By Robert Griffin

Sports Writer

It’s a philosophy that has served Rita Schroeder well over the years.

The volleyball coach calls Iowa home, and she’s the long-time coach of Southwestern Community College.

Last year, Schroeder won her 700th match as the team’s head coach, making her one of the most successful coaches in the country.

Last week, Schroeder teamed up with one of her former assistants, Troup head coach Jodi Dowden, to put on a camp for middle-school aged players.

Schroeder said she and Dowden share the same coaching philosophy, one that has worked out quite nicely for the veteran coach.

“We just work great together,” Schroder said, “and we both teach the same fundamentals of the game and believe in a lot of positive reinforcement and repetition to train kids and with that we can start and end each others sentences at the same time.

“With that it works great for camp because we can make a difference with a lot of kids, teaching them the sport.”

Dowden was an assistant coach at Southwester for five years, and now she’s trying to help volleyball grow in Troup County.

Dowden and Schroeder will put on another camp later this month for high-school players.

The two are together again as they put of the first middle school volleyball camp at Troup High.

During one drill last week, the girls were in two parallel lines inside of the gymnasium working on passing drills, with the two coaches looking on closely, walking from pair to pair offering words of encouragement and helpful advice.

Passing, Schroeder said, “is the most important part of the game. Serving is way up there too. Everybody wants to hit, but you have to learn those other skills too. I still teach that at the collegiate level. It’s the foundation.”

The girls had one of the best coaches to learn from.

Schroeder is in her 24th season as the head coach at the school in Iowa.

She holds an overall record of 705-372 and a winning percentage of .655.

“I try to stress the basic fundamentals,” Schroeder said. “The basics. Passing, hitting serving and setting.”

While teaching the fundamentals at times can become a boring grind for even the most hardened player, Schroeder said that she tries to make the camp fun, so that all of those in attendance will have a great time, while also gaining some knowledge about the sport that she loves.

“We try to make it fun,” Schroeder said. “It needs to be fun. The kids need to have a good time and feel like they are getting better too.

“If you see them at the start of the camp, and then at the end, all parents would agree that there is a lot of improvement, because they do work hard.”

While the numbers for those in attendance for the camp may be small, both coaches know that putting on the camp is a good start to spurn the interest of kids in the community.

“Not too many kids of middle school age play this sport because of the simple fact that they are not strong enough,” Dowden said. “This is a very skilled sport, and it takes a lot of practice to be able to get the fundamentals down, so it’s a good thing to get the kids out here and get them playing.What we are really trying to do is breed an interest in the sport here.

“The younger the kids are when they learn the fundamentals, hopefully the same number become interested in the sport.”

Added Schroeder: “We just have to start somewhere. Volleyball in Iowa is very popular, and we have kids who are involved in it. I have a youth camp for fifth and sixth graders and we will get 40-50 kids at that camp. I can probably do that twice a year.

“Here our numbers aren’t that great but it’s a start and hopefully next year they will tell their friends that they had fun and they learned a lot.”

While coaching a good number of camps every year can get arduous to some, Schroeder said that she loves the chance to teach younger children because it allows here to let her “silly side” out.

“I love teaching the younger kids because I have a silly side about me and I like to have fun,” Schroeder said. “They will laugh will me, and my college kids are a little more serious. There is a good balance between this. You can see a lot of the growth because a lot of them haven’t had the coaching. Now you give them the information and the tools to work with, and its just amazing what happens. Its all about the kids.”