In the first half of the club volleyball season coaches are likely to try a little bit of everything. While there are some important events where coaches are trying to win, no one is winning a national championship in January. There are also typically smaller events or power league dates that provide coaches with the opportunity to try out different lineups and different offensive or defensive systems.
In the second half of the club season, teams are starting to settle into more consistent lineups with clearly defined roles. Those can, and should, still fluctuate on any given day based on performance, but ideally, players begin to understand and embrace what they can do to best help the team succeed.
While deciding on a winning volleyball line-up, here are some considerations to help you get there:
5-1 versus 6-2 Offensive System
Deciding on a 5-1 vs. a 6-2 may be one of the first decisions you make based on the personnel that you have. If you have two setters on your roster, are they at a similar skill level or do you have one that you want to set more? If passing is a weakness for your team, do you want to have more front-row options for out-of-system attacking or to have a front-row setter who can make plays on tight passes? If you are running a 6-2 with two setters who do not play in the front row, you’ll want to decide whether to have your setters sub in for your opposites or your middles.
Subbing your setters for your middles can allow for a better middle/setter connection, avoid your middles serving and playing defense in favor of an opposite, and allow for your libero to pass in middle back in all 6 rotations without needing your opposites to take on passing responsibilities. However, it requires more creativity with your attacking routes out of different serve-receive patterns.
How substitutions affect your line-up
In club volleyball with a 12 substitution limit, if you make three substitutions every full rotation you will likely run out of subs in the middle of the set for a back and forth game, at the end of the set for a game with a few runs of points, or not at all in a game with multiple large runs of points. If you only make two substitutions every full rotation, you will likely not run out of subs unless you get deep into a back and forth game.
Deciding how to best allocate those substitutions will depend completely on your team composition. Do you need to use them on setter / opposite substitutions with small setters, hitter / defensive specialist substitutions, or can you afford to use a serving and defensive substitution for one of your middles?
Utilizing stats to maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses
Club volleyball coaches have a tiny fraction of the resources that college coaches have when it comes to advanced statistics. However, if you’re able to keep some basic volleyball stats, you can gain quite a bit of information to utilize in your decision-making process. When placing players into the rotation, there are a few things that you will want to look out for.
- Can you get your best passers passing the most serves? This can be as simple as using a defensive specialist (DS) substitution for the weak passer, or as complicated as making sure that your weakest passer is in the front row longer while your opposite’s DS is in the back row.
- Can you spread out your strongest attackers from each position into a “triangle,” ensuring you have at least one of them in the front row at all times?
- Can you position your most efficient middle next to your setter in a 5-1? The “next-to” middle typically gets more attempts than the “away” middle, so ideally, this is also the middle who is best off one foot behind the setter.
- If you’re starting with your setter in zone 6, can you put your best outside attacker in zone 4? When starting with your setter in zones 1 or 6, your “away” outside will generally get more attempts than your “next-to” outside.
Once you know where you want your players to go in the line-up, you must decide what rotation to start in. Once again, statistics can come into play if you can track your sideout percentage by rotation and your point scoring percentage for each server. If you are mostly focused on your side of the net, which is important at the younger age levels, you just try to start with your best servers and best sideout rotations. As teams get older it becomes more of a challenge to balance your best rotations with the match-ups that it creates at the net and in the serve/pass battle.
In the end, you want your line-ups to be rooted in statistics but also backed up by the eye test. If something is working, stick with it. If it is not working, then take a look at your stats and make a determination of where there is the most room for growth.
View more volleyball game management resources.
Illini Elite (Bloomington, IL) is a member of the Junior Volleyball Association, an organization committed to enhancing the junior volleyball experience for club directors, coaches, players, and fans.
