Evaluating Technical and Tactical Skills

chapter from Coaching Volleyball Technical and Tactical Skills

by Cecile Reynaud

Volleyball is the ultimate team sport. Players need to master many technical skills and know how to apply those skills in tactical situations. Most of the focus in team practices and individual training sessions is on the development and improvement of volleyball skills. Coaches, however, must also be concerned about objectively analyzing and evaluating those individual skills and using that information to develop the team's season and game plans. For example, decisions about starting lineups, having players specialize in certain positions, and developing offensive and defensive tactics can be made only if coaches have the necessary information to make sound decisions.

In building a team, coaches should use specific and accurate evaluation tools to assess the development of the individual parts that make up the whole of the team. You must remember that basic physical skills contribute to the performance of the technical and tactical skills of volleyball. In addition, a vast array of nonphysical skills, such as mental capacity, communication skills, and character training, overlay athletic performance and affect its development and should also be considered (Rainer Martens, Successful Coaching, Third Edition, Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2004). But even though all these skills are important, the focus here is on evaluating the technical and tactical skills of volleyball. Please refer to Successful Coaching, Third Edition, to learn more about how to judge those other more intangible skills.

In this chapter we examine evaluation guidelines, exploring the specific skills that should be evaluated and the tools to accomplish that evaluation. Evaluations as described in this chapter will help you produce critiques of your volleyball players that are more objective, something you should continually strive for.

Guidelines for Evaluation
Regardless of the skill you are measuring and the evaluation tool you are using, you should observe the basic guidelines that govern the testing and evaluation process. These are as follows:

Understanding the Purpose of Evaluation
First, the athletes need to know and understand the purpose of the test and its relationship to the game of volleyball. If you are evaluating a technical skill, the correlation should be easy. But when you are evaluating physical skills or mental, communication, and character skills, you must explain the correlation between the skill and the aspect of the game that will benefit. Doing so speaks to the importance of giving players ownership over their development.

Motivating for Improvement
Coaches must motivate the athletes to improve. Understanding the correlation of the skill to volleyball will help, but sometimes the matches seem a long way away during practices and training. For physical skills, elevating the status of the testing process can help inspire the athletes. If you can create a gamelike atmosphere with many players watching as you conduct the testing, athletes will compete with more energy and enthusiasm than they would if you ran the tests in a more isolated fashion. Goal boards and record boards listing all-time-best performances can also motivate the athletes. The best of these boards have several categories, such as the top 5 or top 10 performances, to give more athletes a reasonable chance to compete for a spot on the board. Separating the team by positions is suggested.

The best motivation, though, is striving for a personal-best effort in physical skills testing or an improved score, compared with the last evaluation, on measurements of technical, tactical, communication, and mental skills. When an athlete compares herself today to herself yesterday, she can always succeed and make progress, regardless of the achievements of teammates. And when an athlete sees personal progress, she will be motivated to continue to practice and train. This concept, while focusing on the individual, does not conflict with the team concept. Rather, you can enhance team development by simply reminding the team that if every player gets better every day, the team will be getting better every day.

Providing Objective Measurement
All testing and evaluation must be unbiased, formal, and consistent. Athletes will easily recognize flaws in the testing process and subsequently lose confidence in the results. Coaches must be systematic and accurate, treating every athlete the same way, for the test to have integrity and meaningful results. No athlete should receive credit for a skill if she does not execute the test regimen perfectly. You must mandate good form and attention to the details of the test. The same is true of evaluation tools that are not quantitatively measured. A volleyball coach who wants to evaluate technical skills must use the same tool for all athletes at their position and score them fairly and consistently for the players to trust the conclusions reached.

