2- A -Days

Tryouts started Monday morning and by Monday afternoon the varsity team was suited in their 2008 practice gear ready for practices, team building exercises, and learning about this years theme. All week, the varsity team practiced 2 times a day with a typical practice lasting about 3 hours and then workouts with Vern followed one of those so as you can imagine, players are definitely fatigued. Most years, we train using part to whole theory starting with the basics and moving towards team drills and strategies towards the end of the 2nd week. This year because of a lot of newcomers, we are training whole to part. We showed them what the final product needs to look like and are going backwards from there. We are taking baby steps and making sure that no rock is left uncovered. It's important, as coaches, to learn from past years to improve the quality of our program and the last couple of years we have had a veteran team and with a veteran team you tend to move as quickly as possible through certain areas of mental preparedness to get to a higher level of play. This week in particular there are 3 things that need to be edged in their mind for us to be successful and we have not deterrred from that at all this week. Those 3 things are coming along and particularly at todays practice we felt like we had some breakthroughs as a team so hopefully we can continue to take some steps forward going into Friday and Saturdays practices. There are a few things that we have done this week that have been pretty beneficial as far as motivating individuals, building team unity, and taping practices. I know that I have not expanded on things in this blog and I will be pretty general throughout the course of the season because there are many opposing coaches who will read this and try to gain info to scout. I know because we get valuable info from other team's websites but lets keep that a secret.
I would like to welcome our new freshmen coach this season, Lori Sandburg. Lori played at VHS and was a freshmen setter on my very 1st team at Venice. She is one of only a handful of players to play all 4 years on the varsity team. As a freshmen, she saw our team win the school's 1st ever District Championship defeating 13 time defending champion, Pt. Charlotte HS who was a powerhouse in the state at that time. Her competiveness continued and as a senior, she set our team to the school's 1st ever berth in the Final 4 and finished State Runner up to undefeated and #3 team in the nation, Clearwater HS, so Lori has seen it all. She went on to gain a volleyball scholarship at Valdosta State Univ. in Georgia as a setter. She is now back and we know that she will do a great job as the Frosh coach. Lori is extremely energetic and always has a smile on her face. She is eager to get started and I know her team will be exciting to watch this season.