RS Blocking

Question
Steve, My daughter plays on 17's and will be travelling to JO this summer.  She is having issues with her coach because he says her blocking is not good enough.  She has the highest kill percentage on her team and her offensive play is great (as stated by him) however he is looking at replacing her because she does not block as well as he wants. She is Left handed. My issue is she is 5'9 and going up againist girls who are OH 6'0 and taller.  He is looking at moving our MB who is 6'1 but her block stats are not any better. (I think this is a move to get her recruited because she is not performing at MB) He says what she does better is change the hitter but she never gets any touches on the ball. I don't understand this point of the game. At what place is being a major point maker on the team get outweighed by blocking?  We also are not a strong defensive team and our passing is our weakest area.  Is there anything she can do to improve blocking at this point she is ready to throw in the towel and not even participate in JO's.

Answer
Ebee,

There are a number of questions/issues here.  My head coach and I always argue about blocking.  My philosophy differs with his because I believe that blocking stats are deceptive.  One example is, two years ago I had a 7' middle hitter on my HS boys team.  He only had 17 blocks in 12 games.  To my head coach that is horrible stats, which would be true unless you watched every game and saw that our opponents NEVER ran a middle attack and would almost always hit line instead of challenging him with a cross court shot.  My philosophy is that if you set up a good block the hitter must hit around it, you place your defensive players in the hitting lanes that the block does not take away.  So if your team had a lot of blocks they will not have as many digs.  If your team has a lot of digs the blockers did a great job funneling the hits into our defensive players.  So I believe that just because a blocker does not get a lot of blocks does not mean they are not blocking well.  Did that make sense?

Now on the other hand if the hitters are hitting OVER your daughter, because they are taller and jump higher, then she is not doing a good job blocking and may have to move over to the left side.

As far as the offensive/defensive statement.  Let me use a basketball analogy.  Your shooting guard scores 32 points a game.  Great offense.  But the players he defends score 35.  I am actually down 3 points.  If I brought in another shooting guard and he scored 12 but the player he defended only scored 6, I'm up six points.  If your daughter is as good an offensive player as you say her coach should find a place for her to play, even if it is not the position she likes.

I would not not go to JO's.  This would give your daughter a "quitter" label that may hurt her from going to another club or even getting recruited to her first choices in schools.  The bigger schools have a bigger selection of athletes, so if they get 10 kids who are about the same skill level have to weed out some of the recruits an attitude (as told by the coach) is a big factor.  The smaller schools will be more willing to take a great athlete with an attitude because they need the better athlete to get their program moving forward (but many times the smaller schools regret their decision.....I know I have in the past).  So if your daughter is good and she wants to go to UCLA, I would not quit playing club.  If she wants to go to St Francis College in NY then quit because they will take her in a heart beat.

I hope this was some help.  My e-mail address is [email protected] if you have any more questions.

Good Luck,
Steve