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Drill by Evan McElhinny in Pittsburgh, PA. Making drills competitive makes all the difference in keeping your players engaged. One of our favorite serve receive drills that gets our team to be competitive is our modified KSU drill. Everyone on the team (not just passers) participates.  We usually split our team by position (ex: one middle on each team, one DS on each team, etc.). Try to divide equally by passing skill level. Side A sets up 3 passers + a target and receives passes from Side B, who serves. Side A receives for 5 minutes and earns points depending...

Tip by Mariah Cooks, Wesleyan Christian School in Bartlesville, OK.  Get players to trust the fundamentals - do this with simple coaching phrases they hear in your gym. After awhile, they begin to finish the phrases as you say them which creates unity in your team's understanding, and they will begin to use them to coach themselves and each other on the court: Passing Defenders - "Low defense is good defense."Blocking Defenders - "Big hands, high Hands"Defensive mentality - "Every ball is getable" and have a "Just go mentality"Communication for everyone - "Dropped balls happen from miscommunication."Passing, "Pass with purpose,"...

Tip by Krystal Barkley in Olivet, MI. Start a youth program. Get your young kids excited about volleyball. Host clinics for Kindergarten through 5th/6th grade. Make the clinics high energy, lots of fun, and exciting. Give away volleyballs to get them excited to play at home. Join community-based leagues if you can for grades 4-8. Just get kids excited to play this amazing sport and it will help you have an amazing program. We've grown our youth program from 30 to 84 kids over two years by doing these things. It has been awesome to see our future players develop a...

Tip by Whitney Armistead, Hilton Head Island, SC. Our goal is efficiency in SR and being comfortable being uncomfortable. One of our teams favorite drills that they ask for by name is the Monday Drill (because we do it on Mondays). We adapted this off of a simple SR butterfly, but mad it so that we are tracking the competitive moments that lead to success. It is a SR efficiency game that warms up all of the skills in one shot and we do it at the beginning of practice after warm up to get our competitive, ball control, and...

Tip by Russell "Woody" Halbrook at Father McGivney Catholic HS in Glen Carbon, IL.Hyperventilate (Pursuit Drill)With a tosser on a hitter's box and someone to feed the tosser balls on one side of the net and three passers on the opposite side on net, we're ready to start the drill. The passers start with their feet on the attack line and are attempting to make three passes to complete a freeball or attack and must complete three successful balls (balls inbounds into the opposite court) to rotate out. The tosser should make it tough, tossing balls to the outside of...