Whenever you are coaching kids in volleyball or any other sport for that matter you need to be organised, disciplined, clear about expectations, and acceptable behaviours. It is very important to bring misbehaving kids back into line to ensure the rest of the kids continue to enjoy the game.

Ok, enough of the negatives, lets focus on the positives.
Coaching kids can be very rewarding and satisfying, especially when a few of them go on to become champion volleyball players one day.
So where should you start?

1. Involve parents early and keep them informed on how everything is going, especially on how their son or daughter is progressing.
Discuss with them any issues that you see and actively seek their assistance. For instance, just getting their kids to training on time on a regular basis can be difficult for many parents.

2. Learn the volleyball rules and keep up to date with the changes.
Your young team will be relying on you for instruction and advice. You have to know what the rules are and point out errors immediately.
You want beginner players to develop the right skills and rules from the outset. It’s diffult to change bad habits when they get older.
Knowing the volleyball rules intimately will also give you credibility with parents.

3. Children learn best through play and fun, so keep it enjoyable. If you push young volleyball players too hard they will turn off the game before they have a chance to really get to know the sport. Volleyball is a game that you enjoy more when you have acquired the basic skills of serving, hitting, blocking, bumping and setting. In other words, once you have developed the basic fundamental volleyball skills then you can start have fun developing plays and strategies.

4. To be a good volleyball coach you need to give lots of feedback. Instead of always pointing out the faults, try giving more praise, especially highlighting when a player has performed well or executed an technique (e.g. a serve) correctly.  Kids crave attention and praise so give it out freely.

As the saying goes: “failing to plan is planning to fail” so it’s imperative for the coach to carefully plan of the year. You might be thinking that that’s a lot of work and why can’t I just do my thing around the volleyball season.. right?

Well for starters, a good coach will be review his and the teams performance from the previous season and clearly identify what aspects of the game, strategy, drills and plays that worked well and what didn’t. Identify any problems that occured and develop solutions to ensure they don’t occur again.

Of course, there is also the important issue of the off season training and preparation for the players. Be sure your players are preparing themselves during the off season and can start the season in a strong position.

The single most important planning task for the coach is to ensure that he/she is planning him/herself. Ensure you are reviewing your performance honestly and try to improve on your weaknesses. Also be honest with you time commitments. It’s easy to over commit yourself and find that you are suffering in other parts of your life. This is often referred to as “coach burn out”. Trust me, you don’t want to be in this situation and your team doesn’t want you in this situation.

In the next article, we’ll discuss how to coach volleyball to kids.