This year you're reading Beyond Basketball by Coach Mike Krzyzewski. As you read ask 'how can I apply these lessons to my life'? I like the saying from Matt Haig, "every book is about someone searching for something." Coach K helps players seek excellence.
Your coaches teach you more than volleyball fundamentals and strategy. They teach life lessons...leadership, being a good teammate, becoming more resilient. You absorb these lessons and grow or you tell yourself, "nah, I'm good."
Up your game of self-reflection, self-correction, and self-determination.
I'm especially proud of Melrose players that I've coached - many of the girls on the 2012 championship team, Victoria Crovo who is in her third year of veterinary school, Lauren Joyce who graduated from the Naval Academy, and your own Sadie Jaggers.
I also believe in studying book summaries and here's an excellent one for this year's selection. That doesn't excuse you from reading the text.
A quote:
“If your standards are low, it is easy to meet those standards every single day, every single year. But if your standard is to be the best, there will be days when you fall short of that goal. It is okay to not win every game. The only problem would be if you allow a loss or a failure to change your standards. Keep your standards intact, keep the bar set high, and continue to try your very best every day to meet those standards. If you do that, you can always be proud of the work that you do”.
Lagniappe: Turn off the volume and use the translation.
"Every day here is the freaking Super Bowl." - The Bear
The second scrimmage is in the books. It wasn't perfect. It never will be, tomorrow or on the 30th of October. But it was better - better pace, better communication, better coordination. UNC soccer coach Anson Dorrance preaches 'continual ascension'. That is what fans, players, and coaches saw today.
What went well?
Grace Gentile continued to lead midseason defense in the back row with lots of intensity from Maggie Turner and Gigi Albuja. Turner is the Dustin Pedroia of the group, constantly talking, constantly moving.
Sabine Wenzel showed advanced skills both offensively and defensively in the middle and Sofia Papatsoris separated herself as the second middle.
Leah Fowke continued to deliver biscuits to hitters, serve bombs, and made a host of strong defensive plays.
What needs improvement?
"Experience is the best teacher, but sometimes the tuition is high." Sadie Jaggers was still out and Manon Marchais appeared to have 'load management' but came in for 'must points'.
The competition for additional outside hitting was fierce with numerous players cycling through. Ava Perrotti, Emme Boyer, Milana Noessel, Alex Homan, and Abby Dennison all got chances to prove themselves. Anna Burns got rotations in the back row.
What can the team do differently next time?
Everything can continue to improve. Coach Sonny Lane used to say, "I'm pleased but I'm not satisfied." The team shows a lot of fight and the girls can start a little faster. "Every second counts."
What were the enduring lessons?
The intensity level was high. It takes time. Make incremental gains day after day and by the end of the season, you're a tough out.
Melrose hosts Marblehead at 5:00 P.M. today in scrimmage two. Marblehead put up a 15-3 regular season record last season in D2.
Scrimmages add competition, coordination, and experience. All are important with lots of moving parts.
Sustainable competitive advantage requires influx of capable young players to complement established veterans. The cycle repeats.
Early season illness for Sadie Jaggers provides a daunting dose of adversity, opportunity for others, and leadership chances.
Scrimmages and practice establish the tentative rotation pointing toward the opener against Woburn on 7 September.
The back row has stability with senior Grace Gentile and a pair of experienced juniors, Maggie Turner and Gigi Albuja.
Junior Leah Fowke has the setter position for now.
The front row has seniors Jaggers and Manon Marchais, both rotational players on last year's sectional titlist. Sophomore Sabine Wenzel is at the head of the line for one middle spot.
Early leaders for other front row slots based on skill and size include junior Sofia Papatsoris and sophomore Emme Boyer.
Another road to the rotation is to become a 'designated server' requiring consistency and the ability to defend. With fourteen healthy players on the roster, that means a lot of competition for that spot. And that's a consequential position with a history, including but not limited to Michelle Foley, Cassidy Barbaro, Leah Fowke, and others.
Lagniappe. Go under the hood with assistant coach Ryan Celli on "Celli Talks Volleyball." In his most recent episode, Ryan shares his volleyball journey and the challenges of coaching identity and work-life balance.
Each day, tens of thousands of thoughts emerge. Define whether they're positive or negative.
'Mantras' help us do that. Mantras are words or phrases to help us focus and relax. They began between 1000 and 50 B.C. according to a '2-Minute Learning' session on MasterClass.
