In 2021, Michigan Volleyball Academy was in the process of expanding to other locations and adding additional teams. Directors Craig and Mayme Vlietstra recognized the challenging task of filling many new coaching positions, so they created a Director of Coaching position to oversee attracting, training and retaining quality coaches. Kelly Delacher had recently retired from a 25-year teaching career and was immediately interested in the opportunity.
In his initial talks with the administrative staff, they talked about his strengths as well as the needs of the club. The Director of Coaching position evolved from those initial talks about what it would take to improve MVA’s coaching staff. Having a big picture vision was the most important thing in starting this position. Kelly and the MVA leaderships then worked their way back from there. Kelly’s experience fit well with MVA’s needs and he was excited about developing this position from scratch with the club’s other Directors so it would be a positive role within the club.
Experience and Philosophy
Kelly has been a Varsity High School Coach for 29 years and coached every age level in club from 11’s to 18’s. He’s dealt with all sorts of parent complaints, many different administrators, and wide ranges of skill levels of players from beginner to State Championship caliber. Through his experience, he can give coaches a good perspective when they are dealing with challenging situations. He has developed a coaching philosophy based on building confidence and positive coaching tactics that he strives to share and model for MVA’s younger coaches.
Responsibilities of the Director of Coaching
Ultimately the purpose of this position is to find ways to share experience and connect with your club’s coaching staff. MVA wants their coaches to feel supported and feel like they are given opportunities to expand their own knowledge and leadership capabilities that they can take with them into coaching, as well as other areas of their professional lives.
One way Kelly established that connection and sharing was by creating a Mentor Program. One key to creating this program is that it is not time consuming for the mentors. Each mentor is given 6 other coaches to create a text group with. This text group is used to pass on information to MVA coaches in a smaller group format. It also gives an avenue for younger coaches to ask questions to an experienced coach. Occasionally mentors will prompt the coaches with something to talk about within their text group. This is program is in the very early stages, but ultimately the club is trying to increase connections amongst its coaching staff so the coaches feel like they have another coach or group of coaches they can reach out to with questions or concerns.
Kelly’s goal is see all of the coaches and practices at least once per month. Prior to the start of season, he conducted a full day coaching clinic for all MVA coaches. It is important to have patience and the support from the other Directors in the club in order to achieve the larger goals and have the objectives of this position running seamlessly. Since Kelly is coaching his own team, it can be more challenging to make connections with 80 plus coaches across multiple locations. The hope is that the mentor groups will make it easier to connect with all of MVA’s coaches even though he cannot be at all the practices and events.
During the season he spends around 12-18 hours per week just on his Director of Coaching duties. In addition to his responsibilities leading the coaching staff at MVA, in his full-time role, Kelly is also involved with managing the events hosted by MVA, overseeing in-season player evaluations, and he coaches MVA’s top 18’s team.
Education
Kelly is working on creating an education program for the MVA coaching staff to access. This education program is based on competencies/skills/behaviors that the MVA Directors feel high level coaches exhibit. They spent quite some time creating that basic framework. The next step is creating learning modules for each of those behaviors, and then creating a self-evaluation form for coaches to use that will be based on those competencies. After receiving feedback from the first year of the Mentor Program, Kelly plans to make some changes to it for next season in order to improve its effectiveness as a learning platform as well.
“Ever since I picked the game of volleyball up when I was a freshman in college, I fell in love with it. I love that I can share the passion for the game that I have with new coaches. I love to talk volleyball philosophy, drills, psychology, etc. with all of our coaches. And I love the fact that I can be a supporter of their journey and a small part of their growth and development as a coach,” said Kelly.
Michigan Volleyball Academy (Grand Rapids, MI) is a member of the Junior Volleyball Association, an organization committed to enhancing the junior volleyball experience for club directors, coaches, players, and fans.
