Monday May 3, 1010

The picture to the right is of the men's national team practicing at the Carenage, St. George's province. There are six provinces in Grenada:
St Andrews
St. David
St. George
St. John
St. Mark
St. Patrick

Grand Anse, which is where I am staying, is in St. George. St. George is considered the "City." All other provinces are considered the "Country."

I was excited for practice tonight. Unfortunately, I thought we had the Women's National team practice tonight, so in the morning at the beach after my morning swim, I outlined a practice for the Women's team. As we were driving to the secondary school practice, I found it was the Men's team. Big Difference!!!! The men are very excited about volleyball. They are very excited to have a coach from America to work with them and train. I want to live up to their expectation.

I began preparing a practice outline while driving to the secondary school practice.

We had approximately 19 athletes report for practice. I'm noticing some consistently show up, and others, maybe once a week. We have new faces attend every practice. I'm still not sure exactly who is on the national team.

We started off with trips and then went into sumo instruction and digging technique. Nanan and I decided we needed to focus on technique this week and then getting into offensive and defensive playing systems. The men seemed very eager to learn and had great attitudes.

Again, I felt they were expecting a very hard, challenging practice...the best practice of their lives! And tonight, I was NOT up to the challenge! Not that I didn't want to be, I feel I ran a very average practice. We incorporated cooperative and competitive drills and did mostly game-like drills involving everyone. We spent maybe 15 minutes on partner passing technique learning sumo, pull-backs, and body positioning. We then went into a serve receive drill, focusing on seem coverage and getting the passing reps. I introduced our scoring system for serve receive and ran a competitive serve receive drill, ranking each team's passing efficiency. One team passed a 2.0 and the other a 1.9. No consequences.

We then went into a ball control drill because I feel we need to work on controlling the ball and learning how to consistently hit the ball in. We ran a 3 v 3 switching drill, where after one side attacks the ball over the net, they switch off and 3 new players come in. I asked the team to control the ball and try for 20 consecutive, successful attacks with the ball never touching the ground. I expected us to get maybe 10 or 12. Our high was 3!!! Our passing was okay, but we could not hit the ball with control. After 10 minutes, I changed the rules to allow any kind of contact to send the ball over....fingers, platform, spike, whatever. We still could not get more than 8. Finally, I began pulling people out of the drill that really didn't belong at this level of practice. Still no luck. I then ended the drill. Nanan was sitting on the sideline and I discussed with him the weaknesses. He said the team should run sprints because he was very disappointed. He approached the group and expressed his disappointment and demanded they run. As they were going to the line, one of the top players approached me and said, "You don't want to be hard on us Coach???" And he seemed disappointed. This affected me greatly.

This team is very willing to work hard to improve. They want to win. I came into tonight's practice completely un-prepared. Not because I didn't have a practice outline (last minute at that). But more because I did not really know what to expect. I was not sure how many would show up tonight, what their work ethic was, their level of dedication, their intensity, their willingness to work hard to get better, the practice habits, whether they hustled or not, if they did consequences or ever ran in practice. This was a complete unknown to me. The ages of the participants range from 16-42. Some are injured. I completely underestimated their desire and commitment.

We talked after practice and I asked if they wanted me to run this as an American practice..forget about the cultural differences, etc. They unanimously said "YES!" I have a new challenge and will be better prepared for Wednesday!!