Photo By Sgt. Nathan Wicks | KANSAS CITY, Missouri - Marine Col. David Fallon, commanding officer of the 9th Marine...... read more read more
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KANSAS CITY, Missouri - U.S. Marines with the Marine Corps Recruiting Command (MCRC) participated in the 2017 American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) convention here, Dec. 13-17, 2017.
During the convention, Marines presented the 2017 United States Marine Corps / AVCA Coach of the Year awards, held a physical training session pushing participants to better themselves as influencers and mentors, and hosted a Marine Corps leadership talk to share 242 years of battle-hardened institutional knowledge.
The Coach of the Year awards recognized the top coaches regionally and nationally, from groups ranging from clubs for 12-year-old players to Division I NCAA colleges. The convention ran concurrently with the 2017 NCAA Volleyball Championship Tournament, and the National Coach of the Year award went to Mary Wise, the head coach of the University of Florida Gators women’s team, which made it to the title match.
Coaches were invited to a “Wake Up and Work Out” exercise activity lead by Marines on the second day of the convention, where they got a feel for some of the High Intensity Interval Training the Corps introduced to its fitness repertoire several years ago.
Finally, Col. David Fallon, commanding officer of the 9th Marine Corps Recruiting District, delivered the capstone leadership talk on the last day of the conference.
The Marine Corps’ partnership with the AVCA, an organization whose values and ideals align with its own, allows it to help shape a brighter future for the nation’s youth by investing in some of the most influential people in their life, their coaches.
“Coaching is about leadership development and the Marine Corps is about leadership development,” said Kathy DeBoer, executive director of the AVCA. “We’re in different businesses but the goal is the same. We ask, ‘how do we get a group of people to act as one, to get out of themselves, to go beyond themselves, and to do that in an environment that is difficult?’ What the Marines do in service to our country is so much harder than what we do, but yet in the gym, we think what we do is hard. So, it’s still about sacrifice and committing to each other and we’ve learned a tremendous amount from what the Marines do.”
Maj. Jennifer Peterson, a recruiting support officer with MCRC, said as a prior volleyball player, the relationship between the AVCA and the Marine Corps holds great value to her as well as the rest of the nation since both organizations play pivotal roles in shaping the leaders of tomorrow.
“I was a volleyball player myself,” said Peterson. “It’s exciting to see the popularity of the sport grow over the past few years. I see a lot of coaches here who exemplify some of the Marine Corps leadership principles. One of them being, ‘know yourself and seek self-improvement.’ They know what they’re good at and what they have to get better at. Personally, the coaches in my life played an important part in my development as a leader and as a person. Please, do not underestimate the impact that you have on your team and players as people and future leaders. The relationship between the AVCA and the Marine Corps is very important as we share the responsibility of cultivating the next generation of leaders.”
Fallon reemphasized the importance of coaching and mentoring during his leadership talk, with dozens of coaches in attendance.
“All the qualities that you see that are developed through the student athlete as he or she grows through the sport are precisely the qualities that we're looking for in our Marines,” Fallon said. “Thing like perseverance, seeking out a challenge and working as a team are all things that we look for in our Marines and nowhere else is that really developed outside of the Marine Corps other than in the athletic programs across our country.”
Several members of the AVCA said they gain a lot from the Marines’ presence at their event and hope to see them return to help the coaches further hone their leadership abilities.
“I’d like to keep learning from the Marines,” said DeBoer. “Our coaches are always very excited about the sessions the Marine Corps does, about the opportunities to go and actually dig deep into some of the processes that the Marine Corps uses to build future leaders and implement them into their coaching of these young men and women.”
| Date Taken: | 12.17.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 12.17.2017 15:52 |
| Story ID: | 259243 |
| Location: | KANSAS CITY, MO, US |
| Web Views: | 298 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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