In a closed forum frequented by volleyball coaches, the issue of coaching and playing in masks as a pandemic introduced measure often gets discussed,...
Category: Skepticism
Secrets to a volleyball pass
This 20 minute video promises that an “AVP Coach Teaches Athletes the Secrets to a GREAT Volleyball Pass“ Well, let’s save you a click...
Volleyball Stops in Hermosa Beach
22 July 2020 At the time of this writing, the United States is breaking records in coronavirus cases, with California eclipsing the previous record...
Understanding Competence
Coaches often refer to athletes as being beginners or novices, as well as those who are “advanced” or “elite”. In racing sports like track...
The Moral Hazards
The drug Naloxone revolutionized treatment of opioid drug overdoses, but had an unexpected sociological consequence: it’s availability actually led to an increase in drug...
Visualizing NCAA GPA data
On 5 Sept 2018, the NCAA Research team tweeted out this chart : It reports the average core high school grade point averages (GPA)...
Becoming height neutral
The website Beachvolleyballspace covered the recent FIVB Gstaad Major with an article celebrating the winners, the currently top ranked Canadian team of Paredes and...
In praise of being quiet
“I need to talk more.” “Talk!” “We need to talk.” Verbal loquaciousness is almost universally valued on the beach volleyball court. Coaches punish juniors...
Falsifiability
In an earlier posting on detecting the signs of pseudoscience, I quoted an article which mentions unfalsifiability as a property. This is actually a...
Recognizing Sports Pseudoscience
In a recent discussion with BJ Leroy of USA Volleyball, I encountered a paper by Bailey et al (2018) published in the open access...