They're used by athletes, therapists, and entrepreneurs.
Choose a PERSONAL phrase that works for you. This reminds me of Jason Selk's "performance statement" in Ten-Minute Toughness.
Here are a couple of screenshots from MasterClass:
Coaches do this regularly. Coach Mike Krzyzewski said, "Next play." Mindfulness teachers may say, "be here now." Coach Shawanda Brown urged defenders, "don't back up." On The Bear, two mantras are "let it rip" and "every second counts."
With one group before every game, I'd ask (from Kingsman), "well, are we going to stand around all day or are we going to fight?" They responded, "fight."
Lagniappe. Melrose volleyball is about BALL CONTROL.
Melrose hosted Peabody today at the Veterans Memorial Gymnasium for their first scrimmage.
First some caveats:
Don't rush to judgment with a small sample size.
Senior Tri-Captain Sadie Jaggers was absent with illness.
Coach Scott Celli always investigates multiple combinations during scrimmages.
Here's a helpful template:
What went well?
What went poorly?
What could be done better next time?
What were enduring lessons?
Melrose brings a mixture of youth and experience with Manon Marchais (left), Sofia Papatsoris (top), and Leah Fowke.
The good. After a sluggish start, Melrose's more experienced lineup with Grace Gentile, Maggie Turner, and Gigi Albuja in the back, Marchais and Sabine Wenzel up front, and Fowke setting controlled the action.
The entire back row looked steady with Gentile already in top form.
Wenzel dominated at times up front, both blocking and attacking.
Overall, Melrose's service game was strong and diverse with heat coming from Fowke, Marchais, and Albuja in particular.
Work in progress. It's early to hand out laurels to the newcomers. Understanding coverages, coordination of play, communication, and consistency of skill take time. "Every day is player development day" and finding depth will take time.
What will improve? Overall, operations will be smoother, everything from substitution to communication.
Big takeaways. As of today, the biggest strength of the team is back row defense. Expect blocking to become a strength with the return of Jaggers and development of Wenzel. Leah Fowke looked like she grew several inches to the point of perhaps being Melrose's tallest setter ever.
It will take awhile to define who plays best together as young players enter the system. November teams bear little similarity to late August clubs.
All opinions expressed in 'The Blog' are solely my own.
Fill your toolbox. Develop a routine. Here are a few worth remembering on game day.
1. Bring optimal intensity. Some people need 'hype music' to get up and others need calming music to relax.
2. "Take a breath." Different breathing patterns work. Controlled breathing slows you down. The simplest is a "square" pattern of four seconds in, four second hold, four seconds out, four second hold.
3. Have a 'mental highlight reel' of five memorable plays that have meaning for you. They can be individual or team oriented.
4. Have a mantra, a catchphrase that works for you. Keep it simple, like Coach K's "next play" or "believe."
5. Talk. Bring energy and energize your teammates. "Silent teams lose."
6. Trust the process. Your coaches put you in position to succeed.
7. Assume a power position. Make yourself big.
Data exists showing power poses raise testosterone and reduce stress hormones.
8. Listen. Be coachable. There is a time for everything. On the court keep your feet where you are.
9. "Always do your best." That includes eating right and get seven to eight hours of sleep nightly. Invest your time, don't spend it.
10."Believe in yourself." You're on the court because you show technical, tactical, physical, and psychological skill.
Lagniappe 2. "Take care of business." Handle your responsibilities at home and in the classroom first.
Lagniappe 3. Impact winning.
What IMPACT do you have on your Team?
▪️Do you raise the Standard or lower it? ▪️Do you improve the Mindset or diminish it? ▪️Do you raise the Effort or lower it? ▪️Do you improve the Attitude or hurt it? ▪️Are you WE first or ME first?
Part of the reason for Kobe's success was being relentless. He was a tireless worker both on conditioning and on skill development. The offseason meant 1,000 shots a day for a hundred days. 100,000 shots.
He wrote about his approach in Mamba Mentality (excerpt below).
Not saying that this was great for work-life balance.
Your dreams are uniquely yours. Dream big. Work bigger.
German mathematician Carl Jacobi preached, "invert, always, invert." Think another way. Choose to invest time not spend it. Choose to be more not less efficient. Choose to do whatever it takes not whatever you want.
