Bruce Dunning is a teacher at Rideau High School. Bruce is one of most respected and knowledgeable club coaches in the province. He is fully certified Level 2 and 3 Technical. Bruce was part of the Maverick 18U HP Boys coaching staff and his now coaching 14U girls. Prior to this he was Head Coach for Algonquin College and for several Regional Teams and Assistant Coach for the Provincial Team. Bruce’s coaching philosophy is: Hard Work, Discipline and Respect!
By Bruce Dunning
When my daughter approached me two years ago about the possibility of starting club volleyball the next fall and asked if I would stop working with the 18U boys teams and switch to 13U girls, I was both happy and apprehensive. Happy that she was interested enough in the sport I love to want to play club ball, but nervous at the thought of moving out of my comfort zone and working with a different age group and gender.
To complicate matters further for me, the OVA had decided to implement a new competition format for this age group—Triple Ball. In this format the following modifications are applied.
The game follows a sequence of three rallies (service, free ball 1 and free ball 2).
- 1st rally – introduced by the server
- 2nd rally – free ball given to the receiving team
- 3rd rally – free ball given to the serving team.
- Every ball introduced is worth one point.
- The service rotates between teams after each three ball sequence.
- There is no specialization and each team must state prior to the game if position 2 or 3 will be the designated setter.
- The lineup for the match includes the entire team and each time they rotate the person in position 1 goes to the bench and a new player enters in position 6. At the start of each of the subsequent games, the rotational order must be maintained with the same girls who finished the last game on the floor to begin.
