Staff and Coaches
One not-so-secret formula of VbDC’s success has been its coaching staff. We’re proud that some of the best lead our training sessions. As in any profession, every coach is different and many have areas of specialisation: Because someone leads a pro club he or she isn’t automatically knowledgeable with the latest methods for teaching beginners; a coach with an inspirational appeal to teens may not have the experience needed to head a university team; 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 coordinate our schedule with the coaches who are best suited to devise and deliver the curriculum. And we also take care in assembling the coaching teams for each camp staff. Rarely can a coach lead a camp on their first VbDC assignment. We research and trial coaches from around the world to join our summer camps as an assistant coach – not just to get to know them and for them to become familiar with VbDC – but also to expose young athletes to the melange of different coaching philosophies and styles that they bring, and which can only be experienced when the training is offered at a truly international camp.
That’s given us a unique perspective on coaching, especially on how to teach young, open and receptive athletic minds. There’s also a great serendipity to our approach. Coaches often drop in to observe our camps and meet the coaches delivering the curriculum. Some are colleagues and others just want an introduction, but it means that VbDC camps have become gathering points for some of the sport’s finest coaching talent and a forum where ideas and suggestions are freely exchanged.
Here, in no particular order, are some of the coaches who have worked with VbDC over the years.
Coaches
Gordon was head coach at our very first summer camp in 2005, and she had already established her reputation as a name to follow in UK volleyball coaching long before then. A teacher and Volleyball England tutor, she knows how deliver a quality session, and as a Scouser, she does it with a no-nonsense delivery that serious young athletes quickly recognise. So much appreciated and loved, she has on occasion trained the children of young athletes who had been in her charge decades ago.
Hailing from Romania, Molnar is head coach of the Ireland national men’s team. He contributes a distinctly Eastern European style of coaching to our camps, blended with quiet observance of group drills followed by dynamic one-on-one instruction. Molnar expects athletic self-discipline when on the court, but off it supplies a steady stream of hilarious tales from his playing and early coaching years – and wherever he is, he shares an infectious enthusiasm for the sport.
Now an assistant coach at Baylor University, McDonald’s first association with VbDC was as a camper, and soon thereafter as an inspiring and effective coach of female athletes attending our camps. He played for the club we sponsor before marrying an American player also on the club roster, moving to the USA and becoming a member of the Georgia Tech University coaching staff. Soon afterwards he was off to Texas, the Bears, barbecues and a new puppy.
Sister to Will, cinematographer and incredibly capable with intermediate and young volleyball athletes. She has coached at VbDC camps in England and Belgium, and produced our first promotional videos, some of which are still used today.
If you watch VNL or Olympic volleyball you will know Lucas as the voice of English language volleyball broadcasting. The father of a pro volleyball athlete, and former coach on the national scene, his easy West Country-tinged dialect can also be heard in person when Lucas takes time from his broadcasting assignments to join us at one of our camps.
A former England juniors head coach, off the court Murphy is an athletic director and GCSE assessor. He’s also one of the most respected coaches we’ve ever worked with, not just for his tough-but-fair approach to athletes and their training, but especially for the way he encourages them to figure out for themselves how to resolve a problem with their playing technique rather than just giving them “how to” instructions.
The Don of English volleyball if there is ever to be one. Coming to England via Jamaica, then Toronto, then Rutgers University in New Jersey, he has been head coach of the England men, the England women, and one of the country’s perennially top clubs, Mallory. His insightful court lectures on technique are delivered in a Caribbean cadence that helps them remain in campers’ memories for years.
Klibi’s distant past of playing for the Tunisian national team and as a pro in the Middle East have not diminished his local fame, and when he visits his home town shopkeepers still offer him free ice creams and drinks. Before his knee became problematic and ended his playing, he had moved to London where he was on the roster of several of the UK’s top clubs. Today he is one VbDC’s most generous coaches for providing one-on-one assistance to campers.
Dr Loftus, if you will, as he is in the final phase of earning a PhD in sports mental health. Formerly coach at a US university, a former Scotland national team coach, current England men’s team coach and an assistant coach for the Great Britain team at the 2012 Olympics, no wonder Loftus is one of the most accomplished and respected coaches in the UK. At the net, on first hearing his Scots brogue one might first think “dour” but after a morning training with him, an athlete will know it’s really “wisdom soberly delivered”.
One of the best-known coaches on the Dutch volleyball scene, and for decades a staple at the Stanford University summer camp programme in California. A teacher of students with special needs, Schimmel has worked with The Netherlands national squad, with the pro men’s team in Apeldoorn and with many local and regional teams in his home country. Very capable at capturing – and keeping – young athletes’ attention for courtside explanations of techiques and tactics.
Directors