Effectively Providing Feedback
Coaches must convey feedback on testing and performance to the athletes professionally and, if possible, personally. No athlete wants to fail, and all are self- conscious to a certain extent when they don't perform to their expectations or the expectations of their coach. At the same time, each athlete has areas in which she needs to improve, and you must communicate those needs to the athlete, especially if she does not see or understand that she needs to make the improvement. Private regular meetings with athletes are crucial to the exchange of this information. Factual results, comparative charts ranking each athlete, historical records of previous test results, and even video analysis of the athlete's performances can discretely communicate both the positive areas of improvement and the areas where progress needs to be made. Discuss both results and goals for each athlete as well as a plan for how the athletes will reach their goals. If you have a large number of athletes, you can accomplish these individual meetings in occasional and subtle ways—by asking an athlete to stay for a few minutes after practice or a workout, by going out to practice early and creating an opportunity to talk to a player individually, or by calling a player into the office at regular times just to talk. These one-on-one meetings are by far the best method to communicate to athletes the areas in which they need to improve.

Being Credible
Finally, you must apply the principles you are asking of your players to the process of evaluating them. You must be an expert in terms of your knowledge of the technical and tactical skills of your sport so you can accurately and consistently analyze and evaluate the skills that you see your players perform. You must understand the value and importance of the physical skills to convey the importance of these skills to the game. You must exhibit outstanding communication skills to be effective in your teaching, and you must exhibit those same skills in your dealings with other staff members and coaching peers, especially when you are visible to the players, so that you can establish credibility with the players regarding communication.

Evaluating Skills
Clearly, players must know the technical skills demanded by their sport, and they must know how to apply those skills in tactical situations when they compete. You must remember, however, that basic physical skills contribute to the performance of the technical and tactical skills, and so they must be consciously incorporated into an athlete's training plan. In addition, an array of nonphysical skills such as mental capacity, communication skills, and character training also overlay all athletic performance and affect its development.

As you evaluate your athletes, one concept is crucial: Each athlete should focus on improving her own previous performance as opposed to comparing her performance to that of teammates. Certainly, comparative data help an athlete see where she ranks on the team and among other players in the same position or role, and this data may motivate or help the athlete set goals. However, all rankings will place some athletes on the team below others, and the danger of focusing solely on this type of evaluation system is that athletes can easily become discouraged if they consistently rank in the bottom of the team or position. Conversely, if the focus of the evaluation is for every player to improve, compared with personal scores at the last testing, then every player on the team has the opportunity to be successful. Whether you are looking at physical skills or nonphysical skills, encourage your athletes to achieve their own personal bests every time they are tested or evaluated.

Evaluating Physical Skills
The essential physical skills for volleyball are strength, core strength, speed, agility, power, and flexibility. The training and evaluation of those six physical skills are especially important in the off-season and preseason periods, when athletes are concentrating on overall improvement. In-season evaluation, however, is also important to ensure that any off-season gains, especially in strength, do not deteriorate because the players and coaches are devoting much of their time and attention to specific game plan preparation and practice.

Testing should occur at least three times a year—once immediately before the volleyball season begins to gauge the athletes' readiness for the season and provide an initial or baseline score; once at the end of the season to measure the retention of physical skills during competition; and once in the off-season to evaluate the athletes' progress and development in the off-season program. You will be constantly evaluating your athletes throughout the season to make slight adjustments as needed.

Of course, training programs can positively affect several skills. For example, improvements in leg strength and flexibility will almost certainly improve speed. Furthermore, no specific workout program will ensure gains for every athlete in each of the six skill areas. Consequently, measurement of gains in these areas is critical for showing you and the individual athletes where they are making gains and where to place the emphasis of subsequent training programs.

Strength
Strength testing can be done safely and efficiently using various methods. The risk of injury for the athlete is minimal because she is not in the weight room lifting a maximal load. After a proper warm-up, the athlete performs a three-in-a-row standing broad jump test to assess lower-body strength. The athlete stands at a line with a tape measure stretched out in front and does three rapid consecutive broad jumps off of and landing on both feet. Record the total distance jumped, and repeat the test again. A third trial may be included if you are averaging the result for a score, or the best of the trials may be used as the score.

