Olds College men's volleyball head coach Ryan Marsden has come back to campus with some new ideas and techniques after coaching the Canadian national men's B team to a bronze medal this summer.
Under his guidance, they won the medal by beating the U.S. men's B team during the The North, Central America and Caribbean Volleyball Confederation (NORCECA) Champions Cup in Colorado, a competition involving high-level teams from North America and in or around the Caribbean.
Marsden says the Canadian national B team is knocking on the door of the Olympic team.
"It's kind of like a next generation team. So we have our top team that goes to the Olympics — or they're trying to go to the Olympics — and then there's our team that's next, of all the guys who will replace those guys eventually," he says.
He says he learned a lot from various coaches, including Glenn Hoag, the Canadian national team's head coach.
"(It was) Just phenomenal to be able to coach at the international level," Marsden says. "The experience that I gained this summer with being involved with that team, the learning curve, was immense. It was incredible; the best (experience) that anyone could have ever wanted in my profession.
"I'm just excited to come back now with our college team to be able to pass along things that I learned and the excitement and enthusiasm that I have to be a part of the game, to pass that on to these young men here and see what we can do this year; see if we can put our program and our institution on the volleyball map on the men's side and have people really respect us. I'm really excited about that," he adds.
For example, Marsden has used video as one of his coaching tools before but over the summer he learned the value of using video more extensively to determine strategy against an opposing team.
"I've been able to put together a more sophisticated tactical plan to beat the opponent," he says.
He also learned another technique from Hoag: doing a detailed profile of each player's strengths and weaknesses and determining how to improve their play.
"That was a big learning curve for me," Marsden says. "When you're a head coach of a team, yes, you work with the individuals but you're over the whole team as well. I learned this summer that you need to spend more time with the individuals.
"The team is still super-important, you can't forget about that. But spending more time with those individuals and building that athlete profile is really important and that's something that I really enjoy as well. So that was good to learn from him."
The home opener for the Broncos men's volleyball team is Oct. 26 at 8 p.m. versus SAIT.
