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Post by volleyballjim on Jun 6, 2017 12:54:07 GMT -5
I know this may sound naive, but: IS pulling such a difficult skill to master? I mean, like any other skill, someone will do it best and others down the line until the "worst puller" is identified. BUT, its watching the pass/set in a critical manner relative to the skills of the hitter (is it the 6'1" hitter or the 5'8", more common, defender hitting). AND how are their sets, etc. You're just not blocking hit after hit and I'm just watching TOO many gals pulling and getting balls up! NOTICE there is no mention of the men pulling as it just doesn't have the efficacy it has at the women's level...Anyway, just not buying Summer Ross blocking EVERY hit of Larissa in the finals as she cuts her way to victory....Sorry man, no way . . . IMHO.
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Post by junior1 on Jun 6, 2017 14:50:56 GMT -5
Guest, can't disagree on the athletic influx of talent into the avp. I was thinking more of the male side where all those guys were beach rats who learned two down as youngsters and then moved to the one up block system on the big court. The us had a huge edge when the olympic games started for our men. When the top women indoor started to play with the women who were beach rats, well the talent increased greatly.
Jim, not hard skills to learn per se... but the reading skills take time to acquire. An athlete needs to see, process and then do, making tons of mistakes along the way. Too many are learning by being coached (information coming from others), instead of learning by applying their own noggins to the process and learning with their own individual attention. Talents are very well learned that way.
Reading & learning by intent play and practice perhaps are what is needed.
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Post by guest2 on Jun 6, 2017 14:57:05 GMT -5
I know this may sound naive, but: IS pulling such a difficult skill to master? I mean, like any other skill, someone will do it best and others down the line until the "worst puller" is identified. BUT, its watching the pass/set in a critical manner relative to the skills of the hitter (is it the 6'1" hitter or the 5'8", more common, defender hitting). AND how are their sets, etc. You're just not blocking hit after hit and I'm just watching TOO many gals pulling and getting balls up! NOTICE there is no mention of the men pulling as it just doesn't have the efficacy it has at the women's level...Anyway, just not buying Summer Ross blocking EVERY hit of Larissa in the finals as she cuts her way to victory....Sorry man, no way . . . IMHO. Did you see Summer pulling in the semi and basically losing the point every time? Were the women you saw pulling and digging balls doing it against Larissa? I would love to see any match where a blocker as slow as Summer was able to pull effectively against Larissa. She isn't the all time FIVB wins leader at 5'9 because she can't handle a slow player dropping. Pulling on a good pass when you are Summer's speed is an extremely difficult skill and near impossible against a player as good as Larissa. I'd compare it to siding out consistently when you are Brooke's height. On a good pass, the hitter has everything in front of her and the drop has to be perfectly timed to confuse the hitter. If a player like Larissa sees an early drop on a good pass its a sideout and with Larissa's ball control its almost always a good pass. Unless Summer's timing is 100% perfect she won't get back very far if she leaves late enough to confuse the hitter. If she leaves too late, like she constantly did in the semis, she leaves gaping holes to shoot or hit into and if she leaves early enough to get all the way back, the hitter will see it early and swing away on a good set. For someone like Kerri a few years ago or some of the Brazilian blockers now there is much more leeway because they are much faster an can drop later and still get in position. Summer can't. I think you are making a classic mistake thinking that when a team lost they must have made some error in judgment or execution. I thought Summer and Brooke played very well, they were just up against a vastly more experienced team who are basically a much better version of Summer and Brooke.
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Post by guest2 on Jun 6, 2017 14:59:22 GMT -5
Guest, can't disagree on the athletic influx of talent into the avp. I was thinking more of the male side where all those guys were beach rats who learned two down as youngsters and then moved to the one up block system on the big court. Agree 100% on this. I'd love to see a lot of Junior tournaments for boys ban blocking. Maybe not every 16 and under event, but a good number of them. Learning to stand in and read a hitter is so important.
