Welcome to the official start of the 2010 volleyball season!
As I said in our intro blog last week, one of our goals as a program this year is to give fans a more in depth, insiders' look into our program. Not only to get to know us better, and get different prospective of things, but to also give you an idea of what goes into a Division I athletic program.
To start, I would like to give you an overview of what goes on during our preseason. Most of what you will read on our website will be about our matches - I would like to tell you what will happen over the next three weeks to get us there.
Fall sports are unique in that the most important prep time for our athletes is the summer leading into our season, but per NCAA rules, we are not allowed to work with our players from the week before finals during the spring semester (end of April for us), till our first official day of practice (August 9). So we have to rely on our players to prepare for the season on their own. We are also trying to integrate a freshman class into the mix in a very condensed timeframe and that class is not only adjusting to the transition of "training" level from high school to college, they also get thrown right into the fire with team travel (that first 10 hour bus trip is a treat) and academics (how would you like to miss your first official day of college because you are on a road trip). So to say the next three weeks will be busy is an understatement!
Our first goal as a coaching staff is to get our players through the move-in day which is no small feat. After a potentially 5-6 hour drive to campus with everything in their car but the kitchen sink, our players have a few hours to move into their dorms/apartments and the rest of their day is filled with meetings. No offense to any of us who are running the meetings, because all of this information is necessary before we can start practice, but it has to be mind numbing for our players to go through. They will hear presentations on everything from NCAA compliance, to dealing with the media, to training room policies and procedures, to how to attach their laundry to the "laundry loop" in order to ensure it gets clean and dry! And that is just Day 1.
As of tomorrow, our goal for preseason is three-fold. First, we need to determine if our team is in shape for a Division I season. We all cross our fingers that we are, otherwise that means additional conditioning sessions we have to add to an already tight schedule.
Secondly, we have to actually practice J Might sound obvious, but the structure is a little different during preseason because we are trying to move along fast enough to get the team ready for our first competition, but also make sure the freshman class is learning the GBVB Way. That is one of the reasons for 2-a-day sessions over the next two weeks. We practice twice a day - morning and afternoon - because we know there may be a lot more "teaching" than normal. A strong returning core of players is key here because the more "teachers" we have in the gym, the faster the newcomers will learn.
And then thirdly, we have about 2 weeks to build our team for the 2010 season. Even though our newcomers and returning players have spent some time together throughout the year on campus visits and at camp, they still have not truly played together and they don't know each other very well. So we also spend a lot of time off the court with team building activities. The time they spend together outside of the gym is as important as the time they spend together on the court.
So that is preseason in a nutshell - oh, except let's add the 85+ degree temps that seem to always roll in just in time for practice which make the gym (and dorms) nice and steamy. We often have players who can go through 4-5 t-shirts a session because they sweat so much!
But even though the schedule every August doesn't change much, the team does. And I still get excited for the first day of practice. New team, new personalities, new chemistry, a new journey. And at the end of the month, when our players put on their jerseys for the first time and we get to see another team on the other side of the net - that is when it is all worth it!
Check back next week when we will invite our players to start blogging so they can tell you how preseason is going so far.
