SETTING UP SUCCESS
Great setters have more than technical skills – they understand player dynamics, are leaders on the court, and keep the team focused. Here’s how to develop all those skills.
By Kenny Berkowitz
Kenny Berkowitz is an Assistant Editor at Coaching Management. He can be reached at: kb@MomentumMedia.com
At the close of the 2004 season, Ohio University sophomore Savanah Parra was looking forward to spending the offseason working on her specialty: defense. She had just finished her best year at Ohio and found her niche as a defensive specialist, playing in 99 games and averaging 2.02 digs per game. But Head Coach Geoff Carlston had a different plan.
“I told her she was going to become our starting setter,” says Carlston. “I’d seen her play the position as a high school senior, and even though she didn’t have the confidence initially, I knew she could handle it.
“That led to a lot of tough, in-depth conversations about volleyball, life, and leadership,” Carlston continues. “As spring progressed, she started to understand she really could do this, and as it turned out, everything came together.”
Under Parra’s leadership, the Bobcats finished the 2005 season with 33 wins and reached the Sweet 16 round of the national tournament. Ohio led the country in both kills (17.71) and assists (16.53) per game, and Parra was second in the nation with 14.69 assists per frame. She also broke two school records, setting new marks for most assists in a season and most assists per game in a season.
“Every year, I learn different lessons as a coach,” says Carlston. “After watching Savanah, I’ll never doubt how far a player can come in a very short period of time. In one month, she changed more than any player I’ve ever seen. A lot of that improvement was due to her own training and hard work. And a lot of it had to do with the time she spent with our coaches.”
Choosing Leaders
Helping a setter reach new heights starts with finding the right athlete for your program. Most coaches begin by looking for height, quickness, and natural athleticism. From there, they look for a personality that fits their coaching philosophy—for example, Carlston seeks out risk-takers who can run his fast, aggressive offense without hesitation. But all coaches quickly move on to the least tangible, most important quality: the ability to lead.
“Personal qualities are just as important as technical qualities, because the setter affects the outcome of every play,” says Debbie Sokol, Director of Club Texas, a non-profit volleyball club in Houston, Texas, and Sokol Volleyball Camps. “Her personality, body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, and ability to have relationships are absolutely crucial.
“I’ve seen setters who don’t have great technical skills, whose hand positions are never quite right, but who are great leaders,” she continues. “With personality, they make up for some of their limitations. Kids rally around them and they make teams win.”
When recruiting setters, Carlston looks for signs of leadership ability during time-outs. “I watch to see how the athlete behaves,” he says. “What kind of leadership does she show? Does she run off the court, or does she walk? Does she focus on the coaches and what they’re saying? Or is she the kind of player who wanders off the court, drinks some water, and meanders back to the huddle toward the end of the time-out? Technique is important, but if I want to find a leader, I need to look beneath the surface.”
At the University of Missouri, Head Coach Wayne Kreklow looks for setters who remain focused regardless of what happened on the previous play. “How do they respond when things are going well?” he asks. “And what do they do when things are not going well? We want someone who’s able to remain calm while everything around her is blowing up. As the main decision-maker on the court, she doesn’t have the luxury of getting emotional.”
He also judges leadership by observing how high school athletes act before, during, and after a game. “I’m interested in seeing how they interact with teammates, coaches, parents, and friends,” says Kreklow.
The Technical Side
Of course, no matter how great her leadership skills, you also need a setter who can consistently place the ball in her hitters’ comfort zone. And when it comes to teaching setters the technical aspects of the position, there’s absolutely no substitute for reps.
“As coaches, we need to spend time tossing balls, devising reps, and giving constant feedback,” says Louella Lovely, Assistant Coach at the University of Notre Dame and a former All-American setter at California Poly State University. “Setters need more repetition than anyone else, and if you’re willing to toss thousands of balls, it’s going to make all the difference in the world.”
Lovely makes the most of her setters’ reps by providing continuous feedback, concentrating on one goal at a time. “Always give your setters something specific to focus on, like ‘Work on your footwork’ or ‘Keep the ball in front of you,’” advises Lovely. “There should be constant communication between the setter and the coach.”
