state rival Utah this year. The season would be a success if we went 2 and whatever, so long as those two wins were against Utah. And we lost them both in heartbreaking 5-game losses.
After the match, I was talking to Chad Lewis (a former All-Pro Tight End for the Philly Eagles – he is a BYU guy and his wife played volleyball here) and he asked me about being up 2 games to 0 and losing three straight. We talked about the need for the very thing you asked about – mental toughness. I told him that while the girls on the team were wonderful kids – respectful, hard working physically, invested in the systems and the feedback they get – they simply weren’t killers, that it doesn't feel like they want to destroy the other teams. At times it seems we are happy to just let the game play out rather than try to control the outcome. Does that make sense? In other words, we haven't yet developed the level of mental "toughness" to which you allude.
That having been said, here is what I think it takes. This is simply my opinion and you probably know these things, but here is what I have seen as a player and a coach:
Experience and Reps
First off, it sure helps if your kids have been in a LOT of matches, so they have a lot of game experience. There isn’t much you can do with this other than try to get your younger kids playing a lot of volleyball so by the time they get to their Junior/Senior year, they have a lot of match experience and they don’t tighten up. I heard a Ph.D sports psych guy talk about the need for confidence, and he went on to say that the biggest factor in increasing athlete confidence is successful experience. In other words, if I perform a task well a lot, I begin to have a lot of confidence in my ability to perform that task well in the future. No big surprise there - I don't think you need a Ph.D to figure that one out. So we need to give our kids a lot of opportunities to perform well, and that means we have to start young and play a lot of volleyball.
Practice Environment
You need to create a practice environment where a) there is a high level of accountability between teammates, and b) there is a lot of competition.
a) the kids have to know that part of being a good teammate is when I am on the other side of the net from you I am trying to beat you as badly as I can. This isn’t because I don’t like you, but because I like you so much I am giving you my best effort as a practice opponent. And I am doing everything I can to come to practice every day in a position to play hard and play great against my teammates, because by doing so I am making the team better. So I work hard in the weight room, I get a lot of sleep, I have good nutritional habits, I am a happy, positive person, I study hard in school, etc. – I do everything in my power to bring my best self to practice every day. This is an overwhelmingly difficult concept for kids to grasp – so you have to talk to them about it all the time, reinforce it, praise it when it happens, etc.
b) practice has to have a lot of competition (you keep score), and the results of that competition has to matter in a way that the kids regard as significant. As you know we like using the Cauldron to manage this aspect of practice.
Match Preparation
If you have a good, solid game plan against your opponents you can help your kids rely less on their intuition and concentrate more on simply doing a task. “Serve player X” is easier to process and execute than “serve great”. “Ignore the quick hitter in rotation 4 and get loaded on the outside” is easier to process becuase it allows the player to go be great at a specific job without having to read very much. The fewer things a player has to process the better they can be at the tasks they need to do, and therefore they will have more success at those tasks. And as I said before, more success = more confidence/toughness. So developing and presenting a good (simple!) game plan is very helpful.
That might be about it. I think there are some things you can do in the pre-season with your team to talk about the purpose of your team and sports in general, but this gets into an area where I don’t have as much experience. Come to one of our Level 2 clinics and we talk more about it.
I hope this helps. Best of luck through the rest of the year!
Chris
Monday, October 26, 2009
Summer Camp Photo Essays
As you likely know, we at GMS have two main products - clinics for coaches, and camps for High School age athletes. In the summer months, we send our staff of highly qualified and highly trained coaches to various high schools throughout the country, where they spend four days at the school working with the team to implement the GMS mechanics, systems, and principles.
Schools that have hosted the GMS camps have given us wonderful feedback about the improvement they have seen in their teams. A big part of that is the GMS system. An equally big part of that is the tremendous quality of the GMS staff that travel to and work at these camps.
A great example of the GMS staff is Lauren Richards Evans. Lauren was a setter at BYU from 2001 to 2005, and she subsequently played professionally in Europe, coached at American University, and has recently been a big part of starting a new club team in her home state of Utah.
Not only a wonderful player and coach, Lauren is an accomplished photographer. Over the course of the 2009 summer, she compiled a series of images that represent the camp experience from the staff perspective. Over the next few months, Lauren will be a "guest blogger" here on the GMS site and will be sharing her photograhy and her thoughts as a GMS staffer. You can see more of her work at her website
Schools that have hosted the GMS camps have given us wonderful feedback about the improvement they have seen in their teams. A big part of that is the GMS system. An equally big part of that is the tremendous quality of the GMS staff that travel to and work at these camps.
A great example of the GMS staff is Lauren Richards Evans. Lauren was a setter at BYU from 2001 to 2005, and she subsequently played professionally in Europe, coached at American University, and has recently been a big part of starting a new club team in her home state of Utah.
Not only a wonderful player and coach, Lauren is an accomplished photographer. Over the course of the 2009 summer, she compiled a series of images that represent the camp experience from the staff perspective. Over the next few months, Lauren will be a "guest blogger" here on the GMS site and will be sharing her photograhy and her thoughts as a GMS staffer. You can see more of her work at her website
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