My sister Kim was home over the Christmas break so while I had the chance I sat her down to talk about how to be a good team captain. You can find the transcript of the video here as well as a link to the video itself.
In her years as the captain of the USA women's team for the 1988 and 1992 Olympics, Kim learned a lot about what did and didn't work. I left Stanford after my junior season for a chance to try out for the USA team prior to the 1992 Olympics and I got to see her work first hand. I didn't make the team, but the time I spent training in San Diego made me a much better volleyball player when I returned to Stanford in the Fall for my senior season.
I can personally vouch for the fact that Kim was a very capable team leader. I always hated running and when I first joined the team I was terrible at the 8-minute run that they called a "warm-up" but was really more like an 8-minute sprint around the park in San Diego where we trained.
The first few days I killed myself to try to keep up (which I could not) and at some point one of the veterans made the mistake of stating that it "wasn't a race." It sure felt like one to me, but after that the other rookies and I slowed our pace down. If it was truly just a warm-up and not a race, why should we kill ourselves? We wanted to save some for practice, which was plenty hard enough to survive as it was.
Well, once this other rookie and I fell off the back of the pack and did our own warm-up run for a couple of days, the same vet that told us it was not a race ended up complaining to my sister, the captain, that we were "dogging it" on the runs. Kim had to sit us down and talk to us.
The bottom line: it was in fact an unofficial race and we were expected to kill ourselves trying to keep up. Long story short, we once again began to huff and puff our way through the "warm-up" run at the back of the pack, but not too far back. Kim was straight-forward and diplomatic with us while she explained the situation and got us back on track.
As she says in the video, being a captain is not easy. Sometimes you have to handle delicate problems (with your own sister) in order to keep the peace. But Kim did it with tact and honesty. So check out her tips for being a good team captain in the latest installment of what will be a monthly volleyball video on the site. Feel free to send suggestions of who you would like to see talking about what subject and I will do my best to get them on tape.
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