Player Selection

Player Selection http://hypbus.com/vicvball/vva/vic/playerselection.html

This article will cover the fundamentals of selecting a team.

This can be a club team, school team or select team. The principles are the same for each and may vary slightly.

First and for most the coach must have a picture (EPV End Point Vision) of what the team will look like at the end of the season. This needs to be done before you see your players. Some coaches like to select their players and then think of the systems that they are going to use. My strong contention is: See the system that will be best in your league or competition and then select accordingly. You can always make adjustments later, But as Stephen Covey's say in "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" "Start with the End In mind.

Knowing what you want and how you will come to your conclusions must be conveyed to your players.

In fact this is all part of Athletes Rights. Players must know what is required of them, how you will select. They then must be notified of the exact reasons why they were let go.

When it comes to national teams or provincial teams they need to be told clearly and then if they wish they are to be given an appeal process. Yes an appeal process must be in place for select teams.

There are two ways to select;

One is you cut and post the final selection.
Or the best way which is to name. This is the method used in the early 70's by Al Scott and Kent Andrews when they successfully won medals for BC in Canada Games and Pacific Rim Championships.

How does the name the players system work.

As you are clear that a player will for sure be able to help your team and will for sure make a contribution at the final championships then you put their name up on the board with their position. Ideally you want to get to 6 players fairly quickly. When you have 6 then you can send them to the other court and start the team play that you will require to be effective in your championships.

With this system you never cut you only name. Mr. Matsudaira used this for his gold medal men's team in the 72 Olympics. I have and continue to use this system. With our under 18 boys team that won the Canadian Juvenile championships in 94 we named 6 early and then added players each week as we saw that they would be able to contribute. We registered 16 players and had that many still playing at the end of the season. We only selected 10 at the deadline to go to nationals. Carrying extra players can be tough.

If you are in a club situation then I recommend that you get to your final 9 very early so the other teams in the club can be formed. There is some question as to how many players to name. I strongly recommend 9 plus a Libero. The reason for this is that all players will for sure be able to make a contribution at the championships. It is nice to have 12 for practice but the advantages of only 9 at the championships is far out weighed. The key with any number is be very clear as to the exact roll that the player will play on the team in the championships.

Now if you only select 9 plus 1 it will mean that you need to invite 2 or 3 extra players to attend practices. This can be done by have graduates come back or adult players or players from other teams in your organization. Also we have some drills that you can use with small numbers. They can be found on Coaches Corner http://hypbus.com/vicvball/vva/vic/index.html

Coaches need to post the criteria for selection.

For example: Post on the board all the positions and the exact criteria that will be used to select. You may say that you are selecting 3 power hitters. All three will be able to:

Hit line, hit cross court, hit in, use a roll shot, use a tip shot, have an effective wipe off shot, be able to pass on service reception, have a spike touch of… be able to block middle, serve effectively from zone 5 and be able to hit targets or be able to serve aces. You set the criteria and then have a way of measuring it.

Examples of general criteria:

Attitude: Indicate that this will be a subjective measure and will count for X %

Fitness Components:

	Standards need to be established and posted well in advance
	Aerobic: set a minimum standard. This can be done using the Leger test or a standard 11 minute run or a distance run such as 1.5 miles or 2000 metres.

If you have national team or junior national team or provincial teams standards then you can set up a % of the national team as your standard.

	Anaerobic: The ball run can be effective. This is done with 6 balls. One on each three metre line where it intersects with the side line (two on each side) One ball in each corner. Start in the middle of the back line lying on your stomach, pick up each ball and return it to centre back line and place on floor. Time the event.
	Jump tests
	Spike touch
	Block touch These are best done on a free hanging apparatus. If you have girls you can put a two by two across the basketball hoop. For boys you can put tape on the side of a back board or find a way to raise the two by two. Then have strips hanging from the board, the first strip is 2 centimetres and then 4 etc. Remember the basketball hoop is 3.05 Metres or 10 feet for others.
	Endurance jumps. How long can they maintain 90% of max.

It is not necessary to have too many fitness tests but you do need to establish the need to meet a standard. You need then to say how much weight the tests will be given. Is it 10 % 15 %. My feeling is that if you set the standards for cardio fitness in advance then the cardio test is the best measure of attitude. In fact all fitness measurements are great measures of attitude. They test how much players want to work out on their own. To me this is the best measure of a player's attitude.

Now that you have most of the simple stuff out of the way, then you must find a way to evaluate in game like situations.

The Jim Bjerring narrow court doubles formulas are still the best way to measure all round Volleyball ability.

The ranking that you get from this system gives you a linear ranking of all the players in your camp. We used this with the National team; Bill Neville at the University of Washington uses this regularly as does Larry MacKay the very successful coach at the University of Winnipeg. To add weight to the games you need to take these statistics. Serving, service reception, and hitting %. I recommend that you check out article on our home page that describe how to use these formulas. The article at http://hypbus.com/vicvball/vva/vic/playtowin.html has some great ideas. We first created the narrow court or split court doubles (half the width of a regular court) then we added refinements to select setters and power hitters. This is the most objective way to select your players, and it is fun. Remember do statistics. On the power hitters you want kill % for sure, for the setters you can select choices, you can see if they can set high to the out side, see if they can back set, see if they can run quick sets. You may want to check to see if they get to the net on free balls and service reception. This is best measured by having a person stand at the net and watch on each of the above situations and see if the player is at the net with both feet (heels) on the centre line and with their back to the net.

[PHOTOS] [VOLLEYBALL]

I will answer all your volleyball questions!!