A simple strategy says, “Do the work of improvement daily.” As Bill Walsh said, “Champions behave like champions before they are.”
Focus on our daily process. “How do I get better today?”
Sometimes it’s an intense workout. It could be watching video. Sometimes it’s a day off for physical and mental recovery.
Whether playing or coaching, it’s executing what makes the team better - nothing more, nothing less.
Success isn't "normal." Coach Cignetti realizes that another word for "normal" is average.
Athletes don't aspire to be average. "We had a great year, we won half the games." Players and coaches consider that mediocre.
Success is hard. Success takes commitment, discipline, sacrifice. It means the ability to say "No" and to invest our time when others spend it. It means developing more skill, more volleyball IQ and instinct, more physicality, more resilience.
The "unseen work," time in the gym, the weight room, film study, keeping your notebook, and mindfulness are the decisions that define destiny.
Former Ohio State Coach Urban Meyer had a saying, "A to B, 4 to 6 seconds." Most volleyball points last longer. In basketball there's an expression, "Find POSSESSION ENDERS." Possession enders get scores and stops. They earn points or prevent them with great defense, rebounding, or plays that change possession like forcing turnovers, taking charges, or blocking shots.
The ability to "win possessions," to control the ball and control the play defines most sports. The best teams don't think about winning the game but winning this play.
Lagniappe. Watch at 1.5 speed. Take notes. Do it.More Curt Cignetti Gold
— Hoop Herald (@TheHoopHerald) January 2, 2026
“It’s a process. It’s a way you go about doing things. It’s a high standard, high expectation, it’s accountability. It’s discipline, commitment, toughness, work ethic, pride. It’s wanting to be great”
(Via @thewinningdiff1 🎥)
pic.twitter.com/lQ8x52hDhj
Everyone wants to be successful. To make that more likely:
Your performance shapes and defines your role. Roles are dynamic - subject to evolution.
Regardless of role, you matter. Don’t equate self worth with role.
“Do more to become more; become more to do more.”
“Stay ready” players have key roles to challenge starters. Be valuable as part of the “red team” or the “white team.”
Every season presents with a spectrum of possibilities.
Do you want know what coaching is really all about?
— Greg Berge (@GregBerge) June 17, 2026
Watch Brad Underwood explain why coaches coach.
100% spot on. 🥇 pic.twitter.com/CDfmZCrAEf
Pass → setter → set → hitter.
The blocker shouldn't simply chase the ball. The pass predicts setter options; the setter narrows them via 'body lean' and tendencies; the hitter supplies the final information.
This explains why some players seem “quicker” than their testing numbers suggest. In my opinion, Danni's early reading helped her defend short attacks at a "higher than expected" rate.
A volleyball READ acronym
R - Recognize cues.
What information matters: pass, setter, hitter, block?
E - Eliminate possibilities.
What can no longer happen?
A - Anticipate probabilities.
Given the situation and tendencies, what is most likely?
D - Decide and move early.
Convert information into positional advantage.
Major cheat code for life: Stop dragging yesterday into today. The argument. The mistake. The missed chance. It’s already gone. Stop reliving it. Life happens in the direction you face.
— Blake Burge (@blakeaburge) July 19, 2026
Watch the video. What are the lessons for you? What can you take away to improve?
There’s a Japanese saying:
— Reads with Ravi (@readswithravi) July 11, 2026
“If you feel like you’re losing everything, remember, trees lose their leaves every year, yet they still stand tall and wait for better days to come.”
As night follows day, so failure meets everyone.
Everyone strikes out. Everyone shanks a ball or hits out. Everyone.
In Moneyball, Billy Beane discussed how his baseball playing career was cut short with inability to handle failure.
John Wooden, a basketball coaching legend at UCLA with ten championships, won his first in his sixteenth season.
Sometimes a player struggles at one position and shows excellence at another. Positional change is not failure. It often reflects a better fit. Alyssa DiRaffaele moved to libero from front row and helped get MVB 2011 to the Finals.
Injury can change career arcs. Injury creates frustration and can require mental and physical adjustment.
Failure is our companion on life's journey. The Japanese proverb "Fall down seven times, get up eight" serves as a symbol of resilience and perseverance. Success is not defined by the absence of failure, but by the will to rise again.
Often, the difference between failure and success is the ability to press on.
Lagniappe. Mindfulness is a tool for coping with failure.
All opinions expressed in the blog are solely my own. The blog is not an official publication of any City of Melrose organization.
Gregg Popovich's teams won five NBA Championships. They also lost heartbreaking games. Popovich 'represented' either way.
