Pleased New 12 months as soon as once more!
Right here’s my annual assessment of the yr passed by and look ahead to the yr forward.
Job
I’m now about 19 months into my position with Volleyball England as Strategic Supervisor for Expertise. In different phrases, overseer of all issues associated to the England nationwide groups – Indoor and Seashore. After spending most of 2023 creating the overarching imaginative and prescient and 5-year plan, 2024 was far more about implementation. The three important areas of focus are improved teaching, extra/higher competitors, and an upgraded athlete expertise.
There isn’t the house right here to speak about the whole lot that’s gone on in these areas over the past 12 months. What I can say is that a lot of the work has been aimed toward constructing foundations and transitioning to new methods of working. Some areas have seen vital modifications already. Others not as a lot but, however with plans creating.
The opposite a part of what I do at VE is act as Indoor Efficiency Director (we even have somebody who covers Seashore). If you happen to’ve adopted my log entries, you’ll have a way of what I’ve finished at Volleyball England in that position. A lot of working of planning and working camps!
Journey & Training
My one actual journey occasion of 2023 was going to Lisbon to spend a couple of week with the membership Benfica. My contact with the workers there goes again to 2020 (additional again for a minimum of one coach). It was my first journey to Portugal. Other than practically going blind on a sunny day close to the seaside (stupidly forgot my sun shades that day), it was totally pleasurable.
I did have it in thoughts to attend the AVCA Conference. They didn’t choose the session I proposed to ship with the VE Seashore Efficiency Director, although, so it by no means occurred.
An enormous developmental piece for me in 2023 was beginning to use AI in a significant approach. That’s one thing I additional progressed in 2024. I’m not going to assert to have it mastered, or something like that. It has grow to be a really useful gizmo for me, nevertheless.
On the e book entrance, there have been a couple of fairly good titles on my checklist final yr. One was The Tradition System by JP Nerbun. One other was Studying To Be an “Ecological” Coach by Rob Grey. And whereas I primarily consumed Developmental To Division I: Energy And Conditioning For The Volleyball Athlete by Missy Mitchell-McBeth for functions apart from my very own training, I undoubtedly picked up some new information doing so.
I additionally listened to The Rating Takes Care of Itself and The Management Secrets and techniques of Nick Sabin. Whereas I didn’t get round to posting opinions about them, each had been good teaching views – particularly, I believe, when it comes to a coach’s private growth and development.
Content material
There have been 57 new posts to the weblog final yr. That’s down a bit from 2023, however I made up for the decreased weblog output elsewhere.
My new faculty volleyball recruiting e book is one main supply of separate content material. I revealed that within the Summer season. It additionally represents my first foray into audiobooks. Admittedly, I imply AI narrated quite than me doing it or having another person accomplish that. Nonetheless, it’s one other option to get content material to folks in a approach they need to eat it.
I additionally took on two new programs final hear. One was a redevelopment of a previous course on observe planning. The opposite was a brand new one on managing issues round matches. That got here out of survey outcomes indicating it was one thing folks wished to get higher at.
Lastly, I dipped again into the NCAA knowledge for a brand new report. This one seems to be on the change in ball-handling errors after the rule change to principally eradicate double calls on 2nd contact.
Website visitors
The location hit 3 million lifetime web page views in early December. General, although, it was a down yr for visitors. By fairly a bit.
For the yr as an entire, 2024 web page views had been down about 20% from 2023. Each month noticed much less visitors than it did the yr earlier than, with March being the one one the place the drop was lower than 10%.
Dig in to the numbers and also you’ll discover that it’s a fall off in visitors from social media that’s the distinction. Guests coming from search (Google, and so on.) – which has all the time been the one largest a part of visitors to the positioning – had been principally flat. Guests from social media – the #2 supply – had been down higher than 40% in 2024 in comparison with 2023, although the engagement ranges of those that did come to the positioning had been up by about 70%.
That is very fascinating as a result of the Teaching Volleyball group on Fb, grew by one thing like 50% final yr, hitting over 108,000 members. You’d suppose that may assist carry visitors to the weblog, particularly since I share content material there. Not a lot apparently. I’ll communicate to this extra beneath.
Anyway, listed here are final yr’s most seen posts.
- Volleyball Set Diagram
- Volleyball Strive-Out Drill Concepts
- Tips on how to educate the overhand serve to volleyball inexperienced persons
- Whose ball? Seam duties
- Volleyball hitter protection technique
- Pin hitter in volleyball – what’s it?
- Ice-breaking and bonding video games
- Placing collectively a beginning line-up
- Volleyball tryouts for highschool groups – some concepts
- Establishing your beginning rotation: 5-1
And right here is the place readers come from.
The highest 5 international locations remained the identical from 2023, although guests from Canada had been up about 13% and Australians up about 8%, whereas the others had been down.
What’s notable is Poland at #6 when it wasn’t even on the checklist in 2023. Germany and India are each carryovers, however dropped down a notch and swapped locations. Sweden is the opposite new arrival for 2024, with France and Italy the 2 international locations bumped out.
Waiting for the brand new yr
The large factor on my checklist for 2025 is to get a brand new membership neighborhood launched and working. The framework is in place. Simply have to put some ending touches on issues earlier than it’s able to go.
This neighborhood concept has been on my thoughts for some time. Seeing simply how a lot of a stranglehold the Fb algorithm has on what the Teaching Volleyball group sees, although, actually pushed it from a probably fascinating idea to one thing I have to do.
As I write this, I’m trying on the final 28 days of posts to the group. There are 117. Of that 117, solely 7 obtained views in extra of 10% of the group’s members. A put up with 114 feedback and 129 reactions was seen by fewer than 5% of members! That’s simply not proper.
So I need to construct one thing the place there’s no system deciding who will get to see what. One which organizes content material and discussions higher. And likewise one the place members can have extra of a say in how issues work.
Search for extra on this within the weeks to return.
The put up Wanting again on 2024 and forward to 2025 appeared first on Teaching Volleyball.