Central Junior High Volleyball, Lovington, New Mexico

As I mentioned before I got involved with the volleyball program as a volunteer and it turned into four seasons coaching the Central Kittens first as the 8th grade coach and then the 9th grade coach. It was another example in my coaching carer of putting myself in a position that could lead to additional coaching opportunities. As I've said I was hired at Central primarily to coach basketball with track being a secondary option. Volleyball was never on the table. The irony is that of the three sports, I was least successful in basketball and probably enjoyed it the least because I never really felt competent.

Playing volleyball myself with the coed team from Rimgrove Park provided me with some basic knowledge fundamental skills of the game, working as a volunteer for one season taught me a lot about teaching the skills and team strategy and as I did with basketball, I read everything I could find on coaching the sport so I felt much more comfortable coaching volleyball than basketball. Once again, knowing the rule book from cover to cover was very important.

Had I not moved from the junior high to the high school to teach after five years who knows, my career might have gone in a different direction because I was a pretty competent volleyball coach unlike basketball where I was basically just a warm body doing the best I could to fill a need.

My first year with the 8th grade team we finished 7-4 and 3rd in the Border Conference. The second year we 8-2 and won the conference championship. The next year I was moved to the 9th grade program and we were 7-3 and 3rd in the conference again. We had gone into that season with high hopes because it was basically the same team that had won the championship in 8th grade.

The issue with that particular team was that we simply couldn't put teams away when we had the chance. We would win the first game and then for whatever reason there was a let down in the second game and we would lose sending the match to a third game that we won more than we lost. I was looking at my written summary of that 1980 season and some things that stood out were our inability to put a team away and our struggles getting our serves over the net consistently. "...we still faced a problem the entire season that eventually cost us a share of the conference championship, we couldn't put a team away in the second game". And, "We couldn't get our serves over (another problem all season) and lost...". At the end of my summary I wrote the following, "One final comment. Last year we were able to serve in the gym before school every morning. This year because we didn't have the gym, we couldn't. I think it made all the difference in the world". That reminded me, we didn't even have a gym that year because our floor was being refinished and so our practices were at another school as were our "home" games. With that in mind I would say that the kids had a pretty successful season. , My final season was 1981 and we finished 3-5. We had a good chance to be 5-5 but probably the weakest team on our schedule canceled both games because of scheduling conflicts.

My overall record as a volleyball coach for those four years was 25-14. I enjoyed coaching volleyball and just like any sport I coached I learned a lot that I was able to use in my future coaching roles. There is so much carry over from sport to sport where basic coaching is concerned. Volunteering that first year was another example of giving myself a chance to be ready when an opportunity presented itself.