Category: volleyball

By Stephen McCarthy, The McCarthy Project

The recent announcement of the inagural NCAA beach volleyball tournament in May of 2016 was a major step forward adding beach volleyball to the map as a youth sport.  The bigger question does this new tournament change your thoughts about playing beach volleyball in college, rather than simply indoor.

From my perspective, it should.  While outdoor volleyball i.e. beach volleyball is played all over the United States by adults, the youth version has been slowly gaining acceptance over the last 20 years or so.  With that said, athletes should take a serious look into playing beach volleyball in college.

Secondly, I interviewed Mercer University’s head indoor and beach volleyball coach Damian Elder on this very subject.  Mercer is one of the original 15 colllege programs in beach volleyball, so he was there in the beginning 4 years ago. Click here to hear his thoughts.

Lastly, UNC Wilmington and their indoor volleyball coach Amy Bambenek just announced its beach volleyball program for 2016. Here is a small portion of the article posted on the NCAA site.

Beach volleyball has been an official Olympic sport since 1996 and the source of its popularity in the United States can largely be traced to one dynamic team: three-time Olympic gold medalists Kerri Walsh Jennings and Misty May Treanor. Recognizing that surge in interest the NCAA in 2009 put beach volleyball on the list for emerging sports for women. After several years of unofficial championships the first NCAA championship will be held this spring with a winner determined via an eight-team double-elimination bracket. Each school sends five pairs, and much like tennis, the No. 1 seeded team plays the opposing No. 1 seeded team and so on through the roster. A school must win three out of the five pairs matchups to claim the match.

Beach volleyball is not only the NCAA’s newest championship, but also its fastest growing sport.  At the beginning of the calendar year, 50 Division I colleges and universities sponsored a team – 10 more than the minimum required to hold a national championship – and 19 of the programs have come into existence since 2013-14. Click here to read the entire article.

By Stephen McCarthy, The McCarthy Project

Over my recent history, I have noticed a trend that athletes feel that if they are perfect, do every action more perfect than somebody else that they will become an elite athlete. Or said in a different way, the more perfect I am, I will be better than you.  Well, I hate to break it to young people, being more perfect is not the answer.  The answer is can you perform a coordinated action that produces the results needed exactly at the time you are producing those actions.

Athletes today need to realize that practicing is needed and perfecting your sport is a worthwhile goal, but the term we are looking for is efficiency in the moment, not perfection.

To further my point, click here for an interview I completed with head volleyball coach Tom Black from Loyola Marymount around the same subject.

Still looking for more information, take the following athletes:

1. A tall person who can jump out of the gym, but does not have any sort of sport IQ.  But can produce amazing amounts of speed and power on the court or field.
2. A relatively tall person who can jump relatively high and is not real fast, but fast enough, but can out think and read the situation faster than another athlete

Which one is the better player?  I would argue number #2.

Again, my hope is not to solve the world of sports problem with one small post, only to challenge young people to think through what and why they do what they do.  Don’t just strive to be perfect in every way and think that the good grade will correlate to success on your sport.

Lastly, quoting Michael Johnson, a Olympic gold medalist in track and field,

I want you to work the way I have, to arrive at a place where you are running your own particular races at 95,96,97 percent efficiency. And every once in a while, as with me in Atlanta, you might come within a whisper of the very limits of your ability, within sight of perfection.   -pg. 205, Slaying the Dragon

So the question is to pursue perfection realizing that getting it right all the time is not the answer, it is the pursuit or chasing of elite efficiency in the moment is the way to chase elite performance life and sport.

Bio on Tom Black:

Tom Black enters his sixth season as LMU’s head coach with the start of the 2015 fall indoor volleyball season after being hired on January 19th, 2010. Serving as head coach since its inception, Black recently completed his fourth year as head coach of the LMU sand volleyball program in the spring of 2015.

UAB Sand Volleyball coach Bailey Coleman joined Stephen McCarthy to talk about the love of the game and the benefits players receive by playing outside in the sand, as well as, her perspective on young athletes and the game of sand volleyball.

Coach Coleman grew up playing volleyball on the beach in South Carolina.  At that time there was no sand volleyball, so she played indoor at Georgia Southern.  When the opportunity arose for her to coach outside in the sand, she was very excited about the possibilities, not only for herself, but the athletes as well.  She talked about how her athletes improved in ways you would expect, passing, setting, and hitting, but with a couple additional benefits, the athletes improved their ability to think independently, they became better teammates, and shortened the amount of time they needed to get over the bad plays.  For the entire interview, click here.

Coach Bailey Coleman Bio:

Bailey Coleman enters her second season as an assistant coach at UAB for the indoor volleyball team and first season as head coach of the sand volleyball team.  Coleman comes to Birmingham from the University of Montevallo, where she spent the pervious two seasons as an assistant coach under Katie O’Brien. While with the Falcons, she assisted in all aspects of coaching, including recruiting, travel and constructing scouting reports. For additional information, visit here.

