When to develop...when to sit?

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Author	Comment
VBCoach22	When to develop...when to sit?	Lead	[-]
Registered Member Posts: 70 (04/10/08 11:33 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Tags : None In the very competitive world of club volleyball, especially in 15s and up, I see a wide range of philosophies out there with regard to playing time. This board is littered with complaints from parents about their daughters making a team and never getting to play. For our team, we are catching a some flak for the exact opposite....we are getting questioned as to why we haven't "shortened" our bench. This caught us a little bit by surprise to say the least...here is some background: All the coaches are in agreement that our approach has been for the best. We are an elite travel team w/11 players. We run a 6-2 (but could run a 5-1 with either setter), utilizing a Libero (for OHs and MBs at different times to give all a chance in serve receive) and a DS...that's 10 players every game. All play mostly every match, and only on the rarest occasion do we sit players for more than 1 game in a row. Our plans have always been that this would be the approach to take for the majority of the season, right up until about a week or two before our Regional Tournament, our best chance to win a bid to Nationals. By then we will need to decide on a "final" lineup and make our run. Whether we qualify or not, we will have a few tournaments after to play to give our girls another chance to impress/improve before the season ends (both for coaches, colleges, and to prepare for HS season). While we may have been able to produce better results by playing less, we still have won two bronzes (1 Q - Open and 1 3-day tourney), two regional tourney runner-ups and two regional tourney championships....we have won 11 matches in a row. Obviously we are still producing results with this approach and have seen some of our initial weaker players catch-up considerably to our best players. So why do we do it? Two reasons.... 1.) With the amount of time, energy, and money that is being invested, we owe it to each and everyone of the 11 girls we took to develop them. They are paying for exposure and to become better players. That can only happen when they are put in pressure situations and given a chance to shine (or in some cases, sadly, wilt). 2.) Without exploring all possible combinations and lineups, we don't see how you can truly know what your "best" lineup is. By giving everyone ample opportunity, there should be considerably less complaint or lack of understanding when it comes time to shorten the bench and go for the bid to Nationals. So, with that in mind, what I'd like to know is how do you handle your lineups and playing time throughout a season? Is this your philosophy or is it partly influenced by your Club, parents, players, etc? What potential flaws or issues could you see with our approach? Any input on what has worked well and what hasn't for you? Have you changed over your coaching career? Any input would be most appreciated....
RIP THREAD	OK...	#1	[-]
Registered Member Posts: 52 (04/10/08 12:09 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	...I'll play devil's advocate here for you. Your philosophy is based on the endless pursuit of fair and equal playing time and development opportunities on a team and individual basis and that ain't ever going to fly with the parents. Explain it ad nauseam to them and they still won't get it. It's in out culture to be the best, be number one, and be better than someone else. I love the comparisons and discussions about the best golfer ever, Palmer, Nicklaus, or Woods. It is unfathomable for us to just appreciate each for their play and contribution, instead having to place one above the rest. It's the same in JRVB and critical to parental thinking. In you example, you're running a 6-2 with the understanding that either could run the 5-1. In effect, and wearing my parental hat, you're robbing one of the setters of their full-potential, accolades, recruitment visibility and scholarship potential by playing her only half the rotations and not displaying full potential. I guarantee you both sets of parents believe their player is better than the other and should be playing the entire time. My suggestion would be to continue what you're doing, develop a very thick skin if you're going to continue in coaching, and be willing to explain but not necessarily defend your style and decisions. P.S. Parents could care less about the wins, it's all about our player…period.
Barney		#2	[-]
Registered Member Posts: 34 (04/10/08 12:26 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	What a good thoughtful post VBCoach22! While not responding directly to your questions, your post gets me started on my biggest pet peeve with club volleyball. The more and more I am involved in club volleyball, the more I question the size of the current rosters. The families are paying good money. The kids do want to play. When the rosters are too large, everybody is put in a no-win situation. The coaches are squeezed between wanting to get players into the matches and the pressure to win. A group of parents are always sitting on the sidelines unhappy about paying to watch their kid sit. Players that should be developing their all-around game are yanked in the back row to share the playing time with the large roster. One day I will start my own club and limit roster sizes to 9 MAX. I've heard over and over again about why rosters need to be bigger because of injuries and so you can scrimmage in practice. I don't buy it. The kids want to play. If you suffer an injury or two during a season, you'd still have a full team and we hear over and over stories of teams with only 7 players at a tournaments playing the best they ever have (and probably having the best time). And inter-team scrimmaging is overrated as any good coach will tell you. Worse yet, while it seemed like 10 was the number most clubs used to shoot for, the trend is toward bigger and bigger rosters with some as big as 14. That is ridiculous and is clearly a way to make money at the expense of the enjoyment of kids in club volleyball. Having large rosters on High School or College teams is fine, but one day club volleyball parents will see the light and demand that clubs carry no more than nine. And VBallcoach22 -- if you had only 9 kids, you'd have none of these issues, would you?
lifeonthesidelines	your thoughts	#3	[-]
Registered Member Posts: 380 (04/10/08 1:21 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	What a wonderful way to coach, develop and TREAT teenage girls. I sincerely wish my daughter, all my daughters for that matter, had played for you. We have been both the starter and the one sitting all the time, and while being on the bench is far worse, watching your friends not play is hard as well. It is especially important when your team is competitive and most of the girls on your team would be starters on other teams. It is nice to see a coach care implicitly about the best possible development of all the girls on the team yet still remain competitive. Many talented athletes are lost forever after becoming embarrassed and discouraged from sitting on a top team, especially when they are told that they are not good enough to play.