To test upper-body strength, the athlete can perform a two-hand basketball chest throw. The athlete stands at a line and chest-passes the basketball as far as possible along a tape measure stretched out in front on the floor. Make sure someone is standing alongside the tape measure to see or mark where the ball lands so an accurate measurement can be taken. The athlete should repeat this for a total of three throws. Again, you may average the result for a score, or the best of the trials may be used. Athletes can also do a one-minute push-up test (complete full-body push-ups). Each athlete performs as many complete (in good form) push-ups as possible in one minute. A second and perhaps third trial may be done as well, with a rest period between. The same scoring options apply.

Athletes will begin to appreciate the need for good overall strength as they get stronger and discover they have more control over what their bodies are doing. They will be able to move quicker, jump higher, and have more control over their skills as they play this fast-paced sport. They will be able to maintain their focus and control when matches last several hours.

Core Strength
Like the proverbial chain that is only as strong as its weakest link, the core of the body ultimately determines whether an athlete can put it all together and translate her strength, speed, and agility into a successful performance on the volleyball court. The core refers to the midsection of the body—the abdominal muscles, the lower-back muscles, and the muscles of the hip girdle—that connect lower-body strength and functions with upper-body strength and functions. Core strength is essential for volleyball, particularly since several of the skills are done while the athlete is in midair, but it is extremely difficult to isolate and test. The test for core strength is to have the athlete perform bent-knee sit-ups for one minute. Make sure the arms are folded across the chest to limit unnecessary pulling on the back of the neck. Again one to three trials may be used, with rest periods in between, either averaging the result for a score or using the best of the trials as the score.

The core must also be strong for volleyball athletes to play with great explosive-ness—combining strength, power, and speed into serving, attacking, and blocking. Every physical training program for volleyball, therefore, must include exercises that strengthen and develop the core. This training program must go beyond sit ups and crunches, which are important but not comprehensive enough to develop true core strength. Volleyball athletes must incorporate active exercises such as lunges, step-ups, and jump squats to focus on development of the core. Implements such as weighted medicine balls, stability balls, and resistance bands may be incorporated into the training program as well.

Speed
Speed testing for volleyball can focus on running a sprint shuttle the width of the court (30 feet, or 9 m) three times, with the time recorded. The size of the court is used as the measurement in order to relate the test as closely as possible to the game situation. Have the athlete start in a ready position on the sideline. Start the stopwatch when the athlete begins sprinting to the opposite sideline. The athlete will reach down and touch that sideline with one hand, turn and run back to the starting sideline, touch that sideline, and then sprint back to the other sideline, running through it to stop the clock. This shuttle consists of three trips across the court. The athlete will complete two or three trials and use the best time for the score.

Even though the volleyball court is a small area relative to some other sports courts, it is critical that athletes achieve maximum speed in their movement on the court. Players may have to run down an errant pass, move quickly to pass a hard serve, or use quick footwork to move to block or hit a slide. Players can spend a lot of time training in other areas, but they need to know that their overall success as volleyball players will depend on how fast they can move their bodies from point A to point B.

Agility
Agility is important in most sports. It is thought of as a rapid body movement with a change of direction, usually based on a response to some type of cue. Volleyball requires that athletes change direction quickly in short spaces and use quality footwork to get into proper position to receive a serve, set an out-of-system pass, attack a set, cover a hitter, move to block the opposing team's attacker, or dig up an opponent's spike. Agility and footwork are physical skills that must be trained and measured. A simple agility test for volleyball is the T-test. Set three cones 15 feet (4.6 m) apart on a straight line. Place a fourth cone 10 feet (3 m) back from the middle cone so that the cones form a T. For volleyball athletes, this basically means one cone on each sideline, one in the middle of those two, and one at the end line. The athlete starts behind the cone at the base of the T, or at the end line. The coach gives the signal to go and starts the stopwatch. The athlete runs forward to the middle cone, touches the cone, side-slides to the left cone (always facing the net), touches that cone with the left hand, side-slides to the far cone on the right, and touches that one with the right hand. The athlete then side-slides back to the middle cone, touches that one, runs backward to the base of the T, and touches the cone there, stopping the watch. This test measures the athlete's ability to plant, change directions quickly, and keep the core low in the athletic body position frequently mentioned throughout the skills in this book.