I don't remember too many summer Sunday night "open practices" for whomever showed up. Jeff Mate' usually came with Kira and some others. After about thirty minutes, I asked him to take over. "I don't have it tonight." I got home and took my temperature which was almost 102. Fortunately, it was a manageable infection.
The best players, coaches, and leaders "show up" even when the 'easy road' leads elsewhere.
Ten year-old Paula had her gear on and headed out the door. "Going out to play softball?" She responded, "No, Daddy, I'm going out to win."
Consider the following:
The phrase “To whom much is given, much will be required” originates from Luke 12:48 in the Bible, where Jesus states, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, even more will be asked.”
MVB 26 has a lot of potential.
Disappointments will happen.
Setbacks will happen.
You will experience frustration.
No matter what, keep showing up. That's what leaders do.
There is an old African Proverb that I love:
— Reads with Ravi (@readswithravi) July 20, 2026
“A cat that dreams of becoming a lion must lose its appetite for rats.”
To achieve greatness, you must let go of old habits that could hold back your progress.
The families, players, and MVB coaches sacrifice "A" for "MVB."
Everyone makes choices amidst time and resources.
Volleyball choices (examples):
Blunt objects have places in the world...crowbars, tire irons, and baseball bats.
But they make lousy instruments in volleyball.
Every message should refine the player's skill, strategy, physicality, or psychology. Making a blunt object blunter falls on nobody's agenda.
Greenberg's Law says, "If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail." Don't make your skill into a hammer or your strategy into tire iron.
Make your agenda refinement. Become a scalpel, useless in itself, magical in the hands of the surgeon.
Volleyball players solve problems...double blockers, defenders taking away tips, imperfect sets.
Because you want a bigger role as a contributor, develop the versatility to understand and execute the game and to become a difference maker, to move from a backup to a primary role.
Lagniappe. "Not that this was set in stone. If you wanted a plan to work, you had to be ready to improvise." - Mick Herron in "Nobody Walks"
All opinions expressed in the blog are solely my own. The blog is not an official publication of any City of Melrose organization.
Learn across domains. Varsity sports creates challenges - identity, performance, culture. You don't need to assimilate everything on day one.
Art imitates life. The K-drama "origin story," Misaeng: Incomplete Life shares the travails of survival and success in a competitive business setting.
Its themes transcend the workplace, applying for school and sports.
It's one of the finest workplace dramas ever made.
What are "premium" coaching lessons shared?
Volleyball lessons from "Misaeng"
"Misaeng" is a term from the board game "Go" meaning, "A stone that has not yet come to life." In sport, this most often applies to an ascending young player but can work for an upperclassman "late bloomer" like Anna Shoemaker in 2022 with 115 kills.
The game "Go" is outside my "Circle of Competence." I asked Claude.ai to help me with "Go" principles that work for sport. I include a few annotations.
There's a Korean drama called Misaeng: Incomplete Life that has no business being this useful to a volleyball program. It's about a high school Go prodigy named Geu-rae who never turns pro, washes out of the game he loves, and lands—of all places—an internship at a trading company he's wildly underqualified for on paper. No degree. No connections. No corporate polish.
What he has is fifteen years of reading a board.
It turns out that's enough. Not because Go and office life are similar on the surface, but because the thinking underneath both is the same thinking that wins volleyball matches: read the whole picture, commit fully to your choices, protect your connections, and never assume a lead is safe. Here are twelve lessons from Geu-rae's board that belong on our court.
Volleyball IQ matters, executing after vision, analysis, and decision.
In Go, a stone that claims key territory is worth more than one that grabs an early, empty capture. Teams that chase the highlight kill over the sustainable system usually pay for it in set three. On the court: don't let a hot early run seduce you into abandoning your system. Build a position — serve-receive discipline, rotational spacing — that holds up when the set gets tight, not just when it's easy.
Craft a culture and philosophy and fight for it.
Weak Go players get tunnel vision on one local fight and lose track of the rest of the board. Geu-rae's gift is that he never stops seeing the whole thing. On the court: this is court awareness in its purest form. A libero locked onto the ball and blind to the setter's tempo, a hitter who never checks the block — both are playing their corner instead of the board. Vision wins rallies before contact happens.
A "dead" group in Go often lives if the player stays calm and counts liberties instead of reacting emotionally. On the court: down close and late, or benched after an error, the instinct is to panic or shut down. The better response is Geu-rae's response — assess what's actually left to work with, and build from there, one stone at a time.
Stay focused and intentional throughout the game. "Win this play."
Go has the concept of sente — moves that force a response — versus gote, moves that are purely reactive. A team stuck in gote is losing control of the match even when the score is close. On the court: this is defensive pressure and needing a score. If you aren't aggressive, you're playing their game on their terms, regardless of the scoreboard.
