Team Selection
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Team selection.

by Vic Lindal

bulletHow do you determine the best all round players?
bulletHow do you determine who will make the best setter?
bulletHow do you select the best power hitters?

The split court doubles formulas allow you to accurately select in a linear order the players with the best all round Volleyball ability. You also have a chance to observe attitude. This shows up very clearly if a player loses a few matches. How do they react? The winners put the past behind them and get fired up with their new partner.

For example: if you have 24 players you can use the 12 person formulas to preselect and then put better players in a group of 16 to determine your final 12 or 8 or 9.

The idea is to select the formula that best suits your numbers. All formulas are attached to this article or can be found on our home page http://hypbus.com/vicvball/vva/vic/index.html

When you run the games, you are best to use timed games of 10 or 11 minutes. This usually gives enough time to have a clear winner.

If you wish you can put a statistician on each court. This allows you to keep certain stats that you feel are important. For example serve and serve receive are very important.

The split court game does not completely match 6 on 6 conditions but does have most of the skills and does have the attitude component. You can observe players who are helpful and stay up no matter what the score is or how many games they have won or lost.

For further refinement and using 6 on 6, 5 on 5 or 4 on 4 we have created systems to select your best power hitters or your best setters.

The power hitters formula is a fantastic system to find out clearly which power hitter can win for you. We like to put 5 power hitters in to a formula system. This can be done early in the season but also works well, in season to see who is doing well. This system also works well just to give the power hitters lots of hitting practice. Bill Neville (former Canadian Olympic coach and current U of Washington women’s coach) likes to use this often and he calls it "Flinch." Bill uses it to see who will start for him, or who will not flinch in a head to head situation.

We select 5 power hitters and then give them each a number. We select two teams of 3 players. These teams will consist of two permanent setters, two permanent middle backs and two permanent right backs. The setters only play right front. We leave out middle blockers. You can use middle hitters later. This first system keeps it simple.

We have several different versions of games we play.

  1. Standard game, the power hitters serve and play left back, they are the only players to rotate. They rotate on a side out.
  2. We play for 5 minutes with no rotate, then switch front and back power hitters and play another 5 minutes.
  3. We may also play either of the two systems and use a wash. The team that wins the rally gets the ball.

At the end of each game we record the winner with a "+" and the loser with a "-" and record the point differential score. The power hitters now regroup according to the formulas and we start again. At the end you have a winner with the player with the most wins. If there is a tie then you use the point differential to break the tie (count up plus points and subtract minus points).

Power Hitter Selection formulas

 
Side 1 Side 2
1,2 3,4
1,3 2,5
3,5 1,4
2,4 1,5
4,5 2,3

It's important that the three permanent players assigned to Side 1 remain

constant throughout the tournament. Ditto for Side 2.

Who will make your best setter? You may have two or three good setters, but who can win for you? Now you have an objective selection system.

 
  Court 1 Court 2
Time 1 S1,T1 vs S2,T2 S3,T3 vs S4,T4
Time 2 S1,T2 vs S2,T1 S3,T4 vs S4,T3
Time 3 S1,T2 vs S3,T4 S2,T1 vs S4,T3
Time 4 S1,T4 vs S3,T2 S2,T3 vs S4,T1
Time 5 S1,T1 vs S4,T4 S2,T2 vs S3,T3
Time 6 S1,T4 vs S4,T1 S2,T3 vs S3,T2
Time 7 S1,T3 vs S2,T4 S3,T1 vs S4,T2
Time 8 S1,T4 vs S2,T3 S3,T2 vs S4,T1
Time 9 S1,T1 vs S3,T3 S2,T2 vs S4,T4
Time 10 S1,T3 vs S3,T1 S2,T4 vs S4,T2
Time 11 S1,T2 vs S4,T3 S2,T1 vs S3,T4
Time 12 S1,T3 vs S4,T2 S2,T4 vs S3,T1

This is very similar to the power hitting formulas, but with more interaction.

Start by selecting your 4 setters. If you only have 2 or 3 then put in other players who you think are good athletes. The setters are now designated S1, S2, S3, S4.

Next you create 4 teams of what ever numbers you have left over. This could be, 5, 4, or 3.

Now you decide the type of game and the timing. It is a good idea to use timed games, so you know how long the day is going to go. 10 minute games gives you 120 minutes of playing time. If you end up 6 on 6 then you can let the setters rotate as usual. With the games you may have the setter only play right front or only right back or rotate every so many minutes. The easiest is to have them play a regular game and rotate normally.

24 players (including setters) is ideal, but this system works with 16, or with less you may want to make a smaller court say 2/3 size. For this system to be effective, you may need to run it over several practices or on a full day camp you can set time aside. You also can get valuable information on the other players by taking stats or by attitude observation.

 

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