The truth that emerges is that Fipav does not invest in coaches, and we ask ourselves who “builds” the players of tomorrow? How is the organization used by the federation? Who are the people that have pivotal roles in the organization? How is it that in certain roles at the regional level are the same faces for decades? It is not that Fipav must answer these questions, but not doing so certainly does not improve the situation.
Who holds the positions of responsibility and does nothing to change things, becomes accomplice in this management policy increasingly distant from volleyball, and closer only to power-sharing.
Volleyball
I will illustrate my point of view:
1) Coaches pay an annual fee for the membership in the federation, as is the case in every other sport. The problem is what you get in return for this fee … I never received a technical bulletin, never received anything produced by CQN (which theoretically should use part of this money for studies or other), never any communication, nothing … The site of the federvolley is also unusable.
2) Mandatory upgrades: since the money has to be made, updates are required … in fact it is right that a coach wshould be upgraded, for goodness sake … but the way that it’s done is questionable. Coaches are forced to take courses in their areas, or better, nothing prevents you from paying 50/60 euros a lesson outside the region, however, they will not be covered. Unfortunately, coaches are rarely taught by a coach who enjoys respect and talk about topics that really interest the listener, more often it happens that most teachers discuss things related to their (unfortunately limited) personal experience, often not shared, sometimes even harmful in my humble opinion … it is clear that this is my personal opinion, I’ve lived in volleyball for many years, I would pay gladly even more than the 50 euros to hear a coach speaking about a topic of interest to me, however, I’m are more or less forced to pay the same amount for a topic that doesn’t interest … And unfortunately this idea, shared by many, transformes the required updates into a regional tax and nothing more. We choose the ones more comfortable in terms of proximity to subject matter and teaching, pay their bills, take the presence … and you retrieve the lost sleep.
3) Training: since I wrote about the teachers, I am also speaking about the courses to train these teachers … The course that I had to attend to become the national teacher, hasn’t changed for years (in fact I had already became a regional teacher, but for some reason the title of regional teacher was not enough, now I need to be a national teacher … as if I had forgotten how to teach). This is a residential course that lasts 2/3 days, with methodological lessons about volleyball, normally held by coaches of the national youth teams, and this nothing bad, so far everything is fine, the problem is that the end of the course there is no exam or test, that you have to pass in order become a teacher …
Coaches course
3a) Who chooses the teachers?
I suspect that attending is not enough to pass the course, but you also need to know the right people … Let me explain: I went through that during the past two years, but no one has ever even called to ask if I was available to do some lessons for the region, and the same can be said for other coaches that I know and that have never even been contacted. Courses have more or less the same teachers …
