What does the Stanford women’s volleyball team do for mindset training? 

We do a lot of stuff that we work on individually. We see what the needs are of the individuals. We talk a lot about confidence. Confidence is where the training and the mindset intersect. If you put the time in, you can develop confidence. The other things that we talk about (are) mindfulness and finding your center. We talk about breathing. We do some meditation training. The thing that we talk directly about as far as competing on the floor is; being aware of where your thoughts in competition, being aware of where your thoughts are in practice and if they are negative thoughts, replacing those thoughts. We talk a lot about thought replacement and being aware of (what) you’re thinking. Replace the thought “I can’t do this” with – “I can do this. I am strong. I am powerful. I got this.” We talk a lot about that thought replacement.

We talk a lot about confidence. Confidence is where the training and the mindset intersect. If you put the time in, you can develop confidence. 

What type of strategies do you use to help players rebound when they have a crisis of confidence?

To me that’s very individualized and it depends on the athlete. For some of them I feel like we try to get ahead of it a little bit. One of our athletes last year was new to us and she was struggling with confidence early on. I think she was trying to decide if she could fit in the team or not. She was struggling to learn our system and all that. One of the things we talked about is how do you earn the confidence first and understand that there’s going to be this learning curve. That’s the 1st piece, giving her perspective. You’re learning a whole new system, you’re playing with new players and you’re trying to figure all this out. Just take a deep breath and be committed to the process.

I feel like my athletes are very pragmatic, they over analyze, and so if we can find the things that are necessary for them to compete and they attack those things in practice or with a little bit of extra time then usually that takes care of a lot of it.  She was a middle blocker, so for her (it looked like) getting extra footwork reps, a few more slide reps, or working on a shot.

And having a conversation – this is how it looks like this team is going to defend you, or this is how they defended you last time. We’ve done that same strategy with passers that have struggled or setters that have struggled. Instead of just saying you should have confidence, get those reps because then they feel like they’re earning the confidence. By mitigating their feelings and just saying what you’re feeling is wrong doesn’t really help them. Let’s try to give them perspective first and then let’s see if we can earn that confidence.

That’s worked out for most of our athletes actually. It’s like if they want to get an A in the class, then they’re going to study and put the time in. That’s how they’re going to have confidence on their tests. We try to draw those parallels. The challenge for all of them is trying to find that perspective. It’s the perspective that it’s okay to make mistakes right now. This is part of the process. We only care about being good in December. 

When you have a team that is very diverse and full of different personalities, how do you approach team building and leadership? 

I do my best to try to recognize leadership. Everyone talks about developing leadership, but I feel like we recognize leadership. We have to recognize who the leaders are first. We don’t have a captain on our team. We have a floor captain. We just say whoever is setting is our captain, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily our leader. We try to figure out what things we value as a group and what are our goals as a group. As you start to have those conversations the vocal leadership starts to emerge. I pay attention to that and identify the leaders. Once I identify who the (natural) leaders are, then I try to put as much on those guys to help drive the culture and the cohesiveness as much as possible because I feel like it’s always stronger when it’s coming from the athletes.

My leadership style as a head coach, even with my staff, is to identify what people are really good at. I’m going to give you the freedom to explore those things as a recruiter, as a coach, as the competitive leader, as the task leader or as the social leader. Let’s identify what you are. Let me be a resource to help you be the best version of that leader possible and what this group needs from you. And then empower you and amplify the message. As a teacher I need to teach our athletes what it means to be a leader, empower them to develop into successful leaders and to lead the way that we need them to and in the way the group is looking for them to lead.

How do you teach communication on your team?

The most important part of communication from me and from my athletes is we’ve got to listen. When freshman come in, they don’t listen to anybody unless you scream and yell. They just want to communicate. The first step for us is we have to listen to each other. But also, if you want people to listen to you, you have to know how to communicate concisely so you don’t lose them in the conversation. And so we talk pretty openly about that. We say – be direct, be on point, be on topic and be concise with that communication in every single way. As the person that’s communicated to, let’s make sure we listen and acknowledge. Just that, (learning to) listen and acknowledge, makes us better communicators in every single way. That goes for if it’s a text I send to the group, they all acknowledge it, they all send a little thumbs up emoji or a got it, or whatever. We give them the freedom to create their own language but with these rules, you’re going to communicate concisely and receive the communication. In this world where we communicate so much through text messages, I think the acknowledgement piece and the listening piece are lost.

What type of pre-game routine do you have in your program?

I leave that up to the athletes. I would not say that we have a routine. I would say that finding a routine that works for each individual is absolutely important. You need to figure out how to prepare yourself physically, mentally and emotionally so you can play in the national championship. And then also you need to figure out how to get your head right for each match. It’s going to take practice and you gotta figure that out. And so we’d talk about that as a group. How do you get yourself ready for competition? How do you eliminate everything that’s around you and get yourself in this moment right now?Different teams have had different strategies. One group shut everything down, turned their phones off, and (found) a quiet place to meditate or breathe, but with my team last year it was like dance party. Goofiness got them in the right place because that helped them let go of everything else.

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The Kirsten Bernthal Booth that was hired back in 2003 inherited a team that won three games in a season. How did you convert the culture of your team to adopt a “winning mentality”.

