My daughter's HS Volleyball Team is the Washington Redskins

[MarkPSkins]

My daughter plays on the High School volleyball team and I was thinking as I watched the Redskins lose how much it reminded me of those poor girls.

First off let me point out that this a a division 2a school in east Bum**** TX. I'm talking very small talent pool and where half the girls after the game switch to their cheerleading uniforms and head out to the football game. Most of these girls will be housewives within the next three years. Needless to say, there just isn't much athletic talent with the exception of a few girls.

Wait a second, let me explain the similarities before you start saying well the Redskins do have talent. Hang on.

The Lady Buffs (buffaloes)...hehehe..ladies in the buff, sorry, I regress. Anyway, this is only the second year playing volleyball as a school and they have won, in the 1 and 3/4th years they have played, exactly one match, and had to scratch and claw for that win.

They expect to lose and is doesn't piss them off when they do.

They have this coach, who must have read a volleyball book, who tries to run all of these sophisicated sets and alignments and plays that probably be a good idea if they had some people who could execute them. Instead of simplifying the scheme, playing a straight W with a setter. She has them trying to do things they cannot. Shall we say she has them trying to run before they ver knew how to walk. They cannot perform the simplelist of tasks like making a pass off of the server to the setter who can make a good set to someone who will spike the ball. When they do get a good pass the setter will probably screw up the pass and then the spike is ugly or weak. They cannot serve the ball over the net consistently. They are forever looking at the girl next them as the ball lands between them, never knowing who was supposed to hit it and afterwards still not knowing who actually screwed up.

So here's what happens. The couple of good players on the team try to make up for the bad players by running around all crazy, occaisionally making good plays but then finding themselves out of position later in the point. It's plain ugly. Now suddenly they are down, they may make an occaisional mini run, but never make a threat. The coach refuses to change her philosopy and just play a base set, make it easy on the girls, let them get confident with the game. The girls are lost, and the good players try to do it all themselves. When the girls are playing well, their spirits are up, they play within themselves and they really aren't that bad, but when it starts to go south, pretty much every game, you can see them deflate. "Here we go again" is written all over their faces. They then begin to play trying not to screw up and no go out of their way to make a play and hope and pray that the ball is not hit to them.

Sound familiar.

The Redskins are the same way, while they do have some talent on paper. They have coaches who refuses to adjust when their are obviously some deficiencies in talent for executing the schemes. They don't ever seem to want to try something different to see if that'll work. They have potentially great players running around trying to take on the responsibilities of lacking players only to find themselves making the mistakes themselves.

Chris Samuels is trying to help Dockery, Champ is trying to be everywhere as is Lavar and Trotter, possibly trying to make up for the DL, who are being told they suck from every direction. No one seems to trust the guy next to him. Samuels jumping the count is too worried about schemes and the guy next to him and has obviously a limited brain being pulled in too many directions. Poor Ramsey is trying to wait too long to make plays. No one is letting the game come to them. Things start to go south, then they start to play to not make mistakes and that pressure just escalates the situation.

The biggest problem to me is that the players don't trust their own teammates enough to concentrate solely on their own responsibilites. The coaches are probably guilty of this as well -- trying to cover deficiencies with some funky scheme.

They'll make special schemes or plays that guys may not be able to handle and the guys who can, in an effort to help, only look bad themselves when trying to cover for or assist. Or they make schemes to hide or cover these deficiencies and it takes away from just playing the game, leaving holes elsewhere.

At some point the Redskins need to "go back to the drawing board". They have to let the players play their spots and not worry that this guy may not handle his responsibilities. They have to play within themselves and not try to cover for other players. Don't try to cover the blemishes with only so much paint or it gets stretched too thin.

Player are going to have to start playing "with" and not "for" their teammates. Because if this continues everyone will continue to look lost and then the "here we go again" attitude will never go away.

Sorry, but it's better than the just fire Spurrier and cut everybody threads.

[NavyDave]

Damn shame they are losing because if they had a winning streak you could post despite a bandaid covering a hangnail and thru tears say, "Its not about ths skins winning or losing like a bunch of bee yotches, its about me seeing :cry: my lil girl play volleyball."

[NASMTrainer]

My question is why?

Why do they still have a volleyball team at that school? j/k