Alan Knipe Edit

Thu, Feb 09, 2023 3:23PM • 40:05

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

coach, volleyball, team, players, game, hear, situation, play, great, big, moment, culture, head coach, point, staff, set, trust, match, world, lose

SPEAKERS

Alan Knipe, Paul Barnett

Paul Barnett 00:00

Elon Knight Hello, and welcome to the great coaches podcast.

Alan Knipe 00:05

That's great. That's great to be here, Paul, thanks for having me.

Paul Barnett 00:08

Always enjoy talking a little bit of volleyball. But, Alan, before we get into volleyball and your long history, something really simple to get us going. Where are you in the world? And what have you been up to so far today?

Alan Knipe 00:19

Yeah, I mean, the wonderful Walther pyramid here on my campus at Long Beach State University, where I'm the head volleyball coach, beautiful, Long Beach, California.

Paul Barnett 00:28

As I look out the window on a dark, deep, cold Bucharest night, I am very, very jealous.

Alan Knipe 00:36

It is a beautiful day out there a little windy for us today. But it is a beautiful November day that most people would take as a summer day.

Paul Barnett 00:43

Well, Ellen, you have had a great career as a volleyball coach. I know it's not over yet. We're gonna go on a journey through many of the successes you've had along the way and a lot of the learnings but I'd like to start by just referencing some of the great coaches that you've had firsthand, up close and personal experience with you were just telling me about our skates. And of course, there's Doug bill and the present men's coach Coach clearly. And I'm I'm wondering, Alan, from this perspective, seeing these great coaches up close. What is it you think the great coaches do differently that sets them apart?

Alan Knipe 01:18

Yeah, obviously, the three names that you bring up are all legendary coaches in our game and set the standard very high for all of us coaches, and they're all very different. So I think that you know, when you bring up the name El skates, what I think is just that is the standard for college. Volleyball. Anyone who aspires to be a great coach in college has to use just a lot of the ways al went about his business as a coach one, he did it for a tremendously long period of time, I believe was 40 plus years. He was also a player at UCLA and coached some of the very best players in the game. But it was really he innovated the game in many, many different ways, especially in blocking thought he was in my opinion, I got to coach against him, played against him as a coach and as the assistant coach for five years on staff to coach against him as a head coach that coached against him for my nine years as head coach before I took the four year break to coach the national team. And I always really enjoyed coaching against Al because I thought his in game management of the game was really really good and significantly ahead of any of the coaches in the college ranks, you know, obviously he wanted a tremendous amount of games and he won a whole bunch of national championships. He also did some a lot of stuff with USA volleyball throughout the years, but the way he went about really I think the block and defense to help locking really zone help locking the approach to changing matchups within a game, the way to use your bench, there was a lot of different things that he did. I thought that was pretty special. When you talk about Doug you know Doug's really special to me because I was my boss when I was the national team head coach and he was just in amazing boss he never really got in your, your area. When you without kind of asking sometimes you got to ask him especially if you if you really wanted to talk volleyball with you. And you wanted him to give his input you really had to ask or he wasn't one to come in and just tell you let you you know, do your job. But having a coach who's been a three time Olympic coach who's you know, been a college coach who's coached in Europe who's now the president of USA volleyball and on the NFIB V board, and he is Mr. Volleyball for the US all across the world. He was just an amazing go to for a resource for me in pretty much any area of my coaching life during those four years. But if you look back at Doug, and he was an innovator, or there's so many things that he did, and his staff, especially with that 84 team, that is is still a big part of the game today. There's a lot of the sets that we even the names of sets that we use in college and on the national team came from that generation of volleyball but him and Tony crab and Bill Neville and that whole crew that he had around him were pretty special. And there's still a big impact throughout USA volleyball but throughout volleyball in general, especially United States of what Doug and his crew were able to do. I have not really coached with Karcher or even against Carter because obviously he's coaching on the women's side. But I was in the gym for four years, coaching the men's team while he was coaching with Hugh McCutcheon on the women's team. And I've been able to we're real close as far as proximity to where the national team strains were only 20 minutes away so we're able to see them. I think with cards what I would say is my biggest observation and probably compliment the cards is that it's unbelievable focus and drive. And you've seen this now as a collegiate volleyball player. You've seen it as an indoor Olympic player, a professional player, you know, the best beach layer, you know, Olympic gold medalists on the beach and many Olympic gold medalist indoor Olympic gold medalist, as a coach on the women's side, his ability to focus in and be single minded on what his job is and what he's going to get to his goal, I've always had a tremendous amount of respect for that. The other thing was, I think that his probably a little different, probably as a coach than maybe as a player is watching his team's culture develop. During his tenure, I think that his his team in the in the Tokyo Games was just a perfect example of a team's culture that you have worked at it, you have maintained it, and spent a lot of intentional moments building that because I don't remember a whole lot of Olympic teams that lose a couple of starters in pool play, and still find a way to win the gold medal. I just have a tremendous amount of respect for cards and pretty much any area of the game of volleyball, but what he's doing right now with the with the national team is really enjoyable to watch. And he's got a, he's got a really good staff, that he allows them to just to use their their strengths, the best for that team, you can see the interaction they have with the players on the team and the trust that the staff has with the players. And I was just really happy to watch that unfold last summer.

