Skills Training

Skills Training concentrates on individual ball-handling skills: the serve, underarm pass (“bump” or “dig”), overhead pass (“set” or “volley”), and the attack (“spike”). The coaching focus in Skills Training is on the individual rather than the team. Until the athlete has attained a high degree of consistency in their rebound of the ball, they cannot reliably perform the team actions necessary to perform a rally within a three-second time frame: defending the court with an accurate pass, setting the ball to an attacker, and deploying the offensive hit.

There are four curriculums in the Skills Training category, delivered in sessions lasting from 90 minutes to three days: New Kids on the Court/First Stepz; Pathways; Skillz and Skillz Plus. Some of the most capable of young athletes might breeze through the first two curriculums in under a year, but it may take the same athlete two or more years to perfect their ball handling well enough to move into Performance Training.