Team Bonding (473)

Team bonding is essential to good team chemistry, no matter what sport or who is playing. Having good team chemistry creates a sense of unity among the team in practices and matches. Most of this can be helped with team bonding. Team bonding comes in many different ways whether it is mandatory or just for fun. 

Some coaches will plan different mandatory team bonding times, like team dinners or scouting a team. A lot of times when we're at tournaments the coaches will have us all sit and watch one of the matches as a team so we know a little more about the other team, but also we are bonding instead of all being separate. At club tournaments, some coaches make a team watch other age teams from that same club play if they are at the same tournament as them, but if they don't have to watch anybody play, they just require that the team hang out together during any down time. 

Team dinners can be either planned by the coach or the parents (in club the patents always planned it). For school volleyball, it is usually at one of the player's houses, but for club the tournaments are out of town most of the time, so we find a restaurant to eat at. 

At the team dinners that I've been to, the coaches aren't there, although every coach is different- some might enjoy coming to them and talking with players and parents but others might not. 

During out of town tournaments, we stay in hotels and typically all of the time we are not playing is spent hanging out with the team at the hotel. You might think this sound boring, but you'd be surprised at how many things to do we've found at a hotel. 

Another way of team bonding is to have a sleepover! This is actually one of the best ways, since you are together (not playing volleyball) with the team for a whole night, and not only a few hours. We have a lot of fun at these sleepovers and this is usually where people get to know each other the best, especially when it is a new team or team with some new people on it. In club they are usually in the beginning of the season when everyone is getting to know each other, and for school a lot of them happen in the summer during pre season training when there is no school, or the night of a tournament. These are unplanned and happen with late notice, so it's okay if not everyone comes to them. 

All of these things greatly help the team dynamics on and off the court, and I think that our Kennedy volleyball team does a good job with bonding; we've had several team sleepovers and many team dinners!