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For my entire career as a volleyball player, I have been a Middle Hitter. This position is known for their height, their blocks, and most of all their powerful hitting abilities. I love this position, not only because it is all I have ever know, but because you have so much control as the central player on the court. While I am tall and I am a very good blocker it was not until senior year of high school into college where I really began to adapt the powerful hitting. Up until this point, I used tipping as my choice weapon in trying to get kills on the other team rather than hitting the crap out of the ball. In my earlier years of volleyball I was good at hitting the ball hard but with little to no accuracy so I often would hit straight to their back row players, thereby missing my target of the open floor. This is why I chose to use tipping (image on the left) instead. While it was a slower shot I was able to place the ball more accurately where the opponents defense wasn’t. This choice I made makes sense in the context of Fitts’ Law. This law discusses a speed-accuracy trade-off where if you perform a task quickly you will be less accurate or vise verse if you perform a task slower you are more likely to be more accurate. As I continued to play and get better and as my opponents continued to get better it became more important that I was able to be both accurate and fast with my hitting. With practice, practice and more practice I can now say that I am all the things middles are known for, being tall, their massive blocks, and the powerful hits.

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In high school, I spent my summers working various sports camps that were held at my high school for elementary and middle school kids. My varsity coaches for both volleyball and basketball ran workshops in hopes of building stronger athletes who would then come and join our program. Some of my favorite summer memory during high school happened during these camp. I strive to be a coach some day and these camps provided just a taste of what it would be like to have that opportunity. Starting out however I was not the greatest teacher. One example of my early struggles as a wanna-be coach is trying to teach middle school girls how to approach and spike a volleyball using the proper form. I began by breaking the skill down into its component parts, the footwork, the arms, the jump and the swing. I had each girl perform a few sets of practice on the specific parts. After it seemed like they all had the parts down I figured it was time to add in a set and a ball and have them put it all together. What happened next was funny but also caused a slight blow to my ego as a hopeful coach. As the girls watched the ball go from the passer to the setter they would try and take their approach but would forget their arms or they would do the steps right but forget to watch for the ball and end up getting smacked in the head. Needless to say, it wasn’t pretty.

After learning about whole and part practice it made sense why my coaching tactics failed me. While using part practice to break down the skill makes it less complex, this skill is highly organized so when I made them try and put them all together it was a train wreck. The spatial and temporal timing of the set, the approach, and the arm swing are significantly interdependent. So while it may have been wise to break down the skill at first to help these novices learn the skill it was even more important for them to perform the skill as a whole soon after they had success with the parts. By using whole practice it includes the spatial and temporal components of the skill and would have potentially helped them be more successful than they were with wanna-be high school Coach Reil. The image below shows a stepped through volleyball approach, hard to believe middle schoolers had a hard time putting it all together on their own...opps!

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Can you tell me what I did wrong?...Can you tell me what I did wrong on this one?...Okay now what about this one? 

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Can you tell me what I did wrong?...Can you tell me what I did wrong on this one?...Okay now what about this one? 

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The St. John Lutheran (SJL) Eagles, where my career in competitive school sports all began. The first sport I even played for my elementary/middle school was volleyball, as it was the first sports season of the year. My coaches were Mrs. Amy Haese, a mom of one the players, and Mrs. Jill Rottmann, a second-grade teacher at SJL. Both of these women had played volleyball at the collegiate level and were very good athletes in their day. However, this was the first time either of them had coached a team, so needless to say there were a few things I now look back on and realize may not have been the best tactics. One example being the amount of feedback they gave us during practice and drills. To this day I can still recall one of my teammates (number 10 in blue) constantly asking after every single pass, hit, or serve “How was that one?” or “WAIT! What about this one?” and so on and so on. Considering our coaches hadn’t had much experience and the fact that they were working with needy little 5th graders, they gave some sort of feedback each and every time we performed something. While you may think that as novices to this sport a lot of feedback may be a good thing, but as we learned that is not typically the case. By providing the players with constant concurrent feedback it drew our attention away from the task-intrinsic feedback, or the natural feedback we can feel after performing a skill. The constant feedback also then became an integral part of how we learned to perform the skill, so when it came to game time when the feedback wasn’t necessarily as present our performance struggled. If I were able to travel back in time and give a piece of advice to my coaches it would be to relax with the augmented feedback and to allow us to struggle a little before jumping in. Providing terminal feedback after the task would be an important guideline to follow because it allows the player to interpret their intrinsic feedback, which is very important in learning a skill, but still allows you as the coach to make some corrections if necessary. The pictures below are my current team on top and my first ever team on the bottom. From then till now I, as well as my coaches have become more and more knowledgable about the game of volleyball and how to best practice it.

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One of my favorite things to do when I come home from school in the summer between my college terms is to go for a round of golf with my dad and grandpa. While some of us are better than others, we all enjoy the sport and it is a great way for us to catch up with each other on what has been going on in our lives. I am a newcomer to the sport and didn’t start to take a real interest in it until my senior year of high school. My grandpa was a high school coach and played in college as well. My dad is also a very talented golfer and played for my grandpa while he was in school. While both my dad and grandpa are good partners to play a round with I will typically shy away from riding along with my dad. I love the man with all my heart but he is a horrible teacher when it comes to the game of golf. “Just look at the ball!” or “Swing straighter!” are just a few of the “helpful” tips my dad has tried to give me during a round. The video below accurately represents my early skills while my dad was teaching me. Even though my dad is quite a talented golfer he lacks in the ability to properly explain the skill. This can be explained by his strengths of the different memory systems. His procedural knowledge, or the how to’s, of a skill, are very good. He is able to perform the skill well himself but because he lacks declarative knowledge he struggles to teach or instruct me on the skill. My grandpa on the other hand who has been a coach for many years has incredible declarative and procedural knowledge for the game of golf. He able to both perform the skill well himself but is also a very effective teacher and I owe much of my knowledge of the game to him. So while both my dad and grandpa are wonderful golfers we usually leave the teaching up to my gramps and the jokes up to my dad.

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I started playing volleyball in 5th grade (pictured below in the cool socks) for my middle school and continue to play today with the UW Women’s Club Volleyball team. Volleyball is a sport that I am very passionate about and one that I have dedicated a lot of time and effort to. From starting out with small school matches with my middle school team to playing in national tournaments with the various clubs I have played for, it is a sport that I grew up with. As I grew my skills in the sport grew with me as I began to practice and play at higher and higher levels of competition. It wasn’t until high school that I realized my volleyball skills were good for more than just volleyball. My freshman and sophomore year of high school we were required to take some sort of physical education class. Being the athlete that I was I chose to do a class called Team and Individual Sports, which was basically learning the rules and rudimentary skills of various sports. We participated in sports like golf, baseball, and field hockey, but it wasn’t until badminton that I found a new niche. I had played badminton for leisure before but not in a competitive setting like what was provided in this class. If someone hit up a high birdie to me either on accident or to try and score I would use my overhand shot to slam it down every time. I had never really practiced this sharp overhand shot before but I was a natural at it. After learning about the Identical Elements Theory explaining why positive transfer like this occurs it all clicked. I had become proficiently skilled in overhand volleyball serve and spiking and since these skills share some of the same observable movement patterns (seen below) and skill components as this badminton shot they transferred over. This positive transfer allowed me to perform quite well on this overhand badminton shot even though I had never done a significant amount practice of that particular skill. I went from just a regular old volleyball player to badminton queen! The picture below from left to right; Me in 5th grade (cool socks, I know!), A professional badminton player performing an overhand smash, and me serving the ball as a sophomore here at UW.