"Losing repeatedly without reflection is just a sad weekend in a convention center." This comment had me rolling." I love your placement of humor because as a JV High school coach, a coach who survived seven years coaching CYS boys league and now my first year as a head coach of a 15U and 16 U girls travel team humor is what I lean into :) Your article was thought provoking, revealing and seriously makes me want to go watch more volleyball. The word constraint grabbed my attention first bc I have been embracing CLA in my own practices, often mirroring drills I learned as a basket instructor with PGC basketball camps and I have seen the benefits: the girls are more locked in during small sided games and we see results in their intentionality. But again I thought how can winning be a constraint and so I read on....... and it has constrained my belief system. I am guilty of having a developmental coaching mindset backing the transformational vs transactional party :). After all I kept every ninth grade and tenth grade girl that could spell basketball this past year because our varsity coach took every player that ever played up to her team :) I jest but it was pretty darn close. Our goal was to get better, to not focus on the "W" and thats what we did and our record was 3 and 11 but wow the girls all got along and everybody got to play and my attendance rate was the highest I have had in four years and added bonus the girls even wanted to play this summer. I created two travel teams so we could go on the road and get better. The first two tournaments we were blown out by 13 and 14 year old teams but my mind was on practice and getting reps. We lived those sad weekends in some high school gym just far enough away you couldnt go home btw games. Parents started rumbling about combining the teams to create a winning team, I said its not about the "W" they need playing time. My vision was for the girls to get better through live play (where are swords are sharpened as we face our prepubescent foes) I began to question my own decision to create these teams. Here I was committing all these hours, even missing my own son's AAU games and the girls werent giving the effort we would expect. This past weekend both our teams played two games on Saturday and we had some bright moments but their effort seemed intermittent. On Sunday at 0800 am fueled by coffee and hope I wrote two things on the board 100% effort or sit next to me (Fear) and Self Belief (Transformational). I subbed early and often and the girls took the lead and never looked back to the same team that beat us the day prior. Later that day with our 16 U I took the same approach and after being down by 18 points 25-7, after subbing constantly because the girls were not playing both ends of the court one of my best shooters got a run and then another girl scored and so on, actually had every player on our team get on the scoreboard. We lost to the eventual tourney champs by 5 and man it felt good to almost get a "w" and we did it with every player getting reps. Looking back I felt justified in this more stern or controlling approach as it did give us a "W" But after reading your article there is much more to unravel....and as with every post game assessment, post season and or player evaluation its this part that keeps me trying to get better.