In many situations in the sport of volleyball, players must maintain a balanced body position but still be able to quickly change direction on the court. A player in the back row playing defense will need to be ready to chase a deflected ball hit off a blocker's hands as well as move to a ball that hits the net, which changes the anticipated flight of the ball.

Power
Power is another primary physical skill required for volleyball. The emphasis here is on the lower-body explosiveness that helps athletes jump high when attacking and blocking, chase down a bad pass to set, or quickly get to a ball dug off the court. The two simplest and best tests for power are the standing long jump and the vertical jump. Administer both tests with the athlete in a stationary position so that the test measures pure explosiveness on one maximum effort unassisted by a running start. Allow the athlete to take several trials, using the best effort as the recorded score.

For the vertical jump, place a tape measure up the wall vertically. The athlete stands with her side to the wall, both feet flat on the ground, and reaches up with the hand closest to the wall. The point of the fingertips is marked or recorded. This is called standing reach height. The athlete then stands slightly away from the wall and jumps vertically as high as possible from a standing start, using both the arms and legs to assist in projecting the body upward. The athlete attempts to touch the wall at the highest point of the jump and reach. The difference in distance between the standing reach height and the jump height is the score for the vertical jump. The best of three attempts is recorded. A Vertec is a good piece of freestanding equipment to measure the vertical jump with the most accuracy.

Since the sport of volleyball is played over a net set at a certain height, it is essential that athletes use the power in their legs to elevate their bodies off the floor so they can attack the volleyball at a higher contact point, therefore increasing their success rate of hitting the ball down into the opposing team's court. Being able to jump high to get their hands across the net to block balls hit by the opponent is also a highly desired skill.

Flexibility
Flexibility is the most neglected physical skill but one of the most important. Increases in flexibility will help an athlete improve performance in just about every other physical skill. Flexibility is difficult to measure, but the classic sit-and-reach test provides a reasonable indication of an athlete's range and gives her a standard to improve on. This test involves sitting on the floor with legs stretched out straight ahead. The heels of the feet are placed on each side of a line, with a tape measure stretched out in front and the heels placed at the 12-inch (30 cm) mark. Both knees should be kept flat on the floor (the tester may assist by holding them down). With the palms facing downward and the hands on top of each other or side by side, the player reaches forward over the legs and feet and along the tape measure as far as possible. Ensure that the hands remain at the same level, not one reaching farther forward than the other. After some practice reaches, the subject reaches out and holds that position for one or two seconds while the distance is recorded. Make sure there is no bouncing movement the stretch must be slow, steady, and held. The measurement can be either a plus or a minus from the 12- inch mark. If the athlete reaches past her toes, the measurement is plus X inches; if she can't reach her toes, the measurement is minus X inches.

Although volleyball players are mostly on their feet, they often need to extend their bodies to dig a ball or play a deflected ball. Good flexibility will help keep an athlete from sustaining injuries such as a strained groin or hamstring muscle and hopefully protect the joints from more serious injuries.

Evaluating Nonphysical Skills
Athletic performance is not purely physical; a number of other factors influence it. You must recognize and emphasize mental skills, communication skills, and character skills to enable your athletes to reach peak athletic performance.

Despite the importance of the physical, mental, communication, and character skills, however, the emphasis in this book is on the coaching of essential technical and tactical skills. For an in-depth discussion of teaching and developing both physical and nonphysical skills, refer to chapters 9 through 12 in Rainer Martens' Successful Coaching, Third Edition.

Mental Skills
Volleyball is a quick-moving game that requires players to play hard but smart; maintain focus on their technique while implementing a game plan according to their opponents' strengths and weaknesses; stay positive with their teammates when opponents have the momentum; and stay focused on the next play instead of thinking about what just happened.