Ask 'what if' regularly and be prepared to "think again" to change your mind if your first impression or core belief doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Putting the same questions through inversion model will require us to answer:
What events, behaviour or action can prevent me from solving this problem?
What events, behaviour or action can prevent me from achieving this outcome?
What gaps in strategy or process can stop me to get where I want to be?
How can I fail in this project?
Some call this a 'premortem examination'. For example, what controllable factors could lead to a disappointing season? To a degree you can't control injuries and illness. But you control choices (behaviors like maturity and rule following) and actions (player development to create depth).
When trying to achieve something, follow these steps to apply the great mental model of inversion and establish higher confidence in achieving your results:
Write down your intuitive question
Now ask the opposite of that question
Go deep in understanding what can cause the opposite to be true and prevent you from achieving your goal
Ask others to contribute to your thoughts and validate your assumptions
Put together a strategy and action plan in place that avoids all causes of failure that you just learnt
As an 'outsider' I can ask of any program:
What are your strengths? How could it become a weakness?
Where can you improve?
Where is your depth?
If lacking in an area, what is your player development strategy?
How are you going to beat 'excellent teams'?
What keeps you awake at night?
Examples. During an intrasquad scrimmage, imagine that your top two back row players collide and have to come out. Replace them and play out the set. Imagine that your top setter breaks a shoelace and has to change it out. Physically go through the exercise. That also suggests that players should have 'reserve' equipment like shoelaces.
Study greatness. Karch Kiraly shares candor about what it takes to be great.
In your career find mentors, be a great teammate, and become a mentor. Those are opportunity and obligation.
Putting the team first means putting yourself second. You don't "own" a position. You compete for the chance to help the team. Great players make everyone around them better.
Beware the deadly S's - selfishness, sloth (laziness), and softness (lack of toughness). When you read Toughness by Jay Bilas, remember how he was embarrassed by not going to the floor and by doing shoddy work changing out the paper in his sister's vanity. His father came home late and redid the work, not saying a word to his son.
What words diminish you as a player? Arrogance, thinking too much of yourself. Entitlement, believing you deserve respect or credit or affection just because of who you are. Complacency, being satisfied with being 'good enough'.
Sport and games value "strength up the middle." In baseball, that's pitching, catching, shortstop and centerfield. In chess, it's controlling the center of the board. And in volleyball it's controlling the net, setting, and libero-keyed defense. Melrose is in good shape with all.
Net control. Sadie Jaggers enters her fourth year up front with the opportunity for a sectional championship three-peat. In addition to 295 career kills, she is a three-year starter and elite front-row defender. Last season she posted 185 kills to her resume including the sectional title match point.
Senior Manon Marchais adds attacking improvement with a baseline of high-level front row defense.
Sophomore Sabine Wenzel has elite size, the tallest player ever at Melrose. She could become the best blocker in school history.
Setting. Ruth Breen had one of the best setter seasons in the history of Melrose volleyball. That's not opinion, it's fact.
Junior Leah Fowke can be just as good statistically and she brings added blocking 'force' and an electric serve.
Libero. Just as Melrose needs a new setter, they need a new libero. Senior tri-captain Grace Gentile has the inside track although not without competition from Maggie Turner and Gigi Albuja. Grace has the most experience, including playing three sets in the state semifinal versus King Philip.
Yes, teams need leadership. But they benefit from having more 'guys' who don't need leadership because they do what needs to be done and avoid doing what shouldn't be done.
🎥 Nick Saban says, "How many guys on the team need to be led?"
Player Led Teams WIN.
The more guys you have on a team that do not NEED to be led, the better.
With the season under two weeks away, you don't play the odds, you play the girls.
You are only as good as your self-belief. You can win every game on the schedule. That doesn't mean arrogance or overconfidence.
Trust the process. Following the process builds skill, strategic understanding, and helps execute the game plan.
People are who they are. You are an integral part of a winning culture. You don't have to unearth a new species or discover the wheel. You just have to be who you are.
Be yourselves. That's more than good enough.
Lagniappe. The Karch Platform.
Lagniappe 2. Be a great teammate.
11 things Great Teammates DON'T Do:
1. Quit 2. Blame 3. Complain 4. Bring Drama 5. Point Fingers 6. Show Up Late 7. Make Excuses 8. Make Poor Choices 9. Run From a Challenge 10. Bring Negative Energy 11. Badmouth Their Teammates
I was a high school freshman and we were in the middle of a heated basketball game with one of our rivals.
