As I said in my previous blog, 'A Day in the Life' is my attempt to give people a sneak peak into the day to day actions of a college volleyball coach who is out of season.  The idea was actually sparked by a local reporter who came in to the volleyball office earlier in the week and asked what we were up to during this time of the year.  We began talking, along with the program's head coach, about the fact that many people don't understand what must be done to create a successful collegiate program. 

So here it is, the first installment of my attempt to help people outside of college athletics understand the rigors of the schedules.  Please feel free to leave comments or ask questions. 

Today's blog is going to sum up the week that's just ending.  It is Friday, January 9th at about 6:00 p.m. as I begin to write this.  We have just concluded our first week back since the holiday break.  Tia, our head coach, and myself were last in semi-work mode at the annual American Volleyball Coaches Association Convention in Tampa, Florida on December 16th-20th.  The players also wrapped up their final exams that week and left campus to go home.

The first week back is a little slow and unscheduled, after all, the students don't return to Big Rapids until Monday the 12th.  I spent most of my week putting together the recruiting calendar for the staff and catching up on literally hundreds of emails, most of them from potential recruits. 

The recruiting calendar doesn't sound like much, and maybe it's not.  However, coordinating a schedule that ensures a staff of two people maximum exposure for the program while allowing us to see all of the players we are interested in, that can get a little tricky.  In addition, through experience, I've learned that if I take care of some of the little things, such as mapquest print outs and hotel shopping, it makes it much better down the road.  All in all, it takes a decent amount of phone calls and emails and if done right, time to get it just right. 

Although is has very little to do with coaching people, motivating, working with people or anything else that you normally think when you think of coaching a sport for a living, I do enjoy this part of the job.  It's a bit of a break from the gym and a nice change up that helps me ease my way back into the swing of things after the holiday rest.

The other part of the week was spent preparing for a talk I am going to give at a Coaching Symposium on January 14th in Ohio.  The topic is setter training.  Not too long along, Ferris adopted a new style of setter training from Long Beach State.  Long Beach has a way of training their players that is very different than many programs in the country.  Prior to my arrival at Ferris, they had already adopted Long Beach's style of serve reception passing, so after my first year here I thought I'd go out and see it for myself.  I signed up to work all of their camps so I could see all of their training styles first hand.  From that, I fell absolutely in love with the way they train their setters!  In a week, I'll present that setter training style to other coaches. 

The biggest challenge with this presentation will be trying to fit the information into an hour.  When I have presented this material in the past, it has been through camps and clinics to both coaches and players.  The setter's camp includes around 20 hours of instruction and I'm unable to fit it all in there. 

So that's this past week in a nutshell.  I am off to somewhat enjoy the last weekend I'll have off for the next 5 months.  Monday begins at 6:00 a.m. with conditioning followed by three sets of individual skill sessions ending at 10:00 a.m.  Once out of the gym, it's back up to the office for quite a few other things that are still on the list!  Stay tuned, I can't wait to walk you through it!