Quickness training for the libero position

Question
My daughter plays the libero position for her high school volleyball team and I know that this position requires quickness. What kind of training activities or techniques can we do to improve her quickness and overall game performance?

Answer
Hello Adam and welcome to www.allexperts.com.  It's great to hear from you!

I'm think I'm expert on volleyball, but not so much on conditioning.

But I can tell you a few things.  (a) Some girls believe that no balls should fall.  Well, a player will never be that quick!  haha.  She can get quicker so that "fewer" balls drop.  If a player judges herself by not making errors, or not allowing balls to drop anywhere on the court, then she will be pretty upset with herself everyday that she plays volleyball.

(b) Your daughter will get quicker by working on her quickness.  I'm not an expert on this, but there are a number of options.  
--> Talk to friends who are basketball player or tennis players.  I'm sure they have a lot of quickness drills.
--> Talk to friends who are getting private instructions from athletic trainers.  What are they doing?
--> Talk to the coaches at your school.  What do they recommend?
--> Keep playing volleyball.  When you read the hitters better and anticipate what's going to happen, then you'll start to just feel quicker b/c you're getting to everything sooner.

c) Athletes will only improve their quickness a finite amount.  It's like vertical, weight lifting, etc.  No, of course conditioning isn't wasted time.  However, the team will benefit much much more if most of the time a coach uses to conditioning is spent helping the girls become better setters, jump servers, etc., and is spent helping the team improve their serve reception, defense, etc.

You may be saying, "Coach Houser, how can you be an expert in volleyball, and not have drills to make my daughter quicker?"  It's because my team finished 2nd in the state in April (and 1st in '09 and '06) by serve receiving, serving, setting, playing defense with all our heart, and being a bonded team.  Yes, we condition, and yes we become quicker.  But while other coaches (who spend A LOT more time conditioning) here in my city finished 7th, 5th, 10th and 14th at that same tournament, we finished 2nd.  And we most often do.  

I'm sorry that I couldn't give you more specific answers to your question.  However, I want you to know that conditioning is not the key to winning volleyball matches.  But, if you still want your daughter to condition, it will be beneficial and I believe there are a TON of resources at your fingertips to help her with this!

I hope you'll have a chance to visit my team at www.coachhouser.com.  After team's season ended, our final team activity was taking formal pictures at a really expensive hotel.  Now that was awesome!  

Coach Houser