Case Study: AVCA Spring Conference
Will Engle is doing something right. In 2008, the American Volleyball Coaches Association had 30 coaches attend its inaugural spring conference. Last year, that number jumped to 125. And this year, 200 attendees joined Engle, the AVCA’s director of external operations who planned the event, in Palo Alto, Calif., for a 3-day conference earlier this month. Engle talked with Connect about why he picked Palo Alto for the event and how he got lucky finding volunteers to help out during the conference.
The event: American Volleyball Coaches Association Spring Conference in Palo Alto, Calif., May 6-8, at Stanford University’s Arrillaga Family Sports Center. The conference ran in conjunction with the NCAA Men’s Volleyball Championship, which was being played at Stanford University.
The attendees: The majority of attendees consisted of volleyball coaches, but several business owners and exhibitors attended to promote their products. Several players from a local NCAA Division III school, University of California Santa Cruz, helped with demonstrations and participated as well.
The plan: Provide new education and coaching ideas to attendees. “Our main focus with this event is coaching education, which is one of the cornerstones of our association,” says Engle. The theme of the conference was 21st-century coaching skills, or what Engle calls “outside-the-box” ideas, including teaching players to “read” other players and marketing volleyball programs through social media.
The logistics: With some guidance from university administrators, Engle opted to host the conference at the Arrillaga Family Sports Center on Stanford’s campus because it had an athletic court and multiple classrooms in the same location, which suited the AVCA’s combination of on-court and classroom educational sessions. “The facility was beautiful, just the right size, and everything was in the same building in close proximity,” says Engle. Attendees stayed at the Sheraton, Westin Palo Alto, Creekside Inn and Courtyard by Marriott, all in close proximity to Stanford’s campus.
The result: The conference, which has grown considerably since its inaugural event three years ago, hit the right note with its on-court education sessions using demonstrations by the UC Santa Cruz players. “The players were not only very easy to work with, and good at demonstrating, but also they also were very enthusiastic about helping and eager to learn along with the coaches in attendance,” says Engle. “Finding unpaid, non-attendee volunteers, not to mention college students who are not only enthusiastic about helping and learning but also grateful for the opportunity, was certainly a gem that our association has not always easily found.”
