Trojan Volleyball making the grade
By Katie Taylor
of The Valley Mirror

“We’re looking okay,” says Orland High’s first-year volleyball coach Dan LaBar, 29.

He is honest with his team — if they want to be good, he tells them, they will need to learn technique, make changes, practice and grow.

“We’re figuring out what we need to be competitive,” Mr. Labar says.

Mr. LaBar played volleyball in high school at Clayton Valley in Concord, and for two years with the Chico State team. He’s been coaching for nine years, most recently having coached the women’s Chico State club team for five seasons.

He has now taken up coaching a high school team while working as a teacher in a discipline classroom at the Educational Alternative Center in Orland.

“The first thing I wanted to accomplish is make this into a program,” Mr. LaBar says of his coaching goals. He has instituted program-wide elements, he says, like joint freshman-JV-varsity team conditioning on Fridays and summer camps for all three teams.

Coach LaBar is also encouraging his girls to just play more volleyball.

“My girls don’t play club,” he says. “They don’t play all year. They play other sports. I’m coming from a world where volleyball is the only sport.” He says that playing club often takes players’ skills — and a team — to the next level. He is hoping some girls will opt to join the volleyball clubs in Willows or Chico during the off season.

Coach LaBar doesn’t know the team’s record last year.

“It wasn’t good, that’s all I remember,” he says. He says records aren’t a major concern for now — he is focusing on going back to basics and building the program from the ground up.

“They haven’t been exposed to a lot of things,” says Mr. LaBar, who says he is trying to give the girls tools to understanding and playing volleyball.
“I’m going to teach [them] three types of defenses, not just one,” he says.

After a foundation of basics, Coach LaBar says, “then it is problem-solving.” Following a competition, he looks at the team’s numbers, finding their errors and then using those problem areas to focus practice.

So far, after a scrimmage with Paradise High, the girls are working on passing and serving.

Coach LaBar says he also stresses education and building character on the court.

“They know what is expected of them,” says the coach, after his girls promptly start running laps without a cue.

“Orland volleyball means be respectable. People know this when they walk in the gym, regardless of how they perform athletically.”

Mr. LaBar lists two players to watch right now, short blonde labarro Rashelle Hudson and tall blonde middle hitter Whitney Otterson. The blondes and the rest of the Lady Trojans will take on Durham High this weekend.