Disclaimer: Blog posts represent the opinions of their author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of MVSA the organization.

If you haven’t already read part 1 and part 2 of this series, then please do that before continuing. I guarantee that everything that follows will make a lot more sense if you start at the beginning.

MVSA believes that ten players per roster is the right number, so why do other clubs choose to have more (sometimes many more)? I can't speak directly to the motivations of other clubs, but I can speculate, and it is honestly hard to be charitable when I do. However, there are some reasons that are better than others. What might those be?

For a long time, twelve players has been the typical team roster size in club volleyball. This does have a couple advantages:

• As mentioned earlier, the club season is long and injuries do happen. Twelve players gives a team a better buffer for handling exceptional conditions (especially season ending injuries) and ensures they will nearly always be able to field a competitive team for a scheduled tournament.
• Since the indoor game of volleyball is played 6v6, a roster of twelve players allows you to more easily play “real volleyball” at practice.

Are those reasons worth the tradeoffs? I think you can guess what I am going to say, but why? 

MVSA has been fielding club teams with ten players for decades. In that time, I can only remember a single team that had a stretch of bad luck (with multiple season ending injuries) that caused them to need to alter their season tournament schedule. Do you want to be on a team where your involvement is effectively an insurance policy against something extremely unlikely happening? 

As for 6v6, it can still be done if you have a roster of less than twelve. You just need to be more deliberate about it as a coach. Joint/combined practices, pre-arranged scrimmages, and non-traditional players (practice/alternate/guest) are all viable options. Counterintuitively, playing a lot of 6v6 at practice is not really that valuable. You usually want more touches and more learning happening at practice than the 6v6 version of the game can provide (one person actively playing the ball and eleven people watching).

So what is a less charitable reason for carrying more than ten players on a roster? Money.¹ Tournament entry fees are per team, not per player. Gym space rentals are by the hour, not per player. Managing a team of 12 or 14 players is a tiny amount of extra work when compared to 10. Team uniform costs naturally increase but many clubs make players pay for uniforms above and beyond the team fee (MVSA doesn't) so what does it matter to them? Once you get to the point where player fees cover team expenses, every additional player you add to the roster is just profit. Maybe a team's expenses are so high that they have to have more than 10 players to break even? If so, maybe they should look more closely at their expenses.

There actually is one more ”charitable” reason. In an area where there are very few volleyball clubs, some will reasonably decide that if they don’t take a player, they won’t get a chance to play at all. In other words, it is better to take someone and give them a year’s worth of practice experience only, rather than no experience at all. I can sympathize with this line of thinking. It is actually why MVSA does sometimes take practice and alternate players. But when we do, we charge significantly less than for a normal player and we are upfront with the families regarding playing time expectations for matches.² Are other clubs being upfront in that way? I don’t know. Besides, in the DMV there are more than enough volleyball clubs to accommodate anyone that wishes to play the sport. If not your club, they will find a place to play.

You have found yourself on a team with more than ten players, now what? That is a tough question because every coach will have their own strategies for dealing with the situation. But there are some common ones that we can outline.³ But before we do that, let's review our baseline team of ten players from part 2 of this series. As you will (hopefully) remember, that was a team of ten players, running a 6-2 offensive system using all the “normal” substitutions/switches. In that scenario, we end up with a very rough playing time distribution as follows for one set of match play:

• S1 & S2: 50%⁴
• OH1: 100%
• OH2: 50%
• MH1 & MH2: 50%
• OPP1 & OPP2: 50%
• DS: 50%
• L: 90%⁵

Assume that your coach rotates which Outside Hitter plays all around from set to set.⁶ In this case (and over the long term), playtime for both outside hitters will settle around 75% each.

Now add an 11th or 12th player and what happens? It depends on what roles the 11th and 12th players serve on the team. If a coach’s goal going into a season is to spread playing time as evenly as possible across their team of 12, they would build a team with all the players (roles) mentioned in part 2 but now take four DSes (rather than 2). Two of the DSes would be Liberos (each switching with a different Middle Hitter) while the other two would be normal DSes (and substitute for Outside Hitters in the back row). If the coach did this, then every player would basically end up with 50%-ish playtime. However, remember from part 2 that the substitution rules of club volleyball will actually prevent a coach from doing this. The second OH for DS substitution will cause us to use 8 substitutions for every 6 rotations, and since we need to budget for 13 rotations every set (the typical number from part 2) we will run out well before the end of the set, potentially leaving the team in a “bad place” (a DS having to hit in the front row for example). As a result, a knowledgeable coach will never do this. What will they do instead? “Susie, I would like to introduce you to this clipboard, now please stand over there and make a mark here every time Stacy passes the ball. Thanks!”

