Video coordinator helps Warriors’ volleyball team click

Anton Willert is popular because of his click.

With a few click-clicks on his computer keyboard, Willert culls information from each play to help the Hawaii volleyball team.

Willert’s duties exceed his job title of video coordinator, and his work will be useful as the Warriors prepare to play UC Santa Barbara Friday and Saturday nights in the Stan Sheriff Center.

"He helps us a lot," outside hitter Siki Zarkovic said.

Willert works every day during the season. But if a starting point needed to be marked, it would be on a Sunday, the first day a school is permitted to download an upcoming opponent’s video archives.

Willert chooses four or five matches. A program called Data Volleyball will allow him to set several tags to each play. He rates each serve, pass, set, spike and dig. Every serve and pass is rated on a 6-point scale. There are 35 different elements for a set, including height of the set, location of the hitter and alignment of the block.

Willert takes the data, then use the Data Video program to synchronize the information to a video clip. If UH wants to know the tendencies of opposing hitters in the fourth rotation, a few clicks will pull up a video montage of all the attacks from that alignment.

The video montages will be placed on a disk, then given to associate head coach Jeff Hall, who writes the scouting report.

The Warriors will have two video-review sessions before each match. The first focuses on set distributions and attacking points for an opposing team’s six rotations. The second session focuses on serving and hitting tendencies.

The Warriors are the only Mountain Pacific Sports Federation team that plays back-to-back matches against the same opponent. Willert will chart every play of the opening match — from serve location to whether a receiver passes better when the ball is served to his left or right side — synchronize the information with the videos, then produce a montage for the next morning’s video review.

"After a good game or a bad game, it’s good to watch the videos to know what changes to make," Zarkovic said.

Zarkovic said even in the heat of competition, players still remember the tips from the videos. "And if we forget, the coaches will remind us," he said.

Willert said: "When I can sit there on a Saturday, and see the adjustments working, it’s a great feeling."

Willert, who was raised in Germany, has received an offer to work with the U.S. national team this summer.