"fair" Play Time

[Guest zanners]

With youth volleyball, how is it possible to rotate girls in and out, to keep the flow of the game, and

allow all the girls ability to play at least one game? Do we try to play to win? or, should all the girls play equally? We have 16 girls on the team with a variety of skill levels this is a7th and 8th grade mixed team. Any suggetions?

[sps4vb 0]

Zanners,

Here is an e-mail that was sent to me about playing the children fairly. I used this approach and it worked out really well with my team as well. I know that mine are only 4th graders but it's a suggestion.

kenoshasquid Posted: Sep 22 2005, 05:22 PM

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Holly-Marie,

Good for you! It's always fun watching them make progress. Two years

ago I was in your shoes struggling to teach them to get underhand serves over. Now, just two years later, all but two of my girls are getting it over overhand and doing other wonderful things like setting and attack hitting now and then. We had a team vote and I asked them to decide their fate:

Do things they are comfortable with in games and win more, or take some chances and work on and try new things in games and make mistakes as a result but maybe win less. They voted to focus on learning and trying new things rather than just worrying about winning. I explained this to the parents. It's the girl's team, not mine and not the parents'. SO now we can have fun and learn without the expectation and pressure to win every time out, although that will always be a goal regardless of what we are trying.

But fun and learning are still #1 priority at this level.

Tonight it's ice cream bars after practice for the winning 3-girl team in a game we play at the end of practice called "Queens of the Court".

With positive reinforcement, fun and games, and organized practices it's amazing how much they learn in the process!

Keep up the good work!

Tim

[RonSalazar 0]

I have been doing a "continuous rotation" for the last couple of years. I really like it and so do the parents. Basically, I rotate a new player in every time we get the serve. It moves pretty fast and each player usually gets to the serve position twice during each game. The negative effect, depending on your perspective, is that you constantly have new servers, setters and hitters. I actually like that because it forces the girls to learn each position which I think will help them later on. If you are not sure how to do a continuous rotation let me know and I will give you the highlights. Any chance of creating two teams out of your 16 girls? Anyway, goodluck. Ron

[fmfjohn 0]

zanners,

You ask, what to me, is probably the most contentious question in youth sports of any type. Who plays, and when? You have, and will continue to get, a wide selection of view-points, all of which are well supported and make sense - to the coaches who give them.

I guess you have to ask yourself what you, and your school, club, etc, and parents expect. I would think that somewhere after 6th grade (11yo's) the competitive urges of both players and schools begin to dictate how you play or sub. Some small private schools like mine might decide that they'd rather have players play and lose than not play and win. That attitude by the school makes your job pretty easy. Rotate in with each serve - which I don't personally like - or play two or more teams (as teams) depending on how many games you can play each match - which is my preference. Other teams may decide that they are playing "to win", which means that other than the game starters and regular substitues, the rest of the team gets "to play" in practice. That can certainly be done, by you really have to do some serious "team building" to make it work.

In a more direct answer to your question, this season I have the best 13 7th and 8th grader girls that I've had in years. (5 8th and 8 7th) and it has been one of the hardes teams to keep happy and still be competitive that I've ever had. (25+ years) What it has come down to is that we have played a "first team" with one substitute, and a "second team" that normally doesn't have a sub unless one is pulled from the first seven if needed. Almost all of our matches are best of 3, and fortuantely, among the teams we play, only one or two decline to play the third game if either team wins both of the first two games. So far, the first team has played fifteen games and the second team has played eleven in a nine match schedule to date. We are 8 and 1, and both of the teams have really improved over the season. Personally, I think that having them play as consistant teams has given them the chance to play their best as a team. I also think that having them play against each other as team in practice - as opposed to constaintly changing them around has contributed to their high level of play against our opponents. The only drawback that I see is that if the girls don't see themselves as teams within a greater team, (which happens from time to time) and if one of the two lose more - or harder - than the other, you can have a division that is hard to heal.

Sorry for being so long-winded, but this topic goes on forever.

There are lots of really solid volleyball folks here, so I know you'll get plenty of good advice, and you'll find something that will work for your situation.

Let us know how it goes.

Good luck

john

[Bert 0]

With youth volleyball, how is it possible to rotate girls in and out, to keep the flow of the game, and

allow all the girls ability to play at least one game?  Do we try to play to win? or, should all the girls play equally?  We have 16 girls on the team with a variety of skill levels this is a7th and 8th grade mixed team. Any suggetions?

Hello zanners,

I can only tell you about the way I do handle thinks like this. I my opinion volleyball is like to go on vacation. This is also what I told the kids I coach. When I go on vacation the first thing I to is to find a place, a country for example to go to. Then I find out the ways to get there, I can go by car or by plane or maybe by boot. So the first thing I do is setting the goal (where to go) and the I think about the way to get there and also the route we must travel. In volleyball or sport in general there are, in my opinion two kind of goals to set. I can set result-goals, like I want to win the next game or I want to be champion ore something like that. The other type of goal I can set are presentation-goals, like I want to learn the kids to spike on position 2 or I like to learn them to serve with a jump serve or something like that.

I only use presentation goals. Every start of the season I make a new education plan (in Exell), where you can find every (presentation) goal I set and the way I want to reach this goals. The different between result-goals and presentation-goals is this: when I use the result-goal 'I like to win the next game' and I didn't win the next game I can hardly say something about the season I didn't win this game, and what I must do to win against the same team the next time we play against them. I can say: "Okay, the ware better", but ........ so what? My team can play the best game ever, but they still can lose the game. When I use presentation-goals I always can give good feedback on the way we did reach the goal or not, for example when some one serve a jump serve into the net, I can say something about the reason he did this.

So, I my opinion I never play to win the game, we always play to learn something, a technique. In my opinion the competion is part of the whole learning process. In this way of thinking, I always lett the kids play equally. This doesn't mean everyone in the team play equally every game. They must have play equally after the whole season. If you know what I mean.

By the way, the theory above, I use and I think is good, isn't from me. It's comming from a american coach, who wrote a good book, called: "coaches who never lose".

Good luck.

Bert

[Doug 0]

Bert and John,

I always enjoy your posts. I don't even coach volleyball, but I find myself coming back here time and time again just to keep a good perspective on you coaching.

Thanks for the great posts.

Doug

[fmfjohn 0]

Doug,

For some reason, I haven't been back to this thread since my last entry. Thanks for the compliment to both Bert and me.

Zanners,

So, what did you end up doing and why? And more importantly, how did it work out for you and your team? (would/will you do it differently next time?)

My school team ended up 11&2 and as a group was probably the best team I've had in years. Not the most talented players, nor did it have any exceptional individual players; just 13 girls who kept working at making each other better.

But I did (re)learn something that the school and previous teams had lulled me to sleep about. If you are lucky enough to help your players improve, and can get them to compete in a positive way at practice, and they have some success in their matches, the team dynamics can begin to shift from playing for fun to win, to playing to win to have fun. Sounds complicated when you look at it as a sentence, but I'm sure you know what I mean; not-so-good teams can console themselves by saying that they're just having fun. But good teams don't seem to be able to do that so easily. It was an interesting lesson for me to have to relearn.

Well, USAV (I liked USVBA better!) jo volleyball is going again, and it's another new group of girls and another learning experience. Hope ya'll have a great volleyball year!

john