Paul Barnett 06:22

Elena have this interesting quote from you, you say, I acted very much like a captain when I was a young coach. And I'm wondering, was there a moment or perhaps even a series of events that led this to change?

Alan Knipe 06:34

I don't know if there really was a moment, I think it's more of Well, I think I should probably explain what I mean by that. First, what I mean by that is, you know,

I grew up in a family, my parents immigrated to the United States from Northern Ireland, where we were a big soccer family, and I was the youngest of three. So it was all soccer all the time. And my dad played and my dad coached. And it was we always ended up being kind of that guy that was the captain of the team that coach's kid, the hardest worker good we we would like to think we were we wanted to have that that was that was a very much a badge of honor in my family with my brothers and I to be a very considered the hard working coach's kid, we took that very seriously, especially when we played on teams that my dad was not coaching. But I think as you go on, and I was able to be captains of lots of my teams, and even my college team, I was able to be a captain at the end of my career there too. And so you have that leadership, where you're, you're kinda you're not a coach, but you get to talk to the coaches, you have a little bit of power, I guess, to motivate the team to, you know, to kind of push them a little bit, I think it works really well, if you have the right personality.

And then when you start to coach until you have more experience and lessons learn, you tend to be who you are. And so I tend to be more of a captain than a coach. And what I meant by that is, I carry too much of the emotion of my team for them, instead of demanding that that was such a big part of the game, and in practice and in games, and I don't think that it's was necessarily the best tactical way to go about it as a coach. But in reality, it's kind of the only way, you know, it's what's been successful for you, as you're, as you're entering the coaching world and leaving the plane world, I think it's inevitable that you're going to have you bounce back and forth. And then I just think there's a moment where you have enough experience, and you have enough lessons learned that I have to have my team. And as I like to say carry their own luggage, they have to take this. So I have to step back, even if it means sometimes letting them fail a little bit in the in the moment, I think that there's a pretty good example of this of Phil Jackson, when he was coaching the Chicago Bulls or the Los Angeles Lakers. There was times, especially during the regular season, that his team was not necessarily playing well in the moment. And they would the camera would pan to the band, and he would be very stoic. And it was he wasn't maybe even the gap was getting a little bit bigger, and he wasn't calling a timeout, or maybe even at times not even taking the starters out, let them work through it. And it was kind of at that time when I was feeling that I was going through that same that same transition of trying to let that happen, knowing that that was where I wanted to be, and how was I going to go about it. So I would like to think I'm a significantly better coach now than I am and I'm a coach a way more than I have a captain and I actually still use that term. Sometimes the guys that when I do have to carry a little bit more than I want to I'll actually say to them, I want to coach you not be your captain. [PB1]

So that's what I mean by that.