As a player, 3 time Olympian and Professional volleyball player Lindsey Berg has been at the forefront of USA Olympic volleyball for over 10 years and she admits that she was not always the most athletic person on the floor. How did this happen? She attributes her success to the early development of her “love of the game.”  Today’s world of sport is littered with how-to camps and power tripping coaches who just think they have all the answers, our hope is more coaches will encourage young people to shake off all the reasons why they can’t, and find within their heart a deeper motive for playing the game of volleyball.

Click here to hear Lindsey on how she did not take the traditional path to elite performance, how some in the volleyball community did not see her potential, and how she overcame with the understanding that elite performance has to be deeper than just athletic ability. The link is about have way down the page.

Secondly, former Olympic and current University of Minnesota coach, Hugh McCutcheon attacked the same question.  The unique part of this discussion is how close their thoughts match.  Click here for the entire interview.

The answer.. When you are young, play numerous sports in a pickup game format. Come to realize the sport you love and become really good at that one you choose.

Sadly, easy to understand and agree, but hard to go against the grain and therefore, not used very often.

University of Minnesota’s head volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon joined myself last week to talk about the love of sport and how to properly develop young athletes.  Coach shared his story growing up in New Zealand playing multiple different sports and developing over his lifetime a love for volleyball.  He talked about how he came to focus on one sport, volleyball, his transition to coaching and some of his principles of success.

For the complete interview, visit The McCarthy Project on Blog Talk Radio.

Coach Hugh McCutcheon Bio:

Hugh McCutcheon enters his third year at the helm of Golden Gopher Volleyball. Completing two seasons as the Gopher head coach, McCutcheon has led Minnesota a 56-15 record, named the 2013 AVCA North Region Coach of the Year and has coached three individuals to All-America honors in the past season seasons. Complete bio

Marquette University’s head volleyball coach, Ryan Theis, will be discussing the importance and role of preparing the days before the actual event. Areas covered include: the role of the coach, the role of the athlete and how communication melds the two together.

For the complete interview, visit The McCarthy Project on Blog Talk Radio.

Bio Information on Coach Theis:

Ryan Theis was named the fifth head women’s volleyball coach in Marquette University history on Feb. 14, 2014. Theis, a 2000 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee graduate, returns to Milwaukee after a six-year tenure at Ohio University, where he led the squad to a record of 144-54 (.727). That mark places him third in the history of the Mid-American Conference and 18th among all active NCAA Division I head coaches.  two-time MAC Coach of the Year (2009 and 2013), Theis mentored three AVCA All-Americans during his tenure in Athens and helped 13 players earn all-conference accolades, including three conference player of the year selections. Full Bio and contact information

Head Volleyball Coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth of Creighton University will be joining Stephen McCarthy of The McCarthy Project to talk about how off-court training habits lead to success on the court.

Specific areas covered: Structure vs individuality, General thoughts that lead to success, sleep, nutrition, watching film, and how the use simple communication leads to better decisions.

For the complete interview, visit The McCarthy Project Blog Talk Radio site.

Bio Information:
Two-time National Coach of the Year Kirsten Bernthal Booth will enter her 12th season in 2014 with six returning starters from a team that finished 23-9 and spent six weeks in the Top 25 a year ago.   Creighton’s 2013 campaign opened with a win over No. 13 BYU en route to a Hampton Inn Invitational title, and led to runner-up finishes in the regular-season and tournament of its new league, the BIG EAST.  CU led the nation in blocks per set and were anchored by all-league picks Leah McNary and Kelli Browning, reaching the second round of the NCAA Tournament for the third time in four years.  Booth enters her 12th year as head coach at Creighton with an impressive past, both on and off the court. Under her direction, the program has attracted two crowds of more than 12,000 while ranking in the top-50 nationally in attendance each of the past eight years. Full bio

Coach Russ Rose of Penn State University joined Stephen McCarthy to discuss the waterfront of ideas related to young volleyball players and coaches around the concept of balanced development.  Coach Rose talked about the role of technology in a young persons life, the proper role of club volleyball, why is it important to play more than one sport, and finally, how coaches and athletes can develop a balanced long-term approach to elite performance in life and sport.

For the complete interview, click here.

Coach Russ Rose Bio Information:

Record breaking. History making. Legendary. All of these words can be used to describe the tenure of Penn State women’s volleyball head coach Russ Rose’s career in Happy Valley. At the helm of the Nittany Lion squad for 35 years, his name has become synonymous with the pride and tradition of the program. The leader of arguably the most successful collegiate women’s volleyball program in the country, Rose continues to pass along the confidence and character he has gained during his career.

During his tenure, Rose has collected wins at a staggering pace. Never having posted fewer than 22 wins in a season, he concluded the 2013 season as the NCAA leader in career winning percentage, having won more than 86 percent of the matches he’s coach at Penn State. He is just the third active DI women’s volleyball head coach to reach 1,000 career wins, Since then, he’s amassed another 125 victories, which puts him just four wins shy of tying the all-time record for career triumphs. Full bio