Thursday Night Clinic
Eric, Joe and Geoff met on Thursday night to scout the other volleyball courts by the Ventnor fishing pier. Despite the stormy skies, we found the courts and two other players with a half dozen volleyballs.
“Are you guys holding a clinic?” Geoff asked. “No,” said one of the guys. “We’re just practicing.”
Little did we know that a two-hour clinic was about to take place courtesy of Dave Pacevich and Walter Lloyd.
Dave and Walt were preparing for this weekend’s quandomania tournament.
While I’m sure we’ll forget some of the tips, hints, suggestions and fundamental tools that were shared last night, one thing that will be hard to forget is the graciousness and patience these two men demonstrated toward the three spiked punchers.
One of the first things we did was warm up. Call it playing gopher. Joe was probably the best at it. Basically, as Dave and Walt practiced their net play, Joe settled into his role chasing all the rocket launched kills that travelled yards down the beach. Meanwhile, Eric and I attempted to touch one of the fireballs coming over the net. That’s right, I wrote TOUCH.
We play Double-B(BB) for a reason. If there was any notion that we were capable of playing at a higher level, D&W squashed that very quickly.
Soon after the warm-up, we played a little three on two. Immediately, Dave started offering strategy/advice on how to start the game. While Joe loves picking the pebble hand, he now understands what to do once the pebble is revealed. Very simply, choose the side that has the wind in your face, if you have a choice of serving or returning and do NOT have the wind, choose to return the serve.
We played for a while and switched sides every seven points. During each switch, we learned more and more about this increasingly complex game.
Here is a recap of what we learned:
- hand signals
- how to approach the net
- defensive coverage
- serving
- bumping
- setting
- spiking
- court awareness
- the role of each position
- mandatory need for designated setter
- getting in the right stance
- how to move in the sand
- conserving energy
Instead of going into precise detail on all the points, I believe it would be better to work on some of the newly learned skills prior to our games. That might involve arriving an hour before game time and running a few drills. Simple stuff and a good way to warm-up for gameplay. I know Eric and I will be doing some pre-game prep, hopefully, others will join in.
In addition to learning, we had a great deal of fun, mostly from our mistakes.
- Joe is still healing from his face wound. I believe Dave nailed him in the right temple. This is kind of what it looked like (except it was on the beach and Joe’s cyborg skeleton kept him from falling).
- Pretty boy Captain Eric is still sand-free because he believes his raw athletic talent doesn’t require him to dive.
- Old man Geoff is trying to find a way to jump more than an inch off the ground and not waste so much energy diving wildly at shots.
Coincidentially, Joe and Dave attended classes together at Stockton. Not really sure what the subject was but they seemed to recall attending the class with strippers.
We’ll be back in Ventnor next Thursday night for practice. Hopefully, we’ll run into a pair of new friends and learn more…