Paul Barnett 09:48

Sal and you were a head coach at a young age around 29. And yet your advice to other coaches is and this is a quote from you sometimes the quickest route to the head coaching job is not necessarily the best route. And so I wanted to ask you what are the top couple of skills you think someone should try to pick up before they become a head coach,

Alan Knipe 10:11

I think the best advice I could give is to spend time with with good coaches in any way you possibly can. So if that means volunteering or helping out, however you have to in the gym, be an assistant coach. First, I think there's so much to coaching that you don't understand just because you understand the game of volleyball, I think the game specially at a head coaching level now. And I'll use my example of the job I'm in now you're very much more of like a CEO of a small company, then you are just a coach, there's so many things that are going on all the time. And I think you want to see how coaches handle that and how they handle the good and the bad and the administrative side of the job and maybe the political side of the job or having to deal with a conference. So the NCAA, you want to see how they recruit, you want to see how they talk to parents, you want to see how they interact with a kid who's struggling or might have gotten into some sort of trouble or you want to navigate, it's a difficult it's a difficult road to navigate as it is. But to do it without a lot of guidance is difficult. So I think the spend time ask questions, even if some of the answers you get are I don't want to do it this way. Like if I ever got the chance, I would not do it the same as this coach did. That's okay, that's fair. I've had those experiences in my life. But it does help you navigate this crazy world later on. [PB2]

The other one is, is just your ability to communicate communication is absolutely everything communicate to your staff can who do your players communicating on your within your organization. And when I say communicate, obviously, it's it's organized communication, it's so that people have a great understanding of what you're asking of them. Because ultimately, to be successful. In any relationship, you have to understand what the person who ultimately gets to make the decision wants from you. And and I take that very serious since I sit in the seat that I get to make the final call, then I think it's only fair that my staff and that my players fully understand what I'm asking for them and how I'm going to end up making my decisions and what I'm going to make my decision based on and then the other one would I would say is, and this is kind of two part is being your organizational time management skills have to be very, very good. So if you know that's not a strength, that's something that most people can work on, but you need to identify it. And the other one is the ability to multicast, there's just no way around it, you're not going to want to do a lot of the things that you need to do in this job, you're going to want to spend more time in the gym, more time with the guys, and more time watching video. And you're going to get pulled in a lot of different directions all of the time. And so learning how to one multicast and to say no to some things. And the other one would be to to trust your that you've got good people around you and delegate areas that they can handle that you can completely remove yourself from so that 100% of their effort is better than the 50% of attention that you're going to put to it. And the whole organization runs better because they feel invested and they have buy in because you're building trust with your staff. At the same time, you're staying focused on a shorter list of responsibilities, which is always good for a head coach, especially when you're in the season, maybe out of season, the list can get a little bit longer, but during the season, you want to try to keep that list as short as possible.[PB3] [PB4]

Paul Barnett 13:42

Allen, you talked about this earlier, but in 2009, you left the college ranks and you became the Team USA coach and you had some success, there was gold medals at the continental championships in the world league. But ultimately, there was a fifth placing at the 2012 Olympics. And I know that was something that the team were disappointed about. But I'm wondering how that time away coaching the national team has gone on to shape your approach to leadership today. Yeah,

