At Roots Volleyball in Austin, Texas, player evaluations go beyond tryouts. In fact, coach evaluations that form teams are just the beginning. The club then conducts three in-season evaluations throughout the year.
Lindsay Rosenthal, a director at Roots Volleyball Club, recently spoke with Briana Schunzel, the Director of Marketing, Education, and Partnership Development at the Junior Volleyball Association, about tryouts, in-season evaluations, and how they use the TeamGenius application to conduct these.
Improving Tryouts
Before using TeamGenius’ player evaluation application, Roots Volleyball used spreadsheets and handwritten notes to track athletes’ performances at tryouts. This made it difficult to keep track of player feedback when forming teams and made it even harder to use the evaluations in the following year’s tryouts.
They made the process more accurate and efficient with TeamGenius.
Instead of using handwritten score sheets and notes, coaches could use the app on their phone or tablet to enter comments and notes about all players.
“We explain to everyone that they’re not texting, they’re actually doing evaluations,” Rosenthal said.
The information was entered into the program and could be accessed after tryouts to form teams. It could also be used in the future when teams were formed the following season.
Having this detailed information on players helped justify team placements. This year Roots Volleyball had about 140 athletes try out in their 14-year-old age group, where they could only keep about 75-80 players. Needing to cut so many athletes, having the feedback and scores from the coaches in the app was critical to explain roster decisions.
With the TeamGenius app, Roots Volleyball saved time by cloning the previous season’s information and editing it to reflect criteria for the current year. They could also preset the app to list the skills to evaluate players on and specify how the scores should be ranked.
Making In-Season Evaluations Easier
In addition to using the TeamGenius app for tryouts, Roots Volleyball also uses it for mid-season evaluations. Each year, the club conducts three in-season evaluations on each player.
The club has always provided players with this feedback, but it’s now much easier with the TeamGenius application. The club evaluates players on hitting, passing, setting, defense, serve receiving and serving, on a scale of 0-10.
Whereas coaches used to have to handwrite notes on each player in each category, they can now select a score and type in a comment. The club made it even easier by having the directors preload common comments in the app coaches can quickly select, allowing them to save time entering in common feedback.
In addition to evaluating players on volleyball skills, athletes are also evaluated on intangibles like coachability and attitude.
After the feedback is recorded in the app, coaches then make them available to players and their parents and schedule individual meetings with each athlete to review their scores and feedback. These meetings are meant to open the lines of communication between the coach and the players so they can discuss the athlete’s strengths and weaknesses.
“We try to be as honest as possible,” Rosenthal said. “They can’t get better if we don’t tell them their deficiencies and what they can work on.”
When delivering the feedback, coaches try to give it in the format of a compliment sandwich.
“We know you’re on the right track, but here’s what you can do better, and here’s how we can get there,” Rosenthal said.
The club hopes this feedback leads to an open conversation between the player and coach about what she thinks she needs to do to improve playing time and her role on the team
“We’re trying to empower these young women to become strong individuals,” Rosenthal said. “We want them to advocate for themselves.”
Using TeamGenius made giving in-season evaluations much easier on coaches. They no longer have to spend time writing out evaluations by hand. They just need to select scores and comments in the app. Spending less time on evaluations enables coaches to spend more time actually coaching players.
Selecting TeamGenius
When Roots Volleyball was looking for a player evaluation software solution, it interviewed a lot of companies before deciding to go with TeamGenius.
“TeamGenius was the easiest from start to finish,” Rosenthal said. “To be honest, every single person we talked to along the way has been so helpful.”
The club has been using the application for almost two years, and they keep increasing how they are utilizing the platform. They initially used it just for basic evaluations before adding on the in-season evaluations. They intend to keep growing in the app as the club adds more efficiencies.
About TeamGenius
TeamGenius is a club volleyball player evaluation app built for club directors and coaches. Ditch the paper and spreadsheets to easily capture player evaluations, track, analyze, and share results with players all on one digital platform.
Learn more at teamgenius.com
About JVA
The Junior Volleyball Association (JVA) is a non-profit organization that promotes the growth of youth and junior volleyball through program and resource development, education and events. The organization was formed in 2006 with a primary focus of being a voice for junior volleyball club directors and coaches, and to this day with nearly 1,300 member clubs, is the only organization that is focused entirely on youth and junior volleyball.
Learn more at jvavolleyball.com
About Roots Volleyball
Originally founded as Texas Eclipse Volleyball by Greg Watts in 2003, Roots Volleyball continues the tradition of developing volleyball players at all skill levels in an environment that is positive for all players, parents, and coaches. Our coaches have always had a passion for developing athletes into superstar young women while keeping their focus on faith, family, and community.
The two stated goals for each player since the early days of our organization are to make them better volleyball players and to do our part to make sure they enjoy the game more at the end of the season than at the beginning. While we have grown to be one of the largest, most successful organizations in the nation we approach every athlete, every team, and every season with the same two goals.
Learn more at rootsvb.org