I was on the floor when I heard my coach yelling for me, “Mandy! Mandy!”
I heard him. But I was blatantly ignoring him.
On the third, “Mandy!” I turned away from the court to the bench and yelled “WHAT?!!?” My hands were in the air to signal I was annoyed.
This coach was not one to mess with. He knew basketball like the back of his hand and he DID NOT DEAL with disrespect. His face immediately got beet red and his eyes were bulging out of the sockets.
I heard the buzzer blaring for a sub and I knew I was coming out of the game.
I went to sit in an open seat at the top of the bench and he said, “no. You go take a seat at the end of the bench. And get comfortable.”
It was the first quarter and I didn’t play another second of that game.
During halftime he said to me, “if you ever talk to me like that again - if I ever hear you talking to a referee or another coach like that - you will be so far down on this bench you won’t even see the court.”
Noted.
After the game, he walked up to my Dad who was a long-time boys’ basketball coach. He wanted to explain why I was benched but my Dad cut him off. “You’re the coach. You don’t owe me any explanation when it comes to your team.”
I think about that moment a lot because I think we’ve drifted so far past that when it comes to teaching our kids about accountability.
In our house, if you’re not playing, that’s on you. Work harder so you leave no doubt (even if politics are involved).
You look cross-eyed at your coach, I hope you are benched.
You’re not focused in school? Benched.
You tear down a teammate? Benched.
Youth sports have changed so much…some days the stories I hear or see firsthand it’s like inmates running the asylum.
Coaches are too afraid to hold kids accountable because parents lobby to have them fired
And it’s sad because a lot of the parents are my generation…and come on, we know we learned and benefited the most from the teachers and coaches who pushed us the hardest and held us ACCOUNTABLE.
I love youth sports because it’s so much more than scores and records.
It teaches us teamwork, builds and reveals character, we learn to work through adversity…the list goes on and on.
There’s nothing wrong with coaches holding our children to higher standards by saying “that’s not how we behave here.”
I don’t know about you, but my kids need that because I’m trying like hell to make sure I’m not raising narcissistic, entitled and self-absorbed humans.
They’re going to make mistakes…
They’re going to have low-character days…
They’re still learning and growing…
I just hope every coach and teacher knows that I have their backs when they tell my kids: “nope. Take a seat.
Forever grateful for Coach H for telling me to get comfortable on the bench. Nothing I could have done on that court that night could have overridden my disrespect.
In order for youth sports to do its job, parents need to stay out of it. Park the helicopter and stop hovering.
It’s the fighting through the adversity that will lead our kids to endless success. Truly.
Leadership is active. Leadership requires leaving your comfort zone. At practice before the Olympics, Coach Mike Krzyzewski told players to think about the one person who most helped you achieve your dream.
When the players returned to their rooms, each found their USA Olympic uniform laid out on their bed.
This piece comes from Kobe Bryant's "Mamba Mentality"
Earn the right to win. Commitment and discipline allow you to own self-belief.
Nobody achieves perfection. Baseball all-stars get hits three of every ten at bats.
"You own your paycheck." Your work ethic produces court time, role, and recognition. Hard work doesn't guarantee you'll be a 'star'. Not working guarantees you won't.
Bring your best self to every venue - home, class, court. You matter.
"We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. " — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (We Should All Be Feminists)
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." - Aristotle
Aristotle defines character by what we do. Sport character reflects this.
As a member of a team, your actions impact everyone else on the team. Lateness, being a distraction, poor grades, not following team rules violate "volleyball character."
Young players lead by being fully engaged in the program. Team captains have a responsibility to assure accountability to the team, especially regarding the Chemical Health program. Show up on social media at a gathering where there are drugs or alcohol and you will be suspended under Middlesex League rules. And you will have lost the trust of your coaches and teammates.
Accountability means "holding yourself to a high standard." It's your choice.
All opinions expressed on the blog are solely mine.
Congratulations! Now the work begins.