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Post by geddyleeridesagain on Jun 6, 2017 15:18:58 GMT -5
Jim: some of the block heavy response comes from the USA volleyball curriculum... when Alli Wood and Anna Collier started assessing the Junior Beach Volleyball talent; they taught a lot of one up, one back defense...Even kids who could never block were being encouraged to learn these skills... how to front as a blocker and how to dig as one back. I thought at the time it was a good idea, however, many of those assessed kids swallowed it like kool-aid and broke completely away from the two down system. Some were lucky, take the Justine Wong-Orontes/Sarah Hughes duo...who learned from an early age the benefits of playing both two down and the one up/one down system from the old Huntington Beach crew of Lovelace, Roy and their crew (sometimes including at times Mr. Dave Lindquist himself). I think that is why our AVP used to be so strong, a cadre of players who could play both with and without a block. I'll have to disagree with most of this. USAV's mandate (and Anna hasn't really had that much to do with it) is develop players with an eye towards elite level play (FIVB age group world championships and FIVB World Tour). And nobody plays two down at that level. Nobody plays two down at the collegiate level. Nobody plays it at the AVP level. Because you can't win with it past the AAU juniors level. So there isn't much point in USAV spending time on it. And USAV very much focuses on defense/passing skills for bigs. They do not focus on blocking skills for a 5'5" kid. Actually, they don't focus on 5'5" kids in general. And outside of the Lindquists (who were damn fun to watch, but managed something like 2 or 3 third place finishes their entire career), nobody on the AVP - or even going back to the WPVA - played without a block. Not for long, at any rate.
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Post by geddyleeridesagain on Jun 6, 2017 15:26:57 GMT -5
Guest, can't disagree on the athletic influx of talent into the avp. I was thinking more of the male side where all those guys were beach rats who learned two down as youngsters and then moved to the one up block system on the big court. Agree 100% on this. I'd love to see a lot of Junior tournaments for boys ban blocking. Maybe not every 16 and under event, but a good number of them. Learning to stand in and read a hitter is so important. Nah. Boys that age are athletic enough to tee it up 8" off the net and pound it. Not a whole lot of need for deception, and not a whole lot to read.
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Post by junior1 on Jun 6, 2017 15:34:19 GMT -5
Geddy, yep, agree, of course. At the time those camps started, too many teams were playing two down... and the initial mandate was to advance the skills to learning how to play the game with a block. All to the good. Necessary to learn to be sure,... but when it came to pulling or learning when not to block, (time is a factor in a few days of evaluation) that may have not been learned as well, unless the kids went to Chula Vista.
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Post by geddyleeridesagain on Jun 6, 2017 15:38:37 GMT -5
Geddy, yep, agree, of course. At the time those camps started, too many teams were playing two down... and the initial mandate was to advance the skills to learning how to play the game with a block. All to the good. Necessary to learn to be sure,... but when it came to pulling or learning when not to block, (time is a factor in a few days of evaluation) that may have not been learned as well, unless the kids went to Chula Vista. No argument there.
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Post by guest2 on Jun 6, 2017 15:46:47 GMT -5
Agree 100% on this. I'd love to see a lot of Junior tournaments for boys ban blocking. Maybe not every 16 and under event, but a good number of them. Learning to stand in and read a hitter is so important. Nah. Boys that age are athletic enough to tee it up 8" off the net and pound it. Not a whole lot of need for deception, and not a whole lot to read. I disagree. Obviously it would not be an optimal strategy in a match under normal rules, but it would do a lot of good in developing the ability to dig hard driven balls. You say there is not a lot of reading involved but I think we are just using the same term to mean different things. Here I am not using it to identify whether the hitter is going line/angle, whatever, but where the ball will go within the small window of a cross court swing. Why does Nick pop up a ball hit right at him whereas Casey shanks the same ball? Because Nick is better at seeing and knowing the small details of the swing that indicate where the ball is going within a small range. Maybe a bad example given how much quicker Nick is than Casey, but go back to Lewis versus Sinjin. Lewy was quicker but Sinjin dug twice as many hard hit balls. As did Dodd, Leif Hansen, Karch etc. I think one reason that those guys were better at digging heat than the next generation of defenders (AJ, Steffes, Lewy, Frohoff) was they learned their skills when you often had to stand in and try to dig a near 50/50 set. Playing those rules would be basically making the tournaments a learning exercise, similar to the way no kids under a certain age should ever play 11 a side soccer.
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