Volleyball goal setting worksheet: free PDF and Word template

If you are looking for a volleyball goal setting worksheet, you want something you can print tomorrow and fill out with a player. Below is one built for volleyball players, with a personal development plan included. After that you will see how to fill it out and what an app adds to it.

Download the free volleyball goal setting worksheet

First, what you probably came for. The worksheet is free, with no account and no email address required. You are welcome to print it, copy it and adapt it.

• Volleyball goal setting worksheet (PDF): printable, A4 portrait, three pages. The worksheet, a personal development plan and a completed example.
• Volleyball goal setting worksheet (Word): the worksheet and the development plan as an editable Word template. Put your club's name at the top, or swap the volleyball skills for the ones in your own sport.

Page 1 of the PDF: one goal per sheet, with the measure, the deadline, three actions and room for five check-ins.

What is on the goal setting worksheet?

The first sheet is the worksheet itself. It works with one goal per sheet, so every goal gets its own measure, deadline and check-ins. At the top you fill in name, team, position and date. Below that are four sections:

1. My goal. One sentence, written as something the player does. Underneath you tick the type of goal: technique, game awareness, physical, mental or role in the team.
2. Measure and deadline. Four boxes: the starting point (where are you now?), the goal (where do you want to be?), how you will measure it (what, when and who counts?) and the deadline, as a date or a week.
3. How I will get there. Three lines for what the player will do and how often, plus a line for the help they need from the coach, the team or at home.
4. Check-ins. Five rows for looking back together every few weeks: the date, where the player is at that point, what is going well, what they will change and the coach's initials.

At the bottom you close out the goal: reached, adjusted or replaced by a new goal, with the date and the initials of player and coach. The second sheet is a personal development plan, the third a completed example.

How to fill out the worksheet with a player

1. Let the player write the first sentence. You sharpen it, but the words are theirs. How to pick a goal that fits each player is covered in setting a personal goal for each player. This worksheet is where you work that goal out.
2. Write down the starting point before you begin. Without one, you will not know at the check-in whether anything has changed. Count it once at practice, or take a number from the last few matches.
3. Pick a measure someone can actually count. That is why the measurement box also asks who counts. If the answer is nobody, it is not a measure but a wish.
4. Book the check-ins right away. Write down the first date before the player walks off. A check-in you mean to schedule later often never happens.

The example on page 3 shows what that looks like. A 15-year-old outside hitter wants to serve overhand every time and get more serves in: from 4 to 7 out of 10, with week 8 as the deadline. The assistant coach counts ten serves during the warm-up at the first practice of the week, and three check-ins record what is going well and what the player will change. The name and the numbers are an example, not a benchmark.

Personal development plan: the second sheet

Where the worksheet covers one goal, the personal development plan covers one player and one season. You start with where the player is now. For ten skills the player circles a number from 1 to 5, and the coach does the same in a separate column: serve, passing and serve receive, setting, attack, block, defense, game awareness, communication on court, physical and mental. Wherever the two numbers are far apart, you have your first conversation.

Below that the player writes down their biggest strengths and most important areas to work on, and picks no more than three goals for the season. Each of those goals gets its own worksheet. At the bottom are two review boxes, for mid-season and the end of the season, with room for the initials of the player, the coach and, for youth players, a parent.

If you want to evaluate players in more depth, with a fixed description for each level, the volleyball player evaluation form is a better fit. The development plan is deliberately short: a starting point for goals, not a report card.

Why a worksheet drops out of sight after a few weeks

Filling it out is the easy part. The hard part comes after. The sheet is at home when the check-in comes around, the measure needs someone to do the counting, and a few weeks in nobody remembers exactly how the goal was worded. That is not the player's fault or the coach's: a goal you do not see slips out of view.

There are three ways to deal with that, and each has its own strength:

• The worksheet on paper. Costs nothing, works in any sport and forces you to actually write the goal out. Putting their initials under a goal of their own can mean more to a young player than a line in an app. The weak spot: the sheet has to be there at the moment you need it.
• A shared document or a spreadsheet. Also free, and you can edit it anywhere. You have every player in one file. But players rarely open a file like that on their own, and you enter the numbers by hand.
• An app that keeps the goal with the player. The goal sits where you already look, and some of the numbers come from what you already record. On the other hand, an app does not force you to work the goal out.

Worksheet or app for goals: an honest comparison

We make Koach, so read the right-hand column with that in mind. We have tried to write down what the app cannot do as well.

The takeaway is not a choice between the two. On paper you work the goal out; in the app it stays in view and the numbers come along with it.

What Koach does with the personal goal and the team goal

Open a player on the Team tab, tap Edit player and enter their goal in the Personal goal field. On the player page it then appears below the position, in its own card. If the player has their own account, they see the goal on their own page and can edit it themselves. If nothing has been set yet, they see Tap to set your personal goal; to change it they tap Edit. The player account is free.

You set the team goal on the Dashboard. That is where the Team goal card lives; tap Edit to type in the goal. Players with an account also see the team goal on their own dashboard. How to choose a team goal that lasts the whole season is covered in setting a team goal for the season. How to link the team goal, behavior goals and player goals is explained in setting and tracking season goals.

How do you track in Koach whether a goal is working?

A measure has to come from somewhere. Koach keeps track of part of it from what you already record:

• Points and faults per player. Whether you score a match live or enter the stats afterwards, you see each player's points from attack, block and serve. Under Fault distribution on the player page you see how often each type of fault occurs, such as Service fault or Bad pass, as long as you mark who made the fault while scoring.
• Reception. If you rate an opponent's serve from 0 to 3 and pick the player at Who received the ball?, the stats for that match show the average per player under Reception.
• Attendance and stars. The player's Season stats include their Attendance. After a practice you give stars from 1 to 5 for Technique, Game awareness, Coachability, Work ethic and Effort. Under Development the Training rating appears as a line across the season. Only the coach sees that line, not the player.
• Notes. Under Notes on the player page you write down what you agreed at a check-in. Every note gets a date, and the player does not see your notes.

What Koach does not do: there is no deadline field, no check-in schedule and no progress bar showing how far a player is with their goal. Koach counts what happens in matches, not drill reps at practice: you count the ten warm-up serves from the example yourself. The app does not make a PDF of the goals either. What players see themselves and how they track their own growth is covered in how to track your own growth as a volleyball player. A broader overview of what you can track per player is in tracking player development in volleyball.

Who the worksheet suits, and when to add Koach

• The worksheet on its own suits you if you work with a handful of players, coach a different sport or first want to see whether goal setting catches on with your team. The first sheet works in any sport; in the Word version you can change the skills in the development plan.
• The worksheet plus Koach suits you if you coach a volleyball team and want to keep the goals in view all season, with the numbers from practices and matches alongside them and a team goal your players see for themselves.
• Koach is not a fit if you coach a different sport or beach volleyball, or if you want an app that monitors goals with deadlines and reminders for you. Koach does not do that.

You can try Koach free for 14 days, with no credit card. After that, Coach costs €2.99 per month for one team with two coaches, or Club €9.99 per month for unlimited teams. With a yearly plan you pay €2.49 or €8.33 per month. In the App Store and Google Play you see the price in your own currency. The prices are on the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

Further reading

Setting a personal goal for every player Setting and tracking season goals with your team Am I getting better? Tracking your own progress as a volleyball player

Browse 200 volleyball drills with animations Download a complete practice plan of 8 to 28 weeks