Covering hundreds of sports events for four decades and taking pictures from the sidelines gives an up-close view of the players and coaches, but moving just a few feet closer and sitting on the bench provides a whole different view.

An invitation by first-year Talawanda High School volleyball coach Ernie Gilbert to sit on the bench as special guest coach and take part in the pre-match team meeting was too good an offer to pass up.

At the pregame meeting as the team prepared to host Wilmington on Oct. 9, Gilbert began by writing the letters BUSU on the whiteboard, before drawing a sketch of the playing court on the board to diagram Wilmington’s rotation style of play and how to counter it.

Jokingly, he asked his players, “Want to buy a vowel?” to which one player said, “A.” He then wrote that letter under the “B.” Somebody said, “Ball.”

He went on with his explanation of the play and at the end asked if they had figured out what BUSU meant. After some guesses, the players shouted as a group, “BALL UP, STAND UP.”

It was a lesson he wanted them to remember — when the opponent’s ball is hit toward their back line, they need to stand up to better gauge whether it was heading out of bounds because Wilmington has several players who hit the ball back on a line rather than with arc, making it hard to judge.

In their pregame meeting, he also reminded his players that they earned an easy win at Wilmington earlier in the season but to take this one seriously. A win would give them the championship of the Southwest Ohio Conference.

“This is a championship game,” he told his players. “Win this one and no one can keep you from the league championship.”

When Gilbert met with his players on the floor after warm-ups, he reminded them of strategy discussed in the locker room meeting and then added, “Let’s have some fun. Let’s win a championship.”

Sipping from a bottle of Coke Zero as the teams warmed up, Gilbert said he drinks one before each match and has a Cherry Tootsie Pop.

Asked if it’s for nutrition or superstition, he replied, “A little of both.”

During games, Gilbert is on his feet the whole time, moving back and forth, talking to his players, making sure they understand the nuances to have players ready when they get on the floor.

Gilbert, who comes from a college volleyball background, said assistant coaches Emily Williams and Derek Benson have high school coaching backgrounds and know the roster and paperwork details better than he does.

“They are wonderful,” he said, as Williams prepared the evening’s roster for the first set, after checking with him about the planned player rotation.

During warm-ups prior to the match, Gilbert watches the opponent players for tips to pass to his team. He sees one player is left-handed and therefore more likely to hit to the other side. He watches for players with a tendency to hit one direction or the other.

Players on the bench supported teammates on the floor, getting to their feet for every point scored. Junior Ana Richter suggested they do “the wave” and they passed the word down the row. It took several points to get it right, but they did, drawing laughs.

Talawanda won the first set 25-7, the second 25-15 and then finished with a 25-8 score with many of the junior varsity players in on the action.

Sitting on the bench with the players, a couple things quickly become obvious. The first is that the players on the court are under the direction of the team’s setter, as well as the coach on the sidelines. Players must talk to remind each other of where they need to go in certain situations.

Gilbert said he meets with the setter prior to the match to review strategy and will often turn over the team to assistant coach Williams during timeouts while he pulls the setter aside to talk to her.

“I talk to the setter. She has more authority on the floor,” Gilbert said. “I do not want to overrule her; she’s the authority to the players, even more than the captains. If I don’t agree with something, I’ll tell her privately. I don’t want to undermine her.”

At one point in set two, he told sophomore Haley Jena she was going into the game and she asked, “Where do I go?”

Gilbert told her, “They will tell you and if they don’t, take it as license to tell them where you are going.”

Another routine that is not immediately obvious from the stands is that many of the player rotations are predetermined, in some cases even before the set starts or at least several minutes before the player is going to enter the court.

Gilbert used the match to move several players from the JV to the varsity roster in preparation for the upcoming sectional tournament. The third set that night saw those younger players moved into the lineup and between sets two and three, he told the regulars to help them out.

“Bench players, be vocal,” he said. “Talk to the player in your position. Make sure they know where they are supposed to be.”

Gilbert praised senior Hannah Terrell for her ability to hit the line, at one point driving four straight shots down the line that opponents either hit at an angle that drove them toward the bleachers or were so close to the line they could not be played.

“She’s a monster,” one player said from the bench, amid the applause for one such shot as Talawanda went up 14-1 in the third set.

Talawanda easily won the match, clinching the SWOC championship which they cemented two nights later with a win over Ross, to put them at 14-0 in league play and 21-1 overall, the lone loss an Oct. 6 defeat by Monroe.