Alan Knipe 14:10

yeah, I think well, first of all, it was the honor of a lifetime to coach that team and represent my country. So proud to do that. And so excited to do that. It was a very difficult job coming off of the oh eight gold medal team that had a lot of guys who were in the later stages of their career. So there was a big transition going on with a lot of guys weren't, weren't back at the beginning of the next four year quad. And so going through that dealing with quite a few challenges along the way like all teams do, and ultimately getting to the point with success throughout the quad but ultimately getting to the point that we played our best volleyball at the Olympic Games, and that whole summer. And what I mean is we we lost in the gold medal match in the World League finals that year, right right before the Olympic Games and we ended up winning our pool at the end Because with you know, we had Brazil and Russia, Serbia, Germany and Tunisia so a really good pool, won the pool. And then unfortunately, we lost the match at the Olympics that you cannot lose, you cannot lose the quarterfinal match, you can lose in the pool and you can lose in the semis because you played for the bronze, but you cannot lose the quarterfinal game. And that will always be very difficult. There's no way around it as a competitor. But I was really, really proud of the brand of volleyball, we played the entire summer of 2012, I thought with everything we had been through and all the moving parts that we got to a really, really high level, I thought that the program itself was in a really good situation as far as young talent coming through, you know, the matt Anderson's of the world and David Smith's of the world. Those guys coming through the program, I think that the junior and youth teams were poised to be really good. They were they were playing really well and really, at a high level. But what I think I take from it is that it's a very unique job in the sense that at least when it was when I was doing it, and that is I didn't coach College and the national team, I only coached the USA team. So I took time off from my job here at launch date. And by doing that, the benefit for everybody, I think, and clearly for me was the way the calendar was set up. I had the summer months with with the team. So basically from April, the guy started to come back. And then we would end you know, in November the latest but usually for for us our summer ended somewhere around August, what you had in that time was that focus time with the national team. But all the time around that which was kind of more of the traditional academic year, the guys were in Europe playing on their pro team. So I had a schedule of going getting over there a couple of times a year meeting was some guys checking in on some guys, we did have a young group training during the winter block. But it wasn't real stressful, because there was no matches being played no travel.

And what we had as a staff is we had a tremendous amount of time to prep for the next summer group coming back plan and invest in our culture. And this is really where I think that I made the biggest strides personally as a coach of spending lots of time taking cultures that a very unique word to kind of throw out there because everyone talks about it. And you have to have a good culture, you have to have trust or whatever it might be those words that fall into culture. But it's a very difficult thing to start from scratch and develop. How do you start it? What how do you even get going. And I think that that was where I made the most strides of putting all of that together a very good plan and build on it even still building on it today of how to where to start, how we're going to do it, what how we're going to work on things and what what we want it to look like by the time we get to the to the end, I think that's what's changed my leadership the most is putting culture at the top of my list of my programs that I coach. And it doesn't mean that X's and O's blocking and serving all that's not super important. It just means we have to constantly spend time maintaining building our culture. And if it's good water, the green spots and work on the brown spots.[PB5] [PB6]

Paul Barnett 18:17

I've actually heard you say that culture drives behavior and behavior drives results. So what do high performing cultures have that allows them to influence behavior? So? Well?

Alan Knipe 18:30

Yeah, I think it comes down to communication, trust and accountability, to be honest with you. So you have to have great communication, open and honest communication with your guys, you have to have the ability for players to talk to one another to talk to the staff, the staff to talk to each other, those lines have to be open. And that sounds easier than that it is because the ultimate goal of culture is to get to the point that everybody feels valued. And there's buy in from the organization, the team or what what have you, and you're not going to get buy in. If you're simply lecturing to your team all the time. And they don't have that it's not a two way conversation. So you got to get communication going, especially with the age group by coach now, where you're dealing with 18 to 22 year olds, and you know, in the in the volleyball world, especially United States, that's 18 is still considered pretty young, because of how late our guys start up start playing. So it's unique for them to you have to teach them even how to communicate about the game like what what are they even communicating about? What is the system you're trying to teach? What is it that they're the what is the goal of you know, of the week or for them? So you have to build up some standards. And this is what we do as a team. This is our system. This is how we pass or blog. This is what we'd like to do in situations to allow them to start talking to you about it and fail at it. Just like learning any other language. I mean, anytime we've been in a classroom that we were Learning a second or third language, we're going to fail at it. And if we, if we're the student that sits in the back and doesn't interact at all just tries to listen and take the test, we're not going to be very successful at it. So the most successful people in those classroom settings are the ones that are interacting constantly with the teachers, the best teachers in those situations are the ones that are communicating in the language that they're trying to teach on a regular basis and making it very normal in the classroom. Well, first of all, you have to have the language and you have to be consistent with the language. So if you're speaking in a language as a coach different each day, or each coach on your staff speaks different, you're not making it very easy on on your athletes. So we define the language and when our guys speak it in a way that is correct, but not within the language we want to use, we will fix that to the point that we can speak the language and practice and speak it in video and speak it on scatter reports so that I can speak it in matches in timeouts in very small bullets, or words or phrases, that mean paragraphs and training and systems that they understand because there's so much consistency to it. So I think that communication is building the trust with one another, and the accountability with one another, which you can't have any of that you can't get to the result that you all want. If you don't have communication, and you don't get to trust, because trust will lead to accountability. And we're gonna get to our goals.[PB7] [PB8]

