Players Need Challenging Coaches Now More Than Ever

I don’t make a point of viewing commencement addresses; however, being a Jerry Seinfeld fan for many years, I had to check out his 2024 address to the graduating class at Duke University. I’ve edited a 20-second clip that will be the springboard for this article.

With increased reliance on AI to do the heavy lifting, is there collateral damage in terms of the students’ ability to work hard, think critically, perform a thorough analysis of the information, generate their ideas, and develop the capacity to solve problems and accept challenges? It wasn’t that long ago (my age is showing) when, performing research, you would go to the library and laboriously seek out information using the infamous Dewey Decimal System. That progressed to using Google to get links to articles, books, and current research. Google wouldn’t find answers; it would just tell you where to look. Now, AI is performing the looking, the finding, and the writing of the paper.

A recent study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) examined students’ ability to articulate their thoughts in three essays. As they wrote, the researchers monitored brain activity using EEG headsets. The participants were tested on their memory of their essays, scored the essays for quality (using human teachers and an AI model), and asked participants how much the essays felt like their own work. Some students wrote their essays using AI, while others completed the work without any assistance from AI. What were the results of the research? Students who did not rely on AI for assistance had a better recall of the material, showed a marked difference in brain activity, and felt a greater sense of ownership over the material.

Cognitive Debt is where you forgo the thinking in order just to get the answers, but have no real idea of why the answers are what they are.”

The results of their research raise a critical concern: while artificial intelligence provides powerful tools for learning, over-reliance on these technologies can lead to “cognitive debt,” resulting in a superficial understanding and poor retention. When students depend too heavily on AI to perform tasks—such as researching, summarizing, or problem-solving—they may miss out on the essential cognitive effort required for genuine learning and memory formation.

The Athletic Parallel – AI and Athletes

The influence of AI extends beyond the classroom and into the volleyball arena. Just as students might be tempted to let AI do the “heavy lifting” in academic work, volleyball players may seek shortcuts or avoid challenging situations on the court. Our athletes need their coaches to foster an environment that emphasizes high expectations, accountability, and competition—one that encourages them to tackle real challenges. Unfortunately, today’s players are often shielded from failure by well-meaning parents, teachers, and coaches. As coaches, we can’t create meaningful growth opportunities if we’re always trying to protect athletes from setbacks. We must challenge our players to take on difficult tasks, as doing so will benefit them both now and in the future.

Your daily rehearsal must promote an environment that emphasizes responsibility and accountability in every aspect of your program. What might be examples of making demands of players that will encourage responsibility and accountability?

• Players are responsible for court set-up and take-down, sweeping the floor, and ensuring that balls, whiteboards, and scoreboards are ready at the start of practice and put away at the end of practice.
• Players will have notebooks to write down all the teaching points for the day. There will be no handouts. Many studies have demonstrated improved retention of information if the student writes items of importance. When I coached the USA U-18 team, the players wrote down everything.
• Coaches will give surprise quizzes over information already presented. The quizzes don’t need to be a labor-intensive task. Just ask a player in the middle of practice, “what are the three most important keys when blocking?”
• Set challenges by incorporating activities that are based on successful contacts vs. allotted time. I’ve never been a coach who does ten minutes of this or twenty minutes of that. I prefer activities that focus on quality. Therefore, I generally run activities based on successful execution. It has always been ten sideouts, or fifty good passes. I don’t worry about how long the task will take. With experience, I could make a good guess about how long a task would take to complete successfully.
• With the assistance of the coach, the players provide the scouting report on an upcoming opponent, with their teammates taking notes and asking questions.
• With the assistance of the coach, the players will analyze a past match’s video, highlighting both the strengths and weaknesses, and strategies for moving forward.
• Players should be able to speak to the essential components of each skill or team system that have been presented. If you ask a player about the key aspects of blocking footwork and they give you a blank stare, it’s likely that either I haven’t taught it very well, or the player wasn’t listening or writing. Neither of those is a good thing.
• Provide an environment to brainstorm with your players to solicit their opinions. I want them to practice developing and verbalizing their opinions by asking open-ended questions. I avoid brainstorming as a team. I place more value on individual or small group interactions. In large groups, it is more likely that a few players will dominate the conversation.

Once you’ve established a foundation of responsibility and accountability, you can take on the real challenges of beating the top teams in your conference or state. What do you need to do this? It depends, but I’ll give you an example. If I’m in the Big Ten and I look at the top teams, and I see that they sideout at an average of 68%. My team has a sideout percentage of 63%, meaning we will probably not win against the best teams. No problem, let’s get to work on getting better. To raise our sideout percentage might entail a need for better reception, or better setting choices, or a greater variety of shot selection from our attackers. Your players need to handle the reality of their situation and focus on getting better. If they have a foundation of discipline, hard work, and accountability, this challenge will be difficult but manageable. However, if you don’t have this foundation, you have no chance.

“If you don’t invest very much, then defeat doesn’t hurt very much and winning is not very exciting” ~Dick Vermeil, Super Bowl winning coach

If being a good team were easy, there would be more good teams. Elevating the performance of your team is nothing other than hard work for both players and coaches. You and your players do have a choice. You can just shoot for the low-hanging fruit and back off on the challenges of playing with the “big dogs”. This path is easier, much like AI doing all the work, but far less satisfying.