At Notre Dame, Lovely spends about 15 minutes with setters before the start of every practice. In a typical session, setters begin by setting balls against the wall, which maximizes the number of touches and warms up their wrists and hands. From there, setters progress to five minutes of footwork drills, where they sprint in and out of rotations, with and without the ball. They spend another five minutes with Lovely passing balls from a variety of locations, practicing front sets and back sets. They end their warmup by running 10 times from one end of the court to the other, setting balls from each corner.
Then, at some point during every practice, Head Coach Debbie Brown splits up the team by position, and either Brown or Lovely spends another 20 minutes working alone with setters. They concentrate on footwork, setting location, hand position, or anything else they need to work on that day.
When reps don’t show improvement, Lovely reaches for the video camera. “With video, they can see what they’re doing wrong. For example, they can easily see how high their hands really were, even if they couldn’t feel it,” she says. “It’s another way to give setters the feedback they need.”
At volleyball camp, Sokol also uses the video camera to help setters improve their form, shooting them from multiple locations. “We try to tape the setter from every angle: directly behind her, directly in front of her, off her left shoulder, and if we can mount the camera, from overhead,” she says. “The setter needs to see her hands from all angles. She needs to see her body in motion, which helps her understand concepts like proper weight transfer, hand positioning, follow-through, and footwork.
“She needs to see where she’s going wrong, because we want her to catch the ball in the same position every time,” continues Sokol. “If she can learn to maintain that triple threat position—where she can set the ball forward, backward, or to the middle—then the blocker isn’t going to know where the ball is headed. And if she can beat the middle blocker, she’s essentially won the game.”
Ohio’s Carlston augments video sessions with two old-fashioned tools: pencil and paper. “Athletes can learn a lot by writing things in a journal,” he says. “It reinforces learning, especially when they’re watching themselves on video. I ask them to analyze what they’re seeing and write down their responses.
“We videotape the setters doing reps for about three minutes, and then we sit down for a class right on the court,” Carlston continues. “We watch the monitor and ask, ‘What do you see when you look at your hand position?’ And they write the answer in their journals, something like, ‘It looks better, but my hands are still dropping at times.’ So our second question is, ‘How are you going to fix that?’ They write the answer, and provide their own mental cue, like ‘I want to see my fingers high above my head.’ And then we go back onto the court, videotape them for another three minutes, and see if there’s any improvement.
“If they notice improvement, we’ll ask them how they’re going to maintain that change. If they don’t see any difference, we can videotape them again and keep playing around in the journal until they find a cue that works for them.”
Carlston also uses visualization techniques to help players achieve optimal body position for setting. “Imagery is very helpful in teaching athletes to keep their hands as high and quiet as possible, making sure their hands are exactly the same until the very last split-second,” he says. “Once we’ve built that technical foundation on the court, imagery works to reinforce that message. We do both reps and imagery, but research shows that imagery can be as effective as 100 extra reps.”
Decisions, Decisions
Another key part of training setters is teaching them how to make choices on the court. Between matches, University of North Alabama Head Coach Stephanie Radecki reviews game tapes with her setters to teach them strategy. “We watch a lot of film together, so my setter can point out what was and wasn’t successful in any given situation,” she says. “That way, she has a chance to re-think her strategy, asking herself ‘Why was I running this play?’ or ‘Why didn’t I try this other play?’
“As a coaching staff, we give her certain plays to think about, and give her cues during a match, but she’s the one who’s actually on the court,” continues Radecki. “Ultimately, the decision is hers, and it’s up to us to give her the feedback she needs to successfully lead the team.”
At Ohio, Carlston also reviews a lot of game tape with his setters. “We’ll look at some of the choices she made in the previous match,” he explains. “We’ll stop the video before she actually sets the ball and say, ‘What would be a good play to run here against this defense?’ She’ll analyze it, make her decision, and explain her reasons. Then, we’ll start the video again and see the play she actually ran. It’s a great way for a setter to keep checking her progress.”
At Missouri, Kreklow sets up similar teaching situations. “In practice, we’re constantly creating situations where our setter has to focus on choices,” he says. “Those are teachable moments, and rather than giving her information, we’ll stop the drill, call her to the bench, and ask her to talk about the last play. ‘What just happened? Why did you do what you just did? Was it a good or a bad choice? Why?’”