Paul Barnett 21:24

I hear you talk a lot about trust, actually, in interviews, you call it the bank account of trust, right? It's a great analogy. How does it shape the team dynamics? How do you use that analogy?

Alan Knipe 21:35

I think I just think that most actions you take on a daily basis on a team, even how small they are, sometimes are building your trust with your team simply arriving to practice on time ready to practice is depositing into the trust account, you're here, we can trust you to be here, being ready to go on a daily basis helping if it's gyms set up or, you know, whatever it might be, it can be as small as that at the highest level. It's in game moments of who's going to pass what ball who's going to pick up the tip responsibility? What is the blocking system going to be? What is the what are we trying to do offensively right now. And if I say I'm going to do it, then I'm going to do it. Now. That doesn't mean I have to, I have to get the result we want every time I just have to attempted to do it. And then if I fail in any way along the way, I have to own that. Immediately. I have to own that situation. I have to address it. Okay, that's on me. That won't happen. Again. This was the fix instead of going quiet, being mad at myself, letting all the team try to figure out what was it my fault was it your fault was whose was that. And then because you get in that moment, as you identify and say that was me, here's what's going to happen on the next time this, this comes up and I'll do it. Of course, that means the next time something comes up on the court, the same situation, if you do it or you don't do it is a very big moment and trust if you take care of your job, now we can trust that you can make mistakes on the court, but you're going to tell us how we're going to get out of it. And we're going to move forward. So I believe that on a regular basis on a daily basis, you're making withdrawals or deposits in a trust account with your teammates and your coaches. And obviously, like any other account, you want to you want a lot more deposits than you do withdrawals. Because when you want when you use the withdraws and big moments you want there to be something there. So we use that analogy all the time. How many deposits can I constantly make on a daily basis into our team culture that helps build our our culture?[PB9] [PB10]

Paul Barnett 23:32

Ellen, I've heard you also talk about mindset Monday, that was really intrigued about it. Could you tell us a little bit about what it means and and what the benefit is that you hope it delivers that its goals? What's it working towards?