bumpit	Roster Size	#4	[-]
Registered Member Posts: 22 (04/10/08 1:28 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Our 17s team took this concept to an extreme this season. Seven girls came together to form a team with the purpose of maximizing playing time and forming a tight unit of performers. Obviously, this is a risky strategy since 7 would seem to be the minimum number of players needed on the court using the libero. These are good players, no doubt, but in a recent poll of "high performers" in the region only two members of this team even received passing mention. Everytime a college recuiter visited our court, however, our players were on the court demonstrating their ability. By NEQ the team lost its MB2 and entered the regional bid qualifier with only six players on the team. Rather than upset the rotations that had been in place the entire year, our coach used the 5' tall libero as MB2. The team won all nine matches and earned a bid to Nationals. I am not sure why this team achieved this success with only six players. Clearly, they played together a sufficient number of matches to understand coverages and roles. While playing without a genuine MB2 clearly caused some confusion for our opponents, it certainly was not enough to overcome the clear advantage our opponents experienced on the front line. There are at least two keys to playing and winning with a short roster: 1) Serve effectively to shorten the game. 2) Avoid three set matches. So, we are at least one example of a team that won with an extremely minimal roster size - although 8 is probably better than 7.
Barney		#5	[-]
Registered Member Posts: 34 (04/10/08 1:53 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Exactly bumpit! And I bet if you polled the kids (and the parents) on this team, it was the best experience they ever had (and ever will have) in club volleyball. Again, it troubles me that the trend seems to be going in the other direction.
TeaWB		#6	[-]
Registered Member Posts: 158 (04/10/08 2:21 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	I'm in the same boat this year as VBCoach 22 (# of players and general playing time concept). I've scheduled some tournaments where we play to win, versus playing to develop. Who starts is based on our other tournaments (and practices) which are more developmental (where we still try to win), meaning I can move players around to positions they normally don't have the opportunity to play, be it front row/back row/different positions from their usual ones. Like VBC22 says, it gives me the opportunity to evaluate a variety of line-ups, positional competitions, and who wilts under pressure or who is strengthened by the pressure. I agree that it looks like a few more rosters are expanding in size, but I don't think this idea will stick. There are just too many problems associated with a large roster. I like having 10 (normal # in most years) better than 11, but this year it made sense, based on our #s for the age group, to take one extra, and for the most part, it's worked out. Smaller rosters would definitely form a more cohesive unit on the floor as well as off the floor. It would also take most of the playing time issues out of the coaches' hands and parents' heads. Just a couple of things to keep in mind with regard to the smaller rosters. Smaller rosters mean smaller teams. If there are 50 players, that's 5 teams of 10 or 6 teams of 8. Either the club needs to hire more coaches for the extra teams, or there will be cuts made. Are there enough coaches in each area for this to work? Also, every club is limited by how much court space (either their own facility or someone else's facility - or multiple facilities) they have available. You can only have X amount of teams before your court time is filled up.
bumpit		#7	[-]
Registered Member Posts: 22 (04/10/08 2:45 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Barney - I think the team, coach and parents got exactly what they bargained for. The team is not part of a club, so there is no pressure to add additional players to help with the financial load or maximize the use of court space. Playing time was maximized, but as a result some players "played hurt" to keep the squad together. There is an extremely strong bond between the players - as they made a commitment to each other in August and have worked and sacrificed together to achieve the bid to Nationals. I believe the players, the coach and the parents would admit that everything worked out just the way they envisioned. It has truly been a great volleyball experience. The only drawback is that without a big club behind the team, they have been, are and will continue to compete in the shadow of the larger clubs and very few people will ever know the identity of many of these players. That is unfortunate, because all six of these players deserve recognition for this achievement.
Asst2theRM		#8	[-]
Registered Member Posts: 21 (04/10/08 3:31 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Our club has an "elite" team with 9 players on it, 2 of which are not the same calibar as the other 7, but do have the potential to get there. The coach of this team did a good job of setting the expectation that the 2 players would get lesser playing time, but there would be the opportunities in "weaker" tournaments for them to play. 1 of the girls takes the roll very well (she is in it for the social aspect) and the other is a competitor who wants on the court all the time and is having issues not playing. She has mentioned to me how frustrated she is, but the bottom line is she knew what she was getting into. I think if you put the expectations of playing time out there before the season, it will help you in the long run.
Barney		#9	[-]
Registered Member Posts: 34 (04/10/08 4:01 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Ah, but if the team had 11 kids on it, you'd have three frustrated girls and not just one. Nine is the right number IMHO--although I recognize the gym time/financial/coaching availability issues noted by TeaWB. Personally, I'm willing to pay something extra in my fees to keep the roster to a reasonable size. I'd like to hear from some of the club directors who are fielding teams with 13 kids on why they are doing it and from parents (or kids) on those teams on what the experience is like.
gojhawks	Roster Size	#10	[-]
Registered Member Posts: 12 (04/10/08 7:02 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Personally, I like 11 kids on a team and am usually able to play all 11 quite happily if they are the righ 11 positions. If I know for sure that I have one stud setter, I might be comfortable with 10. If we didn't carry 10 or 11, we wouldn't ever be able to give any of our kids rest. With the play schedule we have, that can be a lot of wear and tear on them. I had 13 one year with no quitters. A couple of kids really just wanted to be part of the team and the practices and didn't expect playing time. This wasn't ideal but for a one-time deal it was fine. Mostly, from what I hear, teams field larger squads not to make money, but to help keep the costs down and also allow for players with financial difficulties to be able to play with the club. The sport is expensive enough. I would hate to see the costs if the roster was only 7 or 8 players.