Coaches and Staff
One not-so-secret formula of Volleyball Development Camps’ success has been its coaching staff. Some of the best coaches lead our programmes, and at our camps they often mentor young assistant coaches who have been recognised as rising stars. As in any sport, every coach is different and many have areas of specialisation. Because someone leads a pro club he or she isn’t automatically knowledgeable about the latest methods for teaching beginners; a coach with an inspirational charisma to teens may not have the experience needed to lead a university team; and we even know one cool and collected national team coach who privately confesses to becoming very apprehensive if asked to teach pre-teens!
We take care to match our camps with the coaches best suited to devise the syllabus and deliver the curriculum, and we assemble different coaching staffs for each camp. Rarely is a coach of even the highest ability permitted to lead a camp on their first VbDC assignment. We research and trial coaches from around the world to join our summer programme as an assistant coach – not just to enable us to get to know them and their coaching philosophy, but also for them to become familiar with VbDC.
Through this rotation of coaches from around the world, VbDC exposes young athletes to the melange of different philosophies and styles the coaches bring, and which can only be experienced when the camp is offered in a truly international environment focussed primarily on the training. Methods used in Bulgaria, for example, are not the same as those used in the USA, Brazil, or Japan – but a young person can learn a lot and become a better athlete through exposure to all those different approaches.
That’s given us a unique perspective on coaching, especially on how to teach young, open and receptive athletic minds. There’s also a serendipity to our commitment to gathering top coaches from different places. Other coaches often make arrangements to observe our camps and meet the people delivering the curriculum. Some are colleagues and others are local coaches who simply want an introduction to an overseas coach who has a different way of going about his craft. Sometimes they stick around after the session to get to know our coaches better.
What it means is that VbDC camps have become gathering points for some of the sport’s finest coaching talent and an informal forum where ideas and suggestions are freely exchanged.
Below you can click the boxes to learn about the people who have been coaches at VbDC camps.