Alan Knipe 23:45

Well, I think first of all, what you want is if you have a team that you're trying to be successful over in a season sustainable success, instead of you know, random success or here or there a big win and a bad loss. You're trying to get the you're trying to stay away from those peaks and valleys, then I think it's really, really important that you have your Monday set your week. So meaning we come in every Monday with the same approach whether we want a tough match, one an easy match, last tough match whatever it might be, they come in and they know exactly what they're gonna get. And that is last weekend is over doesn't mean there's not some lessons to be learned from last weekend, but it's over. So we're going to take those lessons we're going to watch some video of what we could have done better, what was good. We're going to set our goals for the week individually and collectively as a team we're going to recover on that day also mean it's probably not going to be a very heavy physical day especially for the guys who did a lot of the the heavy lifting during the weekend. And then we're going to get some of the guys who didn't get a lot of the lifting that you want to say lifting obviously the volleyball and we're gonna give them a lot of reps with the coaches. They are in front of the head coach and the assistant coaches getting all the meaningful reps that day and bye At the end of the day, we've recovered physically, we've set our goals, we have a good mindset of what we do, we do some visualization. That day, we do some just relaxation and breathing just to set the week. And what we're doing is we're, we're closing the chapter of last week, it's done, because the most important match of the season is coming up, because it's the next one we play. And we're going to use this same approach all season. It also allows myself and my staff to stay away from highs and lows, if we win a big match on a Saturday night, can we have practice on Monday and my staff come skipping into practice, and everything's great, because we won this match, we're setting our team up for absolute failure. The flip side of that also is that if we lost a tough match, we're not going to come in red faced look into take it out on the team and get them on the end line and have them run. That's not necessarily the approach we want either where there's this huge emotional swings, what we want is to build the maturity of our team to understand Mindset Monday means whatever we did great was awesome. And we want to continue to water, the green spots, we want to find out some areas we can get better. And we want our entire focus to be on this week. It's a very American football approach to a week, you know, obviously, in their situation, they are just so physically beat up. I'm not sure you could have a Monday that was real physical. But it's a very methodical, this is what we do on Monday. This is what we do on Tuesday, we walk through our offense on Wednesday, you know, or maybe we have pads on Wednesday and walks through it on Thursday. But the players have a really good understanding of what they're coming into each day. So that's where it comes from. We've done this now for 10 years, it's been very successful for our guys, I think the quality of what we get out of Monday is great, it makes our Tuesday and Wednesday, practice even better. And I think we we really get a lot out of it. Elena is a player[PB11] [PB12]

Paul Barnett 26:58

you would not picked for the 1992 USA Olympic team. And I know this disappointment has stayed with you. And it's shaped the way you communicate team selection today.

Alan Knipe 27:09

To be really fair and clear. I don't really think it was probably even that close to be selected. I wouldn't say you know, 12 player backs, I certainly wasn't the 13th player, okay. But I was in the gym and part of that training block. And everybody who's in that gets into the gym likes to believe that they can play volleyball at a high enough level and their aspiration is to play for the games in the game. So to say it was disappointing would be would be accurate. And I think that goes for lots of players. I think that what there's I don't know if there's a whole lot of lessons I learned just from that one experience.

When it comes to shaping rosters, I just think that really when it comes down to making the team, when you're I should say when you're announcing the team, and you're meeting with the players about who's going to be on the team on any level, I think what the players want to hear from you is honesty, I think they want to hear real reasons. And hopefully along the way, you were able to give them things that they were trying to work on that you can actually talk about, like in these areas, we just didn't meet them. It's not that you can't play the game, it's just that I have to pick a very small group of players. And we're gonna go with this group, where I think you lose a lot of credibility as a coach is when those meetings become more about feeling about your feelings, for example, I just feel like this team plays better together. Or I just feel like these guys do this together. That could be true. But it's a very difficult thing for an athlete to hear that you're basing the decision of him going to, you know, to make to go to the national championship game or the Olympic Games or whatever it might be based off of a feeling you would love to hear even if it's hard to hear that this player right now is passing the ball significantly better than you are. Or we're signing out at a much better number when this when this player is setting or whatever, we're scoring more points with this guy on the court as a server. I think that if you willing to do it, and you're willing to stat your practices and share the information along the way, it will allow a lot more contacts along the way with your players to talk about things when you're that's why Mindset Mondays are important to you. Right because your goal setting for them individually or their goal setting for themselves. I don't think that there's a whole lot of times right now in the program that when we have to make a roster to go somewhere that there's a lot of shock in what we do, because I think that we've been talking about it for weeks and weeks before it gets to the point we have to make that decision. But I just think that if for all coaches who have to make those very difficult decisions, I just think that it's from the player standpoint, they don't really want to hear much about feelings they want to hear they want to be as black and white as possible because for a lot of them it's going to shape how they make the next roster that they that they aspire to make and that information, you'll give them that honest information you'll give them as hard as it is in the moment will help them in the future.[PB13] [PB14]

