Three Ideas Newsletter – 10/21/25
Hey everyone! State tournaments are around the corner for high school programs. A frequently asked question from many coaches is how to best prepare their teams for the competition. First of all, there isn’t a best single way to prepare your team for the state tournament. Each team has its own personality, along with many variables such as injuries, experience, and other factors. But here are a few items that I’ll present as food for thought.
- Reduce practice duration – towards the end of the season, I would bring the on-court practice time down to ninety minutes. Make no mistake, during that allotted time, we worked hard and competed a lot. However, I didn’t want players to become fatigued due to the physical demands of the practice.
- Relate everything to the upcoming competition by phrasing it in a way that correlates with the state tournament competition. For instance, “that is the shot that will score against Central HS.” This will allow a player to remember that shot when competing. Or, if you have a poor practice, instead of railing about the practice, you might try, “to win the state tournament, we need to win seven consecutive matches. Let’s prepare for that by having seven consecutive good practices.” Lastly, have your team buy into a plan: “Here’s how we’re going to win the state championship.” So, everything the coach says is preparing the team for an upcoming opponent or the tournament.
- Monitor jumps and swings – A state tournament is a mental and physical grind. You want your players to be physically and mentally fresh. Make sure you are monitoring jumps and swings in practice. Wasting jumps with a twenty-minute “queen of the court” game is probably not wise. Budget your jumps and swings for team and system development.
- Lots of positive vibes – Reward the good plays, don’t worry about the bad ones. Focus on your strengths; weaknesses can wait until next season.
- Implement a game plan without players’ knowledge. If you have a tough opponent in the second or third round, but want your players to focus on the next opponent, incorporate into your practice some concepts (serve areas, specific shots by the attacker, etc.) that will be implemented against future opponents. You don’t want to tell your players because it can cause them to lose focus in the next match. You are just front-loading some tactics to be used later in the tournament.
- Work subs into your plan – You never know who might get hurt. So, practice doomsday lineups just in case.
There are certainly more components to preparing your team for a state tournament. But these might get you started in thinking those thoughts.
Thanks for reading!
~Jim
Quote for the Week: “If you don’t invest very much, then defeat doesn’t hurt very much and winning isn’t very exciting.” ~Dick Vermeil, Super Bowl Football Coach
Idea #1 – Never Hold a Team Meeting to Solve a Problem – One coaching tip that I picked up from Hall of Fame coach Terry Liskevych was to avoid using team meetings to address a perceived team problem. I say “perceived” because most “team problems” are not actually team problems. Often, the problem lies with one or two players who try to recruit teammates to their side of an argument. Another issue with team meetings is that many players are hesitant to share their honest opinions, and even when they do, they may not be the most effective problem solvers. Team meetings should be reserved for organizational agendas, game plans, or other general items. Solve problems with individual or small group conversations.
Idea #2 – When Receiving a Serve, Face the Ball as Long as Possible – One key word that I use when working with players on serve-receive is “face the ball as long as possible.” Of course, this mandates foot movement. So often, when receiving a deep serve, the first movement of passers is to turn their shoulders away from the ball. In this video, Elaina Oligvie, demonstrates how moving her feet enables her to face the ball on a deep serve. Another area of focus is that while she shuffles back, she maintains a good posture and keeps her upper body quiet. VIDEO
Idea #3 – When Teaching Ball Control Skills, Vary the Posture – When teaching forearm and overhead skills, I emphasize varying the posture of the player when executing the skill. So often, we teach the skill in a comfortable, medium posture; however, that’s not realistic. The player must be comfortable both passing and setting the low and high ball that they must control. VIDEO
Video of The Week – Serve Short, But Keep the Trajectory Flat – Passers have a difficult time receiving a short serve, if the trajectory is relatively flat. Too often, short serves have a high trajectory and is easy to recognize and pass. However, short serves with a flat trajectory present significant issues to the passer. VIDEO
Archive Blog Post – If You Don’t Know Goodhart’s Law, You Should – In 2011, the U-18 World Championships were held in Ankara, Turkey. We just completed a match against China, led by future star Zhu Ting. China performed well, and we had opportunities to win the match, but a high number of attacking errors in critical situations hindered us. Before our next match against Slovakia, I gave the team a statistical analysis of the China match while lamenting the number of attack errors. I set a performance goal for the upcoming match, focusing on reducing attack errors. Result? We reduced the number of attack errors. How did we accomplish the goal? In my entire coaching career, I’ve never seen so many tips and roll shots in a single match. The players adjusted their game to meet the statistical goals that I put forth. Welcome to Goodhart’s Law. READ MORE
Thanks for reading. Have a great week!
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~Jim
