Competitive Team Drills for Volleyball

The best practice sessions are the ones that include game-like drills that focus on player development. This video takes it to a whole new level by adding a competitive culture.

Ron Kordes, 2012 AVCA National High School Coach of the Year, runs his state champion high school team through 14 team drills. He provides insight into ways to customize the drills to meet your team's skill level while building a stronger and more cohesive unit. You can use these drills to focus on player movement without the ball, such as block coverage and out-of-system sets.

All the drills presented in this video are team drills with 6-on-6 play. Team drills allow each athlete to learn the game by playing volleyball instead of breaking into individual skills. By providing goal-oriented focal points to each drill, Coach Kordes explains how to reinvigorate your team to improve in a specific area while also working on their overall skill-set within a scrimmage environment.

Ball Control

The first few drills focus on team warm-ups and ball control. Even the simplest team warm-up drills have players competing for a common goal or against each other. These drills work on skills such as ball control, hand passing, team defense, out of system play and conditioning.

Team Concepts

As players master individual skills, the next evolution in their game is becoming a valuable member of the team strategy. Coach Kordes uses competitive situations to train athletes to be a more effective teammate.

Much of the time in these drills is spent attacking offensively in a 6 on 6 situation. Here, you'll be able to learn drills that help with out-of-system play. Your players are held accountable on getting a terminating swing while out-of-system. The Initiator/Terminator Drill puts focus on certain hitters and getting them to score more. You can tailor the drill to target the athlete you feel needs the most work.

The worst nightmare of many coaches is seeing their players commit unforced errors in a match. Coach Kordes shows drills that help make players accountable for their errors by putting game-like pressure on them to excel.

Other skills that get work in this section include serve receive and serving. Coach Kordes takes a common servers vs. passers drill and tweaks it to make it more competitive than normal.

Play Action Games

This section presents game-action drills to put players in situations they'll face in a real match. In 6-on-6 style play, you will learn how to prepare your players for:

• Finishing a set or game - Successful teams need to be able to finish games when they get into the 20s. Strategies are discussed for the end of a set situation and drills focus on putting pressure on players to limit unforced errors.
• Side-out offense - In order to win regularly, teams need to be successful scoring on first opportunities.
• Battling back from a deficit - Coaches can't expect players to have the mindset to battle back from a deficit without giving them the experience in practice. The competitive nature of the Reverse Make It Take It and 5 Sets to 25 drills helps replicate the feeling of needing to get back into the game on the scoreboard.

Coach Kordes shares his experience to teach you how to generate healthy competition in a typical scrimmage environment. He provides insight to help you customize this set of drills to help your team focus on their needs and push them to the next level.

"I appreciated the bird's eye view of the drills while watching strong players set a good example of what can be achieved in a simple scrimmage environment. The video shows how all the players can interact to stay involved and active." - Customer Review

82 minutes. 2016.