Paul Barnett 30:07

Elon, in this interview, you've talked about emotional control a few times, and you've talked about being in that narrow bandwidth and minimizing the valleys and the troughs. And you just talked about feelings again, then and I, I've also read in interviews where you say you like your teams to be able to manage their aggression, and adapt on the court so that they actually minimize their mistakes, which is counter actually to what you hear from a lot of other coaches. But what I wanted to ask you was, when it comes to the game, when it's that Saturday night, and you're playing, how do you help people prepare themselves to actually be able to manage their aggression, to have that emotional control?

Alan Knipe 30:47

Yeah, it's a great question. And I think what happens in our sport is that, as coaches, one of the things you hear all the time is we have to get our players to get to the next point, get past the last point, when the next point, however they say it, and it's all true. However,

I think a large portion of coaches and certainly me at different times in my career, and I fight this all the time, I think most coaches do is we say all those things, but we coach in the last point, everything we're talking about to our players is the last point what just happened, what should have happened, what could have happened, and when you can get to the point that you're you're truly understanding of, and this is a quote I use all the time in our gym, it's not that it doesn't matter that we just made an error, or we made a mistake, or we did something out of character, that does matter. It just doesn't matter right now, it matters after the match in between sets in video session tomorrow, as we move on Mindset Monday, it but it doesn't matter right now, because it doesn't have anything to do with us winning the next point.

So once you can kind of get to that point that you can go back later and talk about things you don't have to fix everything real time because it's not going to help them win the next point. If you were to use for example, like an American baseball pitcher, or any golfer, you look at that situation, when they're getting ready to pitch no one says anything to them, when someone's getting ready to, you know, hit a golf ball and they're getting ready go into their backswing, the whole crowd, they put signs up that says quiet, be quiet. And it's a technique sport, right. So they don't want that. But in volleyball, even though it's a highly highly technical sport and technique, sport, we tend to constantly coach about their last play and their technique, but yet ask them to be really dialed in and focused on the next point. And I don't think that the athletes over time can do both, I don't think I don't think they do that very, very well. [PB15]

So the idea then is to try to be so good in training, that we train in our systems that we can truly allow them to be as freed up as possible on the court to make the proper reads during the game. But more importantly, of how, and this is probably the most vital part is in between the points as they prep for the next point of their total focus on just winning the next point, their physical and mental and vocal preparation. And we don't, they don't need to hear a whole bunch of stuff from us at that moment. As they prep, we want them to be prepping to be as physical as they possibly can. So we want them to be we want them to terminate when they get set, we want to get on the ball, we want them to try to point score when they're serving from the online. However, to read the situation, if it's a bad approach by me as a hitter, or a bad set from the center, or a bad toss on my serve to manage those situations into I can read the game enough to know the opportunity, the chances of success are so low in this situation, I need to manage my my physicality here and maybe a little be a little smarter over physical and try to find a way to score a point. That's not so physical. But that doesn't mean it all has to start from physicality first, and termination first, going back to baseball again, I would say in baseball, a pitcher who has a good off speed curveball breaking ball type pitch, generally sets that up with a fastball. So you have to find your fastball and you have to prep for your fastball and everything that you throw that slow and off speed needs to have those same look that might be a fastball. So we use that analogy in our gym all the time as we need to prep and find our fastball but be willing to go to secondary pitches or selections when the situation arises. But I say all those things because I can't get my players to be prepped and be physical and then be calm enough to read the situation if I'm standing at the sideline yelling at them about the last play.[PB16]

Paul Barnett 34:55

Head is this philosophy of not coaching to the last play but focusing on the next point, how does that influence your approach to conflict management?

