2022 AVCA (Virtual) Convention – Content Catch-up

If you haven’t seen them already, here are my updates from Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4 of the virtual version of the 2022 AVCA Convention. In this post I’ll share the sessions I went back to watch after the Convention ended.

Youth VB Practices: Strategies & Drills to Build Confidence and Survive the Chaos

This was a pre-recorded session by Kathy DeBoer and Becca Just (Education Specialist at the AVCA). Kathy doesn’t normally present at the Convention, aside from the stuff you’d expect from the Executive Director of a coaching federation. As such, I was interested to see this one.

Kathy started off by sharing the growth of volleyball at the high school level. She also mentioned that growth in the sport is really being driven at the younger age groups. In particular, she noted that the 13-and-under age group was the largest at AAUs last year, with over 700 teams.

From there the presentation featured Kathy talking about something, then Becca offering on-court examples. A big feature throughout was Kathy talking about the value of blocked training, in particular as related to player confidence. I have a lot to comment on about this one, but have to do that elsewhere. It would take up too much space here.

Coaching Juniors in the Japanese Way

This was another pre-recorded session. The presenter was Sei Kawabe, the Executive Director for the Japanese equivalent of the AVCA. He talked about the way things go in youth volleyball in Japan. A clear criticism he spoke of is an extreme focus on winning because tournaments there are strictly elimination. You lose, you go home.

One of his more interesting comments was that in his mind technique is about controlling the ball, while kill is about controlling the game. A chunk of the video (only about 35 minutes total) focused on coaching spiking. He specifically talked about teaching youngsters how to throw, and also shoulder alignment. Toward the end he shared clips of one club’s training that featured some more general athletic movements with volleyball skills.

Learning Lab: Setting

Like the other Labs, this was a zoom. The presenter was Paco Labrador, from the Naval Academy. It being an open Q&A means the questions covered several different topics. Kind of like Chris Tamas from Day 2, Paco talked about not being fixated on specific technique, particularly with footwork.

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