Most important to volleyball players' success, however, is the mental ability to understand the game and read cues that allow them to execute the proper skill at the right time. They must work hard on every point and continually monitor what is successful and not successful. Players must be ready to adapt to what their opponents are doing offensively and defensively. A consistent performance of technical skills requires knowledge of the game, discipline, and focus on the right cues while maintaining composure as a team. The term mental toughness might be the best and simplest way to describe the concentration and determination required to effectively execute the technical skills and appropriate tactical skills in the course of a long volleyball match.

Communication Skills
Volleyball also requires communication skills at several levels among the players on the court and between the coaches and the players during practices and matches. As a coach, you must convey adjustments to the match plan and strategy during time-outs and in between sets. Because communication skills are essential in volleyball, you should spend considerable time coordinating your system of communication as it pertains to offensive and defensive systems on the court and out-of-system problem solving.

Character Skills
Finally, character skills help shape the performance of the team. Volleyball is a game that requires (and reveals) character as officials make calls, the score changes back and forth, and players are substituted in and out during a match. Good character is critical for teammates to play hard for one another.

Evaluation Tools
Volleyball coaches should video record practices and matches to analyze and evaluate athletes' performance of basic technical and tactical skills. Video is useful because the action is so quick it is difficult, if not impossible, to watch each of the players on every rally. Video allows you to repeatedly review players in practice or in a match, enabling you to evaluate each player on each play. The video also becomes an excellent teaching tool in individual or team meetings because the players can see themselves perform and listen to your comments evaluating that performance. In addition, live delayed video feeds (such as a TiVo) during practices can help athletes evaluate and correct their own performances.

You can use many different systems to evaluate what you see on video. The most common system isn't really a system at all—it is the subjective impression you get when you watch the video, without taking notes or systematically evaluating every player on every play Because of limitations of time and staff, many coaches use video in this manner, previewing the video, gathering impressions, and then sharing those impressions with the player or players as they watch the video together immediately at courtside or at a later time.

Many coaches, depending on the level of play, have video and computer software that systematically breaks down the video by skills, players, certain rotations, plays, and any number of criteria a coach is interested in. The focus can be on specific techniques and tactical decisions by the players. The grading process can be simple; for example, you can simply give the athlete a plus or a minus on each play and score the total number of plusses versus the total number of minuses for the game. Alternatively, you can score the athlete on each aspect of the play, giving her a grade for technique and a grade for her tactical decision making. More elaborate grading systems keep track of position-specific statistics. Regardless of the level of sophistication or detail of the grading instrument, most coaches use a statistical system of some kind for evaluating player and team performance. Most grading systems are based on a play-by-play (or rep-by-rep in practices) analysis of performance, possibly coupled with an analysis of actual practice or match productivity totals such as the ones listed previously. Here are some basic statistics you may want to keep on your players, either individually or as a team:

• Points scored per game (set): total aces plus total blocks plus total kills divided by total games (sets)
  
• Hitting efficiency: kills minus attack errors divided by total attack attempts
• Kill percentage: total number of kills divided by total attack attempts
• Ace-to-error ratio (A-E ratio): total number of aces divided by total number of errors
• Passing efficiency: total number of points (based on a three-point system) divided by total number of passes attempted. The three-point system is as follows: three points for a perfect pass to the target area; two points if a pass is close to the target area, but far enough away that setter cannot set the middle attacker; one point if another player (other than the setter) has to step in and set the ball; and zero points if the serve results in an ace.
• Perfect pass percentage: total number of perfect passes (a three using the three-point system) divided by total number of passes
• Points per rotation: the difference between the number of points your team scored in each rotation and the number of points the opponents scored in each rotation, the results for each rotation will be a plus or minus
  

ATHLETE EVALUATIONS
Coaches on USA Volleyball High Performance teams evaluate their players in specific areas, such as physical skills, passing, setting, attacking, defending, and blocking. They also evaluate the players' understanding of the sport of volleyball along with their ability to process information while the ball is in play. Following is a comprehensive list of different types of evaluations coaches may want to use with their teams.