If a team adds a 13th, 14th, and/or 15th player, things go from bad to worse very quickly. I have seen teams with 14 players on their roster who play a completely different lineup every set. In other words, for set 1 of a match, the lineup is composed of players 1 through 7. In set 2, players 8 through 14 play. That is one strategy, I guess... but now everyone’s play time (including the best players on the team) has been arbitrarily cut in half as a result of questionable decisions the club has made. Usually, it won’t be that extreme though. What is more common? The more common scenario is certain players will never see the court unless the match is in “garbage time” – i.e., you are beating a team so badly that the coach is now comfortable letting people who normally don’t play into the match. I am not sure what that is teaching players about their worth (to the team) but in my opinion, it is unfortunate that teams end up in a position where these types of lessons can even be taught.

One thing that I think is important for every family to understand, is that none of what I have discussed in this series is arcane or special hidden knowledge. While the exact mechanics that have been detailed may not be common knowledge among volleyball parents, everything is plainly obvious to anyone who has coached volleyball for more than a month (and had to build lineups for their team). So why, if it is plainly obvious that taking more than 10 players per team brings so many compromises, do so many clubs do it? Good question. However, I think a better question is, if a club is willing to make this type of “compromise” at the start of the season (technically, before the season has even started) what others are they willing to make during the season?⁷

I chose to write this because I have seen an alarming trend in the CHRVA region over the last couple seasons. More and more clubs are fielding teams of 14 or 15 players, even at younger age groups. While I (and MVSA) believe 10 is the right number for all the reasons given, 11 or 12 is at least understandable. But 14 or 15? I just don’t get why a club would do that or why parents would willingly sign up for it. Maybe they just don’t know better? Maybe the promise of “college scholarships” and “playing in college”⁸ is enough to blind them to the reality of what is happening? I just don’t know. Either way, I hope this helps. At the very least, I pray it gives you something to think about, and adds a question or two to the list you will be asking when looking at clubs this tryout season.

¹ Bet you didn’t see that coming! While I think money is, and will continue to be, the primary factor in roster size decision making for clubs, there is another factor that I suspect might be coming into play more recently. From observing the region over the last few years, I get the feeling that some clubs are taking more players (beyond the typical 12) simply to keep them from going to other competing clubs. In other words, I would rather take a strong, but not really strong enough to play much on my team player, than give them a chance to go to a competitor where they could actually make the other team stronger. Just speculation on my part, but if true, that reason would actually be worse than money.

² Practice players cannot participate in matches and alternates can only if the team is low on regular players for a tournament. In other words, neither practice players or alternates meaningfully impact playing time for the regular players on the team.

³ While MVSA does not take more than 10 players per team under normal circumstances, consider this a public service for what you can expect if your athlete ends up on a non-MVSA club team.

⁴ Any role in this list given “50%” playtime is better read as “50%-ish”. That is because you don’t know exactly how many rotations will happen in a set, where the point runs will happen, and what rotation the team will end up in. Generally speaking, and over the long term, the “50%” role players who start on the court to begin a set will average a bit more than 50% playtime while those who substitute in will average slightly less than 50%. Either way, a player that only goes across the front row or back row will generally be regarded as a 50% playtime player.

⁵ The Libero has to sit out for the serve of one middle hitter because all players can only serve in one spot in the rotational order. In other words, they can only serve for one middle hitter during a set, not both. Because of this, their playtime in a set is rarely 100%. This should also be read as “90%-ish”.

⁶ Playing six rotations can be tiring for an Outside Hitter, especially because they get the majority of sets in a match (bad passes usually result in a set to a team’s outside being the only option available to a setter). As a result, it is wise for a coach to rotate who goes all around from set to set in order to preserve energy for the outsides over the course of a tournament. Sometimes, one of your outsides will be the obviously better player and the coach may only switch which outside goes all around against weak competition. There are lots of possible variables.

⁷ Up until this point, I can imagine the family of the star athlete on a team (who plays all around all the time) thinking roster size just doesn’t matter because it doesn’t impact them. When it comes to involvement in matches, they wouldn’t be wrong. However, I don’t care how good you are, you can not escape all of the other compromises they might be making. And if you think you can, I have a bridge for sale. You interested?

⁸ Unsurprisingly, the trend toward team rosters of 14 or 15 players is dominated by the “top” clubs in the region. The same ones that dangle “inevitable” future fame and glory for their child over families. Personally, I would rather play all around on a 3rd place team than only occasionally see the court (or ride the bench) for a 1st place team... but that is just me.