Volleyball Try-out Tips, Tricks & Tools for Coaches and Club Directors
Expert advice on running volleyball try-outs that allow you to select teams quickly and easily, while minimizing hassles from upset players and parents
Run better try-outs with fewer hassles and less stress
For many coaches and club administrators, try-outs is one of their least favorite things. With good reason!
- There's all the administrative work of getting people processed - making sure registrations are complete, forms are collected, payments have been made, and check-in completed.
- There's trying to manage the (sometimes barely) controlled chaos of actually running the try-outs, usually with too many bodies and too few resources.
- There's the stress of trying to do good player assessments in a very limited amount of time.
- There's the emotional process of informing players of the selection decisions - especially talking with player who get cut or placed on a different team than they want to be on.
- And of course there are the oh so fun complaints and arguments from parents and administrators afterwards about the decisions.
This course is all about making the try-out process at least less painful, if not actually somewhat enjoyable. It's presented to you by a coach who has run numerous try-outs at the high school, club, and collegiate levels.
You will find ways to make the administrative side of things go more smoothly. You will receive tips and ideas to get the absolute most out of the assessment process. And while there's probably no way to completely eliminate player and parent grumblings, you will at least find ways to lessen the amount of player and parent discontent you'll have to face after try-outs are over.
Your Instructor
John Forman is the Head Coach of the Men's & Women's Volleyball teams at Medaille College and authors the highly respected Coaching Volleyball blog at CoachingVB.com. His coaching experience covers many different ages and levels. John has coached in all the NCAA Divisions, and has coached and run a Juniors program, after getting his start at the high school level. He was a very successful coach at both the university and club level in the U.K., and also coached professionally in Sweden, as well as having worked with pro teams in Germany and Hungary. As the developer of Volleyball Coaching Wizards, John has been involved in interviewing dozens of the world's great coaches.
Along with his blogging, John has authored articles for the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) magazine Coaching Volleyball and the digital edition, Coaching Volleyball 2.0. He also published the book Inside College Volleyball, which focuses on college recruiting.
John holds the CAP III certification from USA Volleyball and is a Level 3 coach for Volleyball England.
Course Curriculum
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StartIntroduction (2:36)
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StartFirst Things First - Knowing the Objective(s) (4:14)
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StartResource Inventory (2:12)
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StartExpectations (2:24)
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StartThe Schedule and Structure (2:12)
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StartYour Evaluation Process (3:41)
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StartObjective Player Assessments (17:13)
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StartSubjective Player Assessments (7:17)
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StartOther Considerations (4:05)
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StartSend me your answers
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StartKey Idea - Efficiency (1:48)
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StartMake it Like a Practice? (2:25)
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StartWarm-ups (3:54)
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StartUsing Stations (2:15)
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StartQuick Assessments (6:18)
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StartPhysical Testing (2:17)
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StartSkill Assessments (4:57)
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StartPlaying Ability Assessment (5:23)
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StartOther Assessments (3:03)
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StartAssignments (3:01)
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StartKey Idea - As little admin as possible (1:00)
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StartWhat can you do ahead of time? (3:00)
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StartWhat do they do while you're handling check-in? (1:41)
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StartKnowing who's who (3:09)
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StartTools for keeping track of evaluations (2:40)
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StartThe Pre-Trial Talk (2:11)
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StartBe ready to adapt (2:49)
Frequently Asked Questions
Reactions to the course:
"I love the concept and I think it is very thorough and it will be helpful to a range of coaches."
Simon Loftus - English Men's National team coach, Volleyball Director at the University of East London, former Scottish Men's National Team Coach, former Juniors coach
"...very well done, John. I like the idea and you seem to cover every aspect of a try-out."
Oliver Wagner - Youth coordinator and coach for TSV Husum, German Level A accredited Coach
"Nice and thorough. I like that you've discussed objective and subjective player assessments properly"
Ben Fairweather - Juniors and volleyball academy coach
"It is a lot of material, very well put together"
Niki Morton - Juniors coach
"I just recently finished going through the materials for your online course on Volleyball Tryouts. This has been great for me, as over the past few years I've sort of taken over the planning of tryouts for our club."
Robert Hixon - Juniors coach
Special Bonus #1 ... Sample tryout plans!
I know that sometimes having a template can be very helpful. With that in mind, as a bonus, you will have access to 8 different tryout out plans. No matter how many courts you have, how many sessions you'll run your tryout for and how long they'll go, or how many players you'll have, you should find something you can use. This is a $19 value!
Special Bonus #2 ... Advice from some of the world's best coaches!
As part of my work on the Volleyball Coaching Wizards project, I get to interview great volleyball coaches from all over the world. In the case of high school and Juniors coaches - and in some cases national team coaches as well - I get to ask them about their tryout philosophies and approaches.
As an added bonus for this course, I'm including excerpts from those interviews. They are short clips where these outstanding coaches talk about what they do in their tryouts.
You'd normally have to pay $14 each to get access to these interviews. As a student of this course, though, these interview excerpts are yours FREE. The interviews are a $56 value.