Practice

One of the most important aspects that determine success throughout the course of the season is practice. For some it’s where you get to work out all the kinks, flaws, and rust that may have built up over the summer. But for others it’s a chance to get in shape and work on skill development and try to perfect certain aspects of your game. Volleyball is a game of skill/ repetition and the more time you practice working on the skills, the better and more comfortable you will become. It’s amazing how fast you loose those skills when you take off a few practices or are away from the game. Usually the first thing to go is your timing. Timing plays a huge role in volleyball; it determines whether you hit the ball in the bottom of the net or getting a point (a kill) for your team. It also affects your passing, blocking, defense and just your overall movement on the court. A moment to slow or too quick you don’t make the play, but if you’re in rhythm and on time good things tend to happen. A varsity practice tends to last roughly 2 hours and the men’s team usually practices following the women’s team. Start time depends on the day but usually starts at 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. For my first 3 years on the volleyball team practice on most nights was at 8p.m. but many of us found this difficult because practice wouldn’t end until 10p.m. and depending on where you live, you might not get home until much later. Practice starts with a warm up, which usually lasts 20 minutes. We use many different warm up drills such as blocking practice, ball control drills, or depending on how coach feels, head soccer (a player favorite). After warm up coach will have us focus on one or two aspects that he feels we need to work on as a group. Most of the time it’s working on passing or our defensive skills and system. Most volleyball players at the varsity level are fairly developed when it comes to their offensive skill because most of us when we’re with our friends playing around all we want to do is hit balls or spike. At the end of every practice we usually have some type of game situation practice either scrimmaging, with starters against the bench or a mix of the two. Losers in the scrimmage almost always have some sort of punishment. Punishments can be running lines, sit ups, push-ups, jumping exercises or a mix of them all. Most athletes are very competitive so they never want to loose and have to do punishments, which is why our practices are so intense. Intense practices usually carry over to intensity in games, which is a key reason why our team has been successful.