I’ve always been a coach that believes in process. Doing the right things and not being totally locked into outcomes. To me, as an athlete and as a coach, that frees you a little bit. We’d really focus on process and taking risks.  In a small way, if a player tipped, they were probably going to get yelled at. If they had a perfect set and they made a low risk decision, they were going to get in trouble with us.  And if they had a good set and they went for it, regardless of outcome, we were going to cheer for that. It allowed them (the players) to go for it and know that there weren’t going to be ramifications. I know that sounds simple, but it really did switch the mentality. We’re a pretty high risk program. When you get a good ball, we’re going to go for it. It’s paid dividends because at the Division I level, if you give the other team that opportunity, they’re going to throw it down your throat, so we’ve got to seize it.

I think our biggest job as coaches is to make kids believe how great they can be.  I really believe that confidence is key to everything

If you have a player that’s in a rut or experiencing a crisis of confidence, what are some strategies you use to help get that player out of their funk?

I think our biggest job as coaches is to make kids believe how great they can be.  I really believe that confidence is key to everything. It starts with how we talk to them. Every word that we say as coaches is impactful. Everything we’re saying is being heard and we need to be careful with the words that we choose. If I see a kid is struggling, the first thing I’m going to do is talk to them. I’m not going to attack them. Maybe there’s something in their life going on, maybe their parents are struggling, you know it might be bigger things. So the first thing is that I’m going to reach out and see what’s going on. If it’s small stuff then I’m not going to make a big deal out of it. If they’re really struggling, then I’m going to try and give them tactical things to do.

They (players) can always control their demeanor. If I can tell they’re down, then I’m going to challenge them to make sure their teammates don’t know they’re down. They need to make sure they’re holding themselves with confidence. I am a believer that you can fake and your mind will follow you faking things, so “fake it til you make” it is a mantra in our gym. Displaying that confidence is important. 

If they are still struggling at that point, then we’ll talk about tactical things. Let’s make sure your step-close is really explosive, or let’s make sure we’re hitting high hands. Another thing we’ve done is made a highlight clip on the iPad that just sits on the end of the bench. During a time-out or when a player is subbed out, they can watch a 20-second video of themself looking awesome.  You can also spin stats in a positive way and try to give them data of why they’re actually better than they think.

There’s not a perfect solution for each kid. Each kid is different. Some you have success with and some you don’t. The benefit of being a college coach is that we get to pick the players. I believe that every kid on my team has the ability to be great and it’s my job to make them know how great I think they can be.

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In the 2019 NCAA tournament your team beat BYU 3-0 at BYU.  How did you prepare your team for that big match-up? 

There were a number of factors. We had very high goals for the season and expectations for ourselves. We were ready for the NCAA tournament. We finished 3rd in the PAC-12. We were ready to make a nice run (in the playoffs) and we felt really confident. We really thought that we had a shot at hosting, and found out that we were going to BYU for the 3rd time in 4 years. I couldn’t have been more proud of my team for the way they handled that. I had very strong leadership.  Right from the start they were like, it’s a bummer but it doesn’t matter. I’ve been doing this long enough now to know that if you start getting too worried about where you’re sent and what your seed might be, then you’re probably starting from behind right off the bat. So we just had a really great mindset going into the tournament right away.  We took the mentality of wherever, whoever and whatever it takes.

We took the mentality of wherever, whoever and whatever it takes.

I felt like it was a calumniation of the whole season, what our goals were and what our expectations were.  We had a plan in place for the season.  Part of executing our plan was to make a nice run. Losing can be a great motivator too and we had lost to them the year before.

There was a lot of media and our fans that tried to make a big deal out of it. Everyone was like hey congratulations and I’m so sorry that you have to go back to BYU.  We just made a decision really early that we wouldn’t let anybody talk to us about the seeding issue.  I was nervous because we had won a big five set match the night before against Illinois and we were tired.  It was one of those things where less is more. We kept our scouting very limited. We let them have time for a nap after a little serve and pass. We were just ready to go. 

How do you prepare your team game after game throughout the long season and prevent player burnout?

The grind of a season is so great that every week you’re looking to find that place where you can play fresh, free and have a great weekend. Especially in the PAC-12. Every week is a different beast and it’s a long season. Sometimes you just grind matches out and that’s what you expect. And then sometimes you have something that’s really exciting happening, like the NCAA tournament.

We had a weekend where we were celebrating my 30th year and we were retiring our first ever volleyball jersey in our arena – Kim Turner. Our team really bought into the excitement of that weekend and had a great week of preparation. At the end of the day it always comes down to if you have a great week of prep, you’re probably going to play really well on the weekend. If you don’t, if you’re good enough you can find a way to grind it out but if you’re not then you’re going to lose. We beat UCLA 3-0 that weekend too and it was a flawless match.

I think it was a combination of you’re constantly doing the work that you do and then you find some places within the season that are you know, players get really fired up about. Maybe it’s an opponent you’re playing that the players like to play. We seem to play pretty well against Washington. We have great matches with them all the time. So in the course of a long season, it’s important to find weekends that are a little different than the other ones because otherwise it’s just a grind weekend after weekend. I would say that UCLA match was pretty similar to our BYU match in that we just came out, we executed, we had a great mindset and a great week of practice. 

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