Volleyball rewards consistency and aggressive play.
Go stones don't move once they're down — unlike chess, there's no retreat. Every placement is permanent. On the court: a shot, once released, can't be un-shot. A pass, once released, can't be recalled. Indecision is worse than a wrong decision, because indecision has all the risk and none of the commitment. Geu-rae's discipline is deciding before the stone leaves his hand — which is exactly what film study and reads are for.
Isolated stones die easily in Go. Connected groups survive almost anything. The emotional spine of the whole series is Geu-rae building real relationships with his team instead of operating alone. On the court: a six-rotation system isn't six individuals — it's one connected group. A star player isolated from her teammates is a strong stone with no liberties. She'll get captured eventually.
Team First
Geu-rae gets underestimated constantly because he skipped the traditional path. What he actually brings — pattern recognition, composure, years of reading pressure — turns out to matter more than the resume. On the court: the underclassman who hasn't played travel ball, the kid coming off the bench for the first varsity minutes of her life — pedigree isn't readiness. Character and preparation are.
"Do more to become more. Become more to do more."
Strong Go players let minor pieces go if it protects the larger position. On the court: this is the dive that sacrifices your body position for the next play, the player who passes instead of forcing a shot she doesn't have, the senior who takes the blame in the film session so the team keeps moving instead of fracturing. Losing a stone on purpose is not the same as losing.
Every stone changes the balance of the entire board — for better or worse, for everyone. On the court: a teammate's shortcut in a drill, a captain's attitude after a bad call, one player's body language after an error — none of it stays contained. It ripples through the whole rotation. This is why culture is built or broken in the small moments nobody's grading.
Your behavior off and on the court impacts the team. Represent.
Go has a long, unglamorous middle phase where nothing looks decisive — and it's usually where the match is actually won. On the court: this is a Tuesday practice in December. Nobody's watching, there's no crowd, no scoreboard. But the teams that take the middle game seriously are the ones still standing in March of next year.
Fight complacency.
Over a long game, a Go player learns an opponent's tendencies — not just what they did, but what they tend to do. Geu-rae reads coworkers the same way. On the court: this is scouting past the stat sheet. Does their outside hitter tip when she's tired? Does their setter favor the same set on game point? Anticipation beats reaction every time, and anticipation is built from repetition, not talent.
"Utilize strengths, attack weaknesses." - The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
There's an old Go proverb for this: the game isn't over until the last stone is placed. Complacency turns a winning position into a loss faster than almost anything else. On the court: Up 23-18 isn't victory. It's a position — and positions require finishing. The teams that let up with a lead aren't unlucky when they lose it. They're playing gote (cautious) against a team that never stopped playing sente (aggressive).
Geu-rae never made it as a professional Go player. But everything the game taught him — patience, position, connection, composure under a weak position — is exactly what let him survive and eventually thrive somewhere else entirely. That's the whole point. The board changes. The discipline doesn't.
Lagniappe: In Go, there's a saying that a single stone, badly placed, can lose the whole game — but a single stone, well placed, can save it. Next time you're deciding whether one rep, one rotation, one sentence to a teammate matters — it does. Place it well.
We all have "knowledge gaps." Although I have studied Spanish with Duolingo for over 300 consecutive days, I'm not fluent and struggle with listening to native speakers. The same goes for volleyball - still many "blindspots."
I asked ChatGPT "What am I missing?" and it provided suggestions.
Jumping ahead to number 12:
12. Spend more time studying errors than highlights. This may fit your temperament best. Pick 25 lost points and classify them: technical error, decision error, communication failure, system failure, opponent superiority, or unavoidable variance. Then ask which were preventable. Volleyball acumen grows rapidly when you learn to distinguish a bad outcome from a bad decision.Not another volleyball book.
Not another hundred drills.
It's compressed experience.
An elite volleyball coach has seen tens of thousands of patterns and unconsciously recognizes:
“I've seen this before.”
Your basketball knowledge already contains that enormous pattern library. Volleyball doesn't - yet.
The fastest way to close that gap would be an unusual exercise: watch one high-level match each week and study only one thing.
One match: setters.
Next: middle blockers.
Next: serve-receive formations.
Next: out-of-system decisions.
Next: transition.
Next: what changes after timeouts.
Don't follow the ball unless the week's subject requires it.
Afterward, write five things you noticed that you wouldn't have noticed a year ago.
Video is from the 2025 D1 State Final with Franklin vs Newton North.
Where was the point won or lost? Often that means to "look away from the ball."
