"IF YOU ENJOY THE GAME, PLAY THE GAME!"
We want kids to enjoy playing the sport of volleyball. Volleyball can be a fun, exciting but also challenging sport. Our travel teams are for kids who enjoy competing and the success the comes from working hard to accomplish something. It takes a lot of practice and hard work to be really good at volleyball. But that hard work pays off in the fun of finding new and exciting levels of success!
GOALS/PHILOSOPHIES OF IPV TRAVEL:
IPV travel teams are the place where we take kids beyond just learning skills and the concept of pass, set, hit and begin to lay the foundation of understanding
1) Unique positional responsibilities
2) Systems of serve receive patterns and offense such as 4-2, 5-1 and 6-2.
3) Defensive positioning and responsibilities.
4) Higher level communication concepts
5) How to play a faster, more aggressive style of play both offensively and defensively
6) Contributing to TEAM success
a) Establishing performance based roles where players must contribute to the success of the TEAM
b) Understanding and executing a role within the system the team is running
c) Being held accountable as to how you fill your role.
Each year we want to have 2 teams. A Varsity level team and a JV level team. Within that we have some kids who are full time Varsity, some who are full time JV and some who swing back and forth. We spend time introducing concepts of various serve receive patterns and offensive and defensive positional responsibilities. Players have to functionally learn- 6( one for each rotation) different serve receive patterns, 6 serve configurations, defensive positioning and movements, transitioning from defense to offense. There are subsets of positioning with each one of these concepts as well. They need to learn how to then apply these concepts in the unpredictable flow of the game and then with every rotation, everything changes! Within all of this, we are still trying to get better at simply passing, setting, hitting, serving, blocking and digging. Players will all have to learn these things at some point... and one of the reasons we are here is to engage that process.
At the JV level the real battle is not our opponents, but it is the process of learning the systems of how to do things the right way. Quite frankly, if we win at the JV level that IS NOT THE ULTIMATE MEASURE OF SUCCESS. Our true measure of success is whether kids are applying the concepts that we are teaching of how we need to play on our side. At this level, I care more about how we handle the ball when it is on our side than I do about how the ball gets back over to us. Winning will come in the long run by learning how to play the game the right way.
At the Varsity level, our primary focus is still on HOW ARE WE PLAYING THE GAME ON OUR SIDE. We begin to see more teams taking swings and putting more aggressive serves on us but we are also better able to handle those things while working within our system. I expect to build on the basic concepts that players have learned with the JV teams and be able to push this team to higher level of skill, a higher level of comprehension and execution of positional responsibilities, a higher level of mastery and application of our serve receive, offensive and defensive systems and concepts. This group by the end of our season should be able to capably function in their positional roles within at a very minimum a highly effective 4-2 but preferable a 5-1 or 6-2.
When a kid moves on from IPV Varsity I want to see a well prepared player who is ready to move beyond the 8th grade/14U level. This is a player with: A solid foundation of ALL fundamental skills and a real working knowledge AND APPLICATION of how to operate well within preferably a 5-1 or a 6-2 system and have a good working knowledge and application of how to operate within their position and a basic knowledge of the other positions roles.