Sudden Impact Volleyball U15 Head Coach, Microsoft CVP Product Management, Ecological Dynamics Geek
Seattle, WA
Joined July 2022
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The USA Women Are #1 at the VNL. Here's What's Really Driving It. open.substack.com/pub/alexsi…
Volleyball hot take backed data on >682k passes: All but one NCAA DI Women's Power 4 team passed too close to the net in 2025.
Here's my blog post with the data to prove it: open.substack.com/pub/alexsi…
Dear politicians, no matter how many texts you send, I will never make a donation based on getting an SMS message. Never. Ever. Best, Alex
Texas A&M converts 37.48% of serve-receive rallies on the very first swing.
Highest in all of Power 4.
56.4% of their side-out points come from that first ball.
They don't grind. They score immediately. @AggieVolleyball
New post on FBSO% and what it reveals about how teams actually win on serve receive:
open.substack.com/pub/alexsi…
New post: Serve Error% ranks 31st out of 36 metrics in predicting winning across all of NCAA DI volleyball.
349 teams. 5,100+ matches. r = -0.12.
The data is pretty clear.l!
open.substack.com/pub/alexsi…
I spent the last few weeks building a R based data pipeline to analyze every 2025 in-conference volleyball match across the ACC, Big 10, Big 12, and SEC.
630 matches. 66 teams. 30+ metrics.
Here's what actually predicts winning sets — and what doesn't:
✅ Dig-Set-Kill% (r=0.83) — way more predictive than raw Dig%
✅ Trans In-System Conv% (r=0.73) — underrated and trainable
❌ Serving Error% (r=-0.16) — stop obsessing over it
❌ Perfect Pass% (r=0.47) — Good Pass% matters more
Full post with all charts and the complete correlation table: alexsimons947623.substack.co…
Thanks to @JoeTrinsey for the inspiration for this work!
What Really Wins Sets? A Deep Dive into Power 4 Volleyball Statistics. Some pretty interesting/surprising results! For instance, having a higher service error % is positively correlated with winning. Pretty fascinating!
open.substack.com/pub/alexsi…
EcoD and Volleyball Episode 4 - Some fun new volleyball activities I used of the last 3 weeks with my team targeted at improving a few very specific skill areas - Hope you'll find interesting! youtu.be/KtWiI2dY3gY?si=ku9V… via @YouTube
The 3rd episode of my video series experimenting with an Ecological Dynamics and Differential Learning based approach to coaching volleyball is live. Would love to receive any feedback or suggestions folks might have! youtu.be/KMDbRoBPM_s?si=W3X0… via @YouTube
Episode 2 in my attempt to share and learn from other coaches - Explorations in CLA and Differential Learning youtu.be/wFXX2EiyvcM?si=PaJu… via @YouTube
For last 4 years I've been using an Ecological Dynamics & Differential Learning based approach to coaching. Hoping to share and learn from other coaches. Here I discuss a recent practice and the activities and constraints we used: youtu.be/5PqvP6HMGMs?si=ZEnO… via @YouTube
I didn’t know I was a judo fan until last night - and then today’s Olympic championship was electric! Allez Les Bleus!
Alex Simons retweeted
For teens, The longer I coach, the less I’m teaching fundamentals of tactics and technique. I’m their therapist/parent/life coach. Calming the drama in life, I find, really helps bring out their best performance.
Very few have been asked: what do you need to play your best?
Got up early this morning during my lottery assigned window of time and managed to grab tickets to the men's and women's volleyball quarterfinals and finals for Paris Olympics 2024. Je suis excité!
Fun time coaching this crew this weekend! Played some of their best and most consistent vball of the season.
Overheard at U12 volleyball practice tonight: ‘If I could get paid to do this as a job, I’d totally do it!’ All I could think was ‘me too!’ 🤣 – at Bellevue, WA
Had a really fun practice with my U15 team today. Trying to push the envelope a bit and incorporate more differential learning and constraint lead approach into our practices. Started out with setters setting four different weight volleyballs. (1) – at Bellevue, WA
Finished out with 6-on-6 games to 25 but added a constraint that you won instantly if you could get a kill off a roll shot. You never saw a U15 team improve their ability in one area as fast once the first girl got one. Amazing to watch and the kids had a great time. (4) – at Bellevue, WA