Ignition is an opportunity for 3-6th graders to fall in love with the game of volleyball!!
Kids want to have FUN.
Kids want to have fun with FRIENDS & PEERS
Kids want adults to SEE them.
Kids want to PLAY
Ignition places the children and what they want at the forefront, giving each child the opportunity to play fun games with their peers. We believe that training 3-6th graders on the same size net and court as our Olympic players compete on is kind of silly. Ignition athletes have fun playing the game on smaller courts, with lower nets, and a lighter ball. These slight changes add up to better long term learning. We use scoring and rule variations to teach principles of volleyball through small sided games, giving each player a lot of opportunities to touch the ball and work with teammates. In our gym, we use games to teach and learn, because they are both fun and realistic. The athletes move quickly from demonstrations to games, to explore the concepts we are teaching.
IGNITION FAQ
We think training 3-6th graders on the same size net and court as our Olympic players compete on is kind of silly. Ignition athletes have fun PLAYING the game on smaller courts, with lower nets, and a lighter ball. These intentional changes add up to better long term learning.
We begin by playing doubles on Day 1. The players explore the game with a partner, against other teams. We use scoring and rule variations to teach principles of volleyball through the doubles game. Small-sided games give each player a lot of chances to touch the ball and work with a teammate, which are critical skills in volleyball.
We then transition to 4-on-4, using various modified games and goals to guide the athletes through concepts of larger team play. Most 6-on-6 concepts emerge in the 4-on-4 game, with the athletes receiving more touches per session.
In our gym, we use games to teach and learn, because they are both fun and realistic. The athletes move quickly from demonstrations to games, to explore the concepts we are teaching.
We aim for one coach per 10-12 athletes. At this age, too much feedback is harmful to learning, and may go ignored. We see the coaches role differently (see “What will the coaches be doing at practice” below) and feel that this ratio is the best learning environment for these athletes. It also allows the three critical components of motivation to arise in each athlete: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
The coaches have 3 primary roles at our practices:
Game Designer
A well designed game can evoke learning and skill acquisition for the athlete. So our coaches design the games, make sure the athletes understand the rules of the games, and stay on task while playing the games.
Observer
Before a coach can give quality feedback, they need to observe an athlete over time. We use the concept of “Bandwidth Feedback” in our gym. This means that, through observation, a coach determines what areas an athlete struggles with or has success in, and then chooses to give meaningful feedback based on this observation over time.
Socrates
Our coaches channel their inner Greek philosopher when giving feedback. It is much better to ask great questions that require the athlete to think, rather than simply obey. This is commonly referred to as the Socratic Method, and is a favorite tool of our coaching staff.
As each player is on their own individual journey in the sport, we cannot guarantee specific results. However, the amount of meaningful repetitions, the opportunity to explore both skills and game sense, and the positive, athlete centered environment has been proven to accelerate development for athletes of this age. Ignition allows each athlete the opportunity to learn every aspect of the sport, and have FUN while doing so.
At this stage of the long term development of a volleyball player, we feel there are big rocks that all players must focus on — really the same big rocks that most high school and college teams work on to some degree.
Game Sense
This is the understanding of the game and how it flows from serve, pass, set, attack, block, defense, transition, attack over and over again. This also refers to the athlete’s ability to adapt to the uncertainty of our game, and to stay focused on the goal of each task, while exploring multiple ways of performing it.
Teamwork
The Olympic & Collegiate versions of our game consists of the most amount of people in the smallest area of any sport. The ability to work well with and for your teammates is essential for any volleyball player. Communication — both verbal and non-verbal — is an essential part of this. In addition, role clarity, trust, and competitiveness are all essential elements of great teamwork.
Movement
The ability to move as the situation demands on the court relies very heavily on the athlete’s ability to move in general. How an athlete moves on the court is greatly affected by what they see. Guiding the athletes to see the right thing, and move as needed to react to what they see helps establish a very strong foundation for them.
These big rocks drive our practice environment, and become the foundation of everything else we teach. Regardless of an athlete’s individual goals in the sport, mastery of these big rocks is essential for success.
*Big Rocks is a concept made popular by Steven Covey
Our Ignition program is based on the concept of “Deliberate Play” within the coaching and talent development world. There are two camps that are prevalent in this space: Deliberate Practice & Deliberate Play.
Proponents of deliberate practice tend toward drills, lots of coach feedback, lots of isolation work, no focus on fun, and repetition solely for the sake of repetition.
Deliberate play on the other hand is focused on the game itself, letting “the game teach the game” as John Kessel of USA Volleyball has been suggesting for 25 years.
In our program, we think there is a place for both Deliberate Play and Deliberate Practice. However, at the early developmental stages, we think Deliberate Play should be the focus. Using the research done by Jean Coté out of Canada — who created the Developmental Model of Sports Participation (DMSP), which has been adopted by youth sports organizations around the world, including USA Volleyball, USA Hockey, and USA Basketball — we recognize that all athletes have developmental stages they grow through as they participate in sport. Our Ignition program is focused on what is referred to in the DMSP as the Sampling Years. Volleyball, like most team ball sports, is considered a late development sport. Players don’t reach their full potential in our sport until they are in their early 20’s and sometimes late 20’s.
For late development sports, there are two possible tracts toward elite level: Early Sampling or Early Specialization. The latter can lead athletes to elite levels of play, but more often than not with reduced physical health — due to poor movement capacity and chronic injury — and reduced enjoyment.
Early sampling on the other hand is seen time and time again to lead to elite level performance while enhancing physical health and enjoyment.
For us, Ignition plays a role in this key developmental stage. And does so through allowing for Deliberate Play during the sampling years.
Deliberate play is more than simply open gym. Deliberate Play includes teaching through demonstration, external focus, constraints, and fun.
Demonstrations come in the form of the active demonstration done by the coaching staff, the videos of high level volleyball players shown in the gym, and the opportunities to watch their peers performing while in the gym.
External focus has been shown to be a key factor in accelerating the process of skill acquisition, wherein the athletes are given the goal of the task, and allowed to explore various means to achieve it on their own, as long as those means fall within a spectrum of healthy and efficient solutions.
Constraints include the size of the court, height of the net, size of the team, rules of the game, how points are scored, and even how players interact during play.
Fun is probably the most important aspect of the early sampling stage of development. USA Volleyball released a report a couple years ago showing that as many as 80% of all young girls who start playing volleyball between 10-12 are not playing when they are seniors in high school. The number one listed reason is that they did not have fun playing the game. This program is called Ignition to reference the initial spark of love and fun that anyone has regarding an endeavor they commit themselves to.
If it is not fun, it is not play.
Ultimately everything we do in our gym is driven by the method of science. As this article https://www.goldmedalsquared.com/blog/fundamental-beliefs/ so eloquently explains, we can derive our coaching beliefs or philosophies in different ways, but ultimately if they are not grounded in scientific, peer reviewed evidence, then we run the risk of not doing what is best for the athlete and their journey. Not being a scientist or researcher myself, we have chosen to go with the Authorities who have based their ideas on methods of science.