Breakdown by class, returning players in red:
Seniors (3):
Sadie Jaggers
Grace Gentile
Manon Marchais
Juniors (9):
Leah Fowke
Caroline Higonenq (IR)
Milana Noessel
Gigi Albuja
Abby Dennison
Maggie Turner
Ava Perrotti
Sofia Papatsoris
Alex Homan
Sophomores (2):
Sabine Wenzel
Emme Boyer
Freshman (1):
Anna Burns
You know the phrase, “don’t rest on your laurels.” Don’t. You know a lot of the names from prior seasons or 'family ties'.
You might ask, "why the expansive roster?" Multiple reasons can exist:
1) Numerous players arose at similar skill levels.
2) Search is ongoing for 'ascending players' to emerge during the preseason/season.
3) Potential exists to create depth, a 'risk management' imperative.
4) COVID overhang exists. COVID is not gone. One school in Kentucky is already closed with 20 percent of the students with COVID. We treat COVID patients almost every day.
5) Competition brings out the best as "the cream rises to the top."
As players, your job is to excel in your role, to compete for opportunities and to add value to the team. The best players make others better. The 'Unholy Triad' of sport includes minutes, role, and recognition. Make the most of your opportunity by practicing and playing hard and by being a great teammate. "Everyone cannot be a great player but everyone can choose to be a great teammate."
Believe in process, like Ed Smith, a great thinker and former England cricket National Team Selector. Here's a repost.
Study thinkers in sport like cricket's Ed Smith, selector of the English national team from 2018-2021. "Innovation begins with a simple insight." He argues, "There is value to skepticism."
Selection shouldn't be "pub talk," as in "I like this guy." There is a team dimension. "How do we create a team that's more than the sum of its parts?" If I pick an "all-time" team of Melrose players, I include Victoria Crovo for her leadership and intangibles which are off the chart.
What are our priorities?
What are our needs?
Who's the opposition?
What's the best lineup?
"Quantity and quality of data" change every way of life.
Data
Scouting
Feedback from coaches and captains
Psychological and medical insight
What you see
Personal insights and intuition
"The strategy of a sports team is about tradeoffs and judgments." "If you're focusing there, you're not focusing in another area." Time spent practicing A subtracts from time practicing B.
One game doesn't define a strategy as valid. "There is loose correlation between decisions and outcomes (uses the poker analogy of Annie Duke, author of Thinking in Bets)." Over time, "you hope decisions translate into success."
"Innovation brings about innate risks," an "insult to conventional wisdom." The pressroom, dominated by ex-players, celebrates conventional wisdom from their time.
Grandmaster Garry Kasparov created "advanced chess" combining both a computer and a person to blend the best of both worlds.
What would we do differently the next time? Smith felt team was at its best when unconventional in lineup. He thought it better to lead off with top batsmen rather than holding them in reserve (lower in lineup).
"There's a distinction between truths that help you and spin which helps you look better than you are." As an insider, you may have information that cannot be revealed.
There is a baseline of team performance. Your goal is to elevate it through selection (and ultimately training and strategy). His program wasn't to be innovative but to solve problems. He learned a lot from other domains (including investing, from his friend Howard Marks). Being different and better risks being different and worse. Your job is to "get more right than the next guy" and "get the next decision as good as possible."
Some people think sports people aren't intelligent. They're intelligent in a different way.
"Data shows you how the game is changing." Algorithms can also extract better interpretation of the data. Get better data and better analysis. "Data helps you to understand reality."
"Teams are typically too cautious." "Data can show the relationship between aggression, risk, and winning." For example, in football, teams punt instead of going for a first down. In tennis, a player chooses a "safer" serve instead of more aggressive serve.
"The power of having something unpredictable will become powerful."
When asked for an example of innovation in sport he discussed Daryl Morey (when at the Rockets). Morey emphasized the current three-tiered strategy of getting three-point shots, layups, and free throws.
"If you know what the optimal play is, you'll be able to defend it better." Scouting shows what worked best for an opponent. Choose a strategy/personnel with the best chance to counter it.
"The game changer (unpredictability) becomes valuable..."
"You can't plan for pure spontaneity...for randomness."
"No one can predict perfect randomness."
"The value of the human being is when they're most human."
"If you have confidence in your ideas...they'll be proved better in the long-term."
Summary:
Create teams more than the sum of their parts.
Data alters our perspective.
Get better data and analysis.
Learn what's going on.
Innovation is seen as an insult to conventional thinking.
Goal is to surpass the baseline performance.
Data reveals how the game is changing.
Being better and different risks being different and worse.
.png)