• Physical skills: approach-jump height, block-jump height, shuttle run, upper-body strength, and lower- body strength
• Passing skills: footwork, platform, overhead passing, accuracy, and communication
• Setting skills: footwork, hand and arm technique, accuracy, movement, isolation of hitters, out-of-system effectiveness, and communication
• Attacking skills: footwork, arm-swing technique, timing, shot selection, out-of-system effectiveness, transition effectiveness, and communication
• Defending skills: anticipation, reading the setter and hitter, footwork, court and body positioning, ball control, covering, floor skills technique, and communication
• Blocking skills: footwork, hand penetration, anticipation and reading of situation and hitter, and communication
• Cognitive skills: preparation, coachability, self-motivation, understands directions, attempts to execute, competitiveness, accepts role, assertiveness, team player, leadership, and conduct
• Knowledge of the game: team offense, team defense, and game and court sense
  

Figure 2.1, a and b, shows examples of an evaluation tool that allows you to isolate technical and tactical skills. The tool breaks down the whole skill into its component parts, enabling a more objective assessment of an athlete's performance than can be produced by statistics. By using these figures and the technical and tactical skills in parts II and III as a guide, you can create an evaluation tool for each of the technical and tactical skills you want to evaluate during your season. In figure 2.1a, using the technical skill of spiking as an example, we have broken down the skill by pulling out each of its key points.

As you may already know, evaluating tactical skills is more difficult because there are many outside influences that factor into how and when the skill comes into play. However, as a coach, you can use a similar format to evaluate your players' execution of tactical skills. You will need to do the legwork in breaking down the skill into targeted areas; in figure 2.1b, we have used a generic format to show you how you can break tactical skills down for the setter using the skills found in chapters 5 and 6 as a guideline.

The sample evaluation tool shown in figure 2.1, a and b, constitutes a simple way to use the details of each technical and tactical skill, providing an outline for both the player and coach to review and a mechanism for understanding the areas in which improvement is needed. The tool can also be used as a summary exercise. After a match, after a week of practice, or after a preseason or spring practice session, an athlete can score herself on all her essential technical and tactical skills, including all the cues and focal points, and on as many of the corollary skills as desired. You can also score the athlete and then compare the two scoresheets. The ensuing discussion will provide both the player and you with a direction for future practices and drills and will help you decide where the immediate focus of attention needs to be for the athlete to improve her performance. You can repeat this process later so that the athlete can look for improvement in the areas where she has been concentrating her workouts. As the process unfolds, a better consensus between the athlete's scoresheet and your scoresheet should occur.

You must evaluate athletes in many areas and in many ways. This process of teaching, analyzing, evaluating, and motivating an athlete to improve her performance defines the job of the coach: taking the athlete somewhere she could not get to by herself. Without you, the athlete would not have a clear direction of the steps that need to be taken or how to proceed to become a better player. The coach provides the expertise, guidance, and incentive for the athlete to make progress. The evaluation of the athlete's technique might be substantially critical. You need to be careful how criticism is presented, however, and avoid purely negative comments. Try to catch your athletes doing the skills correctly as much as possible and give feedback on that basis.

One final rule, however, caps the discussion of evaluating athletes. Athletes in every sport and every age group want to know how much you care before they care how much you know. You need to keep in mind that at times you must suspend the process of teaching and evaluating to deal with an athlete as a person. You must spend time with your athletes discussing topics other than their sport and their performance. You must show each athlete that you have an interest and a concern for her as a person, that you are willing to listen to each athlete's issues, and that you are willing to assist if doing so is legal and the athlete wishes to be helped. Events in an athlete's personal life can overshadow her athletic quests, and you must be sensitive to that reality. You need to make time to get to know your players as people first and athletes second. Athletes will play their best and their hardest for a coach who cares. Their skills will improve, and their performance will improve, because they want to reward the coach's caring attitude for them with inspired performance. They will finish their athletic careers for that coach having learned a lifelong lesson that care and concern are as important as any skill in the game of volleyball.