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Tip by Mary Franke Fort Wayne, IN.  Always have a dry erase board courtside for impromptu illustrations of concepts. Many of our young people are visual leaners who benefit from the occasional chart/drawing. It can help with keeping score, too. My Favorite use? Make a tic-tac-toe board and challenge two teams in a drill. Each time a side/team wins or meets a goal, they put their X or O on the board. They battle out until they win the tic-tac-toe game. The tic-tac-toe idea I got from another coach-- possibly Bill Neville?

Tip by Lesli Hiller, St. Paul HS in St. Paul, Oregon. Capture the Flag drill. This is a great drill for hitters to be aware of targeting their hits and the team to be vocal on holes they may see. 6 vs 6 with 6 "flags" behind and off the court(when traveling we use their water bottles). Play is initiated with a free ball and continues with free ball to the loser. If there is no kill free balls continue to losing side. First team to get a kill, the passer of the kill runs to behind the other team's...

Tip by Flo Valdez, Franklin HS in El Paso, TX. PURPLE BALL WASH:  conditioning and concentration Teams are in starting rotation on each side of the net.  Team A serves to Team B and the ball is played out; the team that won the point gets a free ball. Free balls are sent out continuously to the team winning the free ball this continues for 90 seconds at which time the next free ball sent out is a PURPLE BALL, this is the only one that counts for a point.  The team that wins the PURPLE BALL wins the serve and gets...

Tip by Tim Eyre, Ogden, Utah.  We do a drill called 1:2:1 to help teach mental toughness in stringing points together. Team A serves to team B. If team A wins the rally they are given a free ball. If team A wins that rally they are given another free ball to play out, again if they win that rally they now have the chance to serve for a point. if at any time team B wins any of the rallies, the ball switches sides and team B becomes the serving team. One team must score four times in a...

Secret Goals in a 6x6 Drill

Tip by Terri Neujhar from Waverly, NE.

Playing 6x6 and finding different ways to score it/win it in practice is something we like to do to keep it fresh for the team. We like to play a take-off of the game Xontro, where a team needs to have so many of "X" things to happen to "win".