As a sport finely tuned to flowing interaction between the digger, setter and hitter, volleyball relies on players who fully appreciate the need to approach practices and matches as a team. Challenges can arise due to the conflict of personalities or impatience with a teammate struggling with some element of the game. The attention you pay as coach to surmounting team-building challenges can pay off during the season and at tournaments, as teams that have solved chemistry problems often shine brightest.
Cliques
If you notice players sitting apart from their teammates or arguing with one another off the court, you have a problem with that elusive ingredient of team sports: chemistry. Look for indications on and off the court of poor chemistry, advises coach Pete Waite in "Aggressive Volleyball." This indicates the formation of cliques and problems that will escalate during games, when the players will separate rather than come together.
Bonding
The discovery of cliques and friction dictates a need for players to share experiences off the court, so that bonds of friendship form on which players can draw when points are going the wrong way on the volleyball court. The Nanooks of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, for example, scheduled a field trip to a remote glacier to do something outside the sport that created a new, shared experience. Teammates bonded as they traversed shaky bridges and waded through glacial waters. Less challenging possibilities include pregame team meals and rotating roommates on road trips, Waite suggests. During practice, rotate partners on ball-handling drills to achieve the same end.
Experience
In your role as coach, you need to recognize that team-building goals cannot be the same each year for each team, writes Minnesota women's coach Mike Hebert in "The Volleyball Coaching Bible." A young team facing veteran rivals needs reassurance and confidence-building as it faces its schedule, while an experienced volleyball team has seen it all before and likely possesses tremendous intrinsic motivation to win or defend a championship. Your challenge is to determine where your team falls on the ladder each new season.
Roles
Players who don't understand their roles or those of their teammates can present a team-building challenge. When players understand the role of a teammate, "they can begin to develop support and empathy," writes Robert Weinberg, a professor of sports behavior at Miami University, in "Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology." You can switch players around to surmount this challenge. Have a spiker upset at the setter's poor passes to swap places and trying setting for a change at practice. This may lead to insight on how difficult the task of setting to the right spot is, Weinberg notes.
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