Hedgehog or fox: what a volleyball club should be best at.
Coach Andor on the one question behind every decision at the club, from the strength room to the end-of-practice lesson, and why it matters to a parent choosing a club.
The question
The fox knows many things; the hedgehog knows one big thing. Jim Collins turned that line into a question for organisations: what can you be the best in the world at, what drives your engine, and what are you deeply passionate about? Where the three overlap is the hedgehog concept. Coach Andor has used it with high school programs for a decade, and it is the question behind the club.
Our answer
St. Johns Volleyball Club is built to be the place in North Florida where a girl in grades five to nine learns volleyball properly: technique that will not hurt her, a strength room that trains the movements she plays with, and a coach who places every player himself. Not the biggest club. Not the most tournaments. That one thing.
That is why the building has three courts and not six, why the strength room and the mindset room are in it, and why every practice ends with a life lesson. It is also why the site says 18 teams and leaves the trophies to the Results page.
Why a parent should care
Ask any club what it is best at. If the answer is a list, that is a fox. A club that can say its one thing in a sentence will coach your daughter the same way on a Tuesday in October and a Saturday in May, and you will be able to tell whether it is keeping its word.
More from the gym
- The screens beside our courts replay every rep. Here is why.A player sees her own arm swing a few seconds after she made it, while the coach is still talking. What delayed video review does for a 12-year-old, and why we built it into the gym.
- Coaches, slow down. A tryout story.A coach who had never met her asked a player to move five feet and change her platform in the middle of a tryout. What happened next is why we tell players to say thank you and play their game.
- Volleyball Pattern Training®, explained for parents.Why the squat she lifts with is the squat she passes from, what the eight VPT episodes cover, and why every club practice starts with thirty minutes in the strength room.