Alan Knipe 35:05

I think the key to conflict management is to be open and honest and direct and to have a lack of fear of conflict. And when I say fear of conflict, I don't mean that we're hoping to engage in an argument. Fear of conflict to me just means that it's not a problem, if you have a difference of opinion, it's not a problem if my staff and I have a difference of opinion, and how we're going to resolve it in our office, where we're not going to have a difference of opinion is in practice or on the court, my players are going to have difference of opinions about lots of things, not only volleyball, but often the court stuff and everything and we're gonna be, we're gonna directly communicate, and we're gonna go peer to peer communication on that. And if there has to be a captain involved or a coach involved, that's okay, too. But we're not going to be we're not gonna have a fear of, of stating what we really believe, because we're not going to get to authentic answers or solution as a team. So I think it's it's multiple levels. Because when you talk about all these things, as far as you know, conflict management, it's easier to deal with it maybe in a practice or a training center training setting.

But what happens in a very high leverage emotional, important game where emotions are very, very high, it's a little bit different in those situations, because the adrenaline's pumping, and and they may say they may come across to each other, sometimes, the tone might not be right. But the message is, and that's something we talked about all the time is that we can get to the tone later, we can talk about let's one of those things that it's not that it doesn't matter that it came across wrong. Or if you have a problem with that you just can't have a problem right now and miss the message of what the teammate is saying. So we talk all the time about having thicker skin and hearing the message and then, but we also want to be aware of our tone, and we're working on our tone, being good with one another because we know over time that we can't just burn that bridge, just the way we talk to one another. But we're going to give everybody a little each other a little bit of latitude in the heat of the battle. And we're going to try to hear the messaging and then keep working on the tone as it goes along. You got to be able to talk to one another, you got to be honest. And you got to know that when your teammates and your coaches are talking to you or your players are talking back to me in that in a very healthy culture, then you've created a situation that people's intentions are good. And if their intentions are good than what they're saying has value. And they have to be and when you that has value and it's heard creates buy in. And when it creates buy in, we really now have something we have trust, we have a system, we have accountability, we can lean on each other in the matches, [PB17] [PB18]

we spent a lot of time with the men's collegiate season is a wonderful way. It has a wonderful calendar, we play our real matches that count from January to May, which gives me from August to December to work on all of these things with our guys. So our fall semester is as much about these things as it is about volleyball. Ellen, you've

Paul Barnett 37:58

been very generous with your time today. And I appreciate everything you've shared with us so far. But I I can't let you off the hook. I have to ask my last question. And I know that you've still got many, many years to go as a coach and I know that you've been over 30 almost 30 years now, I guess. But what's the legacy that you hope you leave? When you do eventually hang up the whistle? Yeah, I

Alan Knipe 38:21

think the longer you do it, I think that word starts to pop up. That legacy word starts to pop up. And it's a good thing and I think it probably if you if you were honest with yourself, it probably has changed over the years. Maybe what you might want for me really we have a we have a saying in our program overall our trophies and stuff it says Expect Greatness it's written very vague on purpose. It doesn't say expect greatness in volleyball or just academics or we want them to expect greatness in life. I've done this now for a long time. And I'm I'm very understanding that the very very smallest of percentages of our players will will make a living that they can retire off of from just playing the game of volleyball. So they are student athletes here at long beach state so their education is very, very important. Learning how to have life balance learning how to approach things that we teach in our program that's not just volleyball will apply into their business life into whatever they do professionally into their relationships later on in life. So I guess for me, I really want them to the legacy is I helped a large lot of young men find their way to create the tools necessary to expect and strive for greatness in all areas of our life. The winning volleyball games or Championships will all be a byproduct of that if we do it right.[PB19]

Paul Barnett 39:48

That's a fantastic saying and a great way to finish expect greatness in life. So Alan, thank you so much for your time tonight. It's been great chatting with you and I wish you All the best for the season ahead

Alan Knipe 40:01

awesome Paul thank you it's been a pleasure chatting with you