To develop his setters’ ability to think quickly under stress, Carlston runs some practice situations as quickly as he can. “We try to do things faster than game pace, especially as we get towards the middle of the season,” he says. “When we’re serve-receiving, we only give them a few seconds between points, so they learn to act quickly. Then, when the game actually comes up, it feels a little bit slower, and that gives the setter time to really analyze the situation before she calls the next play.”
Providing the setter a lot of feedback on her choices is also critical. “You’d be amazed what you can get out of players if you keep giving them feedback—positive and negative,” Radecki says. “If she made a great choice on a play, tell her. Even if it wasn’t a kill, she needs to understand why it was still a great choice on her part. And she has to understand the reverse, too: Just because it was a kill doesn’t mean she made a great choice.”
Part of helping your setter make the right decisions is teaching her how to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the hitters on your team. “Our setters have to know what kind of balls each particular hitter hits the best and which ones they have trouble with,” says Kreklow. “Communication is enormously important, because the setter and the coach may have different perspectives about who does what well. As the coach, I have to make sure we’re both on the same page.”
At Club Texas, Sokol gives setters in-depth, no-holds-barred evaluations about each of their teammates. “Your setter needs to know everything you know,” she says. “You need to have frank, one-on-one conversations about the strengths and weaknesses of every player on the team, and your setter has to be able to keep that information confidential and use it wisely.
“She might look at the stat sheet every day to see who’s hitting well and who’s not,” Sokol continues. “But she may not understand that your best hitter, statistically, is also the one who consistently errs at crunch time, or that one of your passers unreliable under pressure. No matter how observant your setter is, you need to point that out to her, so she can anticipate what’s going to happen.”
Leading The Way
The final aspect of developing setters is teaching them leadership skills. “We talk with our setters about leadership a lot,” says Carlston. “We tell them, ‘You are the mirror for the team, so whenever your teammates look at you, you have to reflect confidence and show them that the team is going to be okay. They cannot see you freaking out. If you make a mistake, or a teammate makes a mistake, you are the one who keeps the team moving forward. And it has to happen instantaneously. Your role is to always keep the team focused on the next ball.’”
To prove his point, Carlston and his staff give their players a preseason demonstration of how not to act after a mistake. “Say I’m the setter,” he explains. “I’ll set a ball to my assistant and she’ll pound it 20 feet out of bounds, and I’ll drop my head and start talking to myself, and the team will immediately see that I’ve disconnected from everyone on the court. For females, that sense of connection and team dynamic is enormously important. So we talk about it, because as coaches we see that all the time, and we tell them there’s no room for our athletes to disconnect.”
Ap Clarke, Head Coach at Bellaire High School and Club Texas 17 Black in Houston, gives her setters tips on providing constructive criticism to teammates. “A setter needs to demand a lot from the people around her, and if her passers aren’t passing the ball well, she needs to communicate that in a way that won’t offend them,” she says. “A constructive way would be to tell a passer, ‘You have a small block in front of you’ or tell a hitter, ‘Your approach needs to be faster.’ That’s providing information, and doing it in a way that’s non-threatening, that feels like one teammate talking to another.
“To become an effective a leader, she has to make her teammates accountable,” continues Clarke. “And she has to do it in a way that the girls will respect and respond to.”
Creating A Vision
When Carlston began transitioning Parra to be his next setter, he didn’t know she would lead the team to a 33-win season. But he knew that he had to develop a great relationship with her. He also knew he had to show her the confidence he had in her.
“As head coaches, we’re essentially teachers in a very high-energy, highly-emotional classroom,” says Carlston. “Every setter is different, just like every student is different. We need to build relationships with our setters, because they’re the quarterbacks of the team. Our job is to create a vision of how good they can be and give them the one-on-one attention they need.”
“We need to spend a lot of one-on-one time with our setters, and a great deal of the relationship should be built around talking about the game itself,” says Sokol. “Setters have to become students of the game, critical thinkers who are able to utilize all the tools in their toolbox.”
Building that relationship also means asking what they need from you. “A lot of setters know exactly what kind of training they need, but as coaches, we sometimes forget to ask them,” Radecki says. “Do they want more drills? More film? More feedback? I ask my setters all the time, ‘What do you need to be successful?’
“Giving your setter the freedom to help guide her training,” continues Radecki, “shows how confident in her you really are.”
