I continued assisting my friend with her drill group but didn’t get to play today. I don’t think I’ll get to play tomorrow either but it’s probably just as well, I’ve played 10 times in the last 9 days. The group was missing 2 people so I got to do every drill. I was told to think of some drills before I came so I stopped watching my friends playing in the APP Punta tournament and watched a couple of drilling videos for some ideas.
With 2 people there to “lead” we break into 2 groups and work on different things. My group has done dinks, drops and transition work. We did a little bit of the same stuff as last week, mostly as a warm up, and then I tried my crazy ideas for drills. It was a bit messy. I used the dots for 2 drills, asking them to announce what color they were dinking to prior to taking the shot. It was an ok drill but because we were side by side there were a few times we almost crashed into each other. With one group I switched the dots (each side had dots) but that didn’t exactly solve anything – the other side nearly collided. But I think they got the point, to be intentional.
My next drill was to have a very specific dink routine, asking them to dink to one corner, dink to the middle and then dink back to the corner again, this time just behind the kitchen line. They kind of looked at me like I was little bit crazy but when I told them this was the setup for an Erne a few of them got excited. Of course we aren’t ready to do Ernes, but I wanted them to see how to move people around and create opportunities. I switched over to be the feeder when one of the gals I know was to execute the drill. She’s an expert dinker as-is and seemed a little unsure that what I was suggesting could work. When she hit the first round I popped up the behind-the-kitchen shot and she went for it. It didn’t work but on the second one she made it happen! She did an Erne at least 3 times and it was fantastic.
The next drill I had in mind was for the receiver to practice drives and the feeder to practice letting out balls go out. If the ball was in they were to play it and finish out the point. That was a little tough to do with only half the court and everyone was really good at drives so the feeder didn’t see many balls to let go. I let a few go just to show what it should look like but they were all in bounds, making me think I picked a bad drill, or that I’m not the best at recognizing out balls.
A couple of the ladies would drive the ball well and then do a drop on their second shot, getting them to the kitchen. I had them practice driving it and attacking the block pop-up. Both of them did well with it and could see that a drive – especially as well as they were driving it – can be a big opportunity for another aggressive shot.
I had time for another drill and wish I would have done transition block resets but I was drawing a blank on what to do. Next week I want to figure out a way to have them practice a dink and then an aggressive shot but I’ve got to find a way to pull that off without everyone running into each other.
