1-Way FBK

An update

We’re talking Offensive Profiles this summer and, in particular, talking In-System Offense in June. If you’re interested in diving deeper, make sure you’re a Premium Subscriber so you can catch our end-of-month webinar. This one is scheduled for June 30. Last month’s Reception System webinar was popular, so check that out if you haven’t yet.

I’ve talked about FBK before, which is one of my go-to 6v6 drills to emphasize In-System Offense. The actual rules of FBK don’t actually say anything about in-system v out-of-system, but it’s going to be really hard to win this drill if you’re not terminal in-system. So what are those rules?

Simple:

1. If the serving team wins the rally in any way, they get a point.

2. If the receiving team kills their first attempt after receiving the ball, they get a point.

3. If the receiving team does NOT kill their first attempt, but they do win the rally at some point, it’s a wash and nobody gets the point.

Sub-Rule #1: A missed serve doesn’t count as a point. The receiving team still has to “earn it” but instead of another serve, a coach (or player not in the drill) tosses in an easy bowl as a replacement for the serve.

Sub-Rule #2: If there’s a block-and-cover on the first attempt, the next attempt still counts as an FBK. For example, receiving team passes the ball and sets the outside hitter. She gets blocked, but her teammate covers and then they set the right-side hitter who kills the ball. I count this as an FBK to reward coverage. It also encourages hitters to attack aggressively into the court and not fear the block.

1-Way FBK

This drill can be played 2-way, meaning the teams alternate who serves. I discuss that variation a bit in the previous article, so check that out if you’re interested. But I want to focus more on the 1-Way variants today because I really like to play it that way.

A 1-Way drill means that one team stays on receive while the other stays on serve. 1-Way drills are great for 2 reasons:

1. They offer a way to scale the difficulty for a given lineup, be those your starters or a lineup you are experimenting with.

2. They give you a predictable time period to work all 6 rotations, while also playing to a finished game score.

Here’s what I mean by that. Let’s say we have a pretty typical “good” high school aged team. Meaning: they don’t get aced off the court and they hit the ball in most of the time. They’ve crossed The Flippening. Simple standards at this level are:

1. Earned Sideout > 50%

2. FBK > 33%

Those numbers are handy because they divide well into 6, which is the number of rotations in a given lineup. If you aim to earn an FBK 33% of the time, you need to receive about 18 balls to earn 6 FBKs. Since 6v6 plays about 2 rallies per minute, this will take about 9 minutes to play. Let’s call it 10 minutes for simplicity.

Okay, the receiving lineup has about 10 minutes and a bunch of chances to earn an FBK in every rotation. Cool. They’ll start the game with 19 points. If they get to 25, they win.

Now, what should the serving team start with? Again, let’s go back to the 18 balls. If those standards hold approximately true, those 18 balls will break down about as follows:

6 FBK
9 Serving team wins (50%) of 18
3 Washes (receiving team wins with a non-FBK)

This means that the serving team should start with 16 points.

So now, we can start the game at 16-19 (servers at 16, receivers at 19), and play it out to 25 with FBK rules. Players like playing games to a finishing score, and coaches like timed drills because they are predictable to plan. But if you know the numbers, you can accomplish both. This game will take about 10 minutes. If you use Practice Lineup Combinations, then you need 120 minutes of FBK to play all the rounds.

It’s unlikely you’ll play 120 minutes of one 6v6 game at practice, but because 12 Is A Magic Number, you do:

• 2 practices of 6 rounds (60 mins)

• 3 practices of 4 rounds (40 mins)

• 4 practices of 3 rounds (30 mins)

A higher-level team that plays 60 mins of 6v6 at practice (like an advanced club team or an NCAA team) will knock the full course of FBK out in 2 practices. Most juniors teams will struggle to hold focus for a full hour of the same drill, so the 3 or 4-round combinations are probably a little better.

Use your whiteboard and keep all the scores of every round and lineup combination on the board. This also creates a position tournament as you keep score.

For example, using the referenced lineup combinations from that article, say the 12 rounds worked out like this:

First note: the serving team won 7 out of 12 teams. That means this scoring is appropriate for this team. Many high school teams will not be able to play this scoring and will need to start 15-19 or even 14-19. If you need to handicap it more than that, it’s not the right game for your level. (I never play this with a U12s or even most U14 teams. If you haven’t fully-Flippened yet, you need to focus more on ball control, keeping the ball in play, and winning the point over the course of a rally, and less on terminating the ball.)

Okay, but going back to the scores, here’s how it would shake out by player:

The Setter, Libero, and Opposite points add up the same, because those positions spend 50% of the time on offense and 50% on defense. Since there are 3 outsides and 2 of them are receiving, the outsides spend 67% of the time receiving and 33% of the time serving. On the other hand, only 1 out of 3 middles is receiving and the other 2 are on the serving side… so their point totals are different.

So if you want to use that exact method, it only works intra-position. But that’s a bit beyond the scope of this article.

Common Questions

Who serves?
I like a different server every time. Otherwise your points get a little screwy if one lineup faces the best server and another the worst. This also keeps your serving team rotating around between front-row and back-row.

Does the serving team need to be in specific rotations?
I don’t. I actually sometimes like to use the serving side of 1-way games to give players the chance to get some variety. For example, a middle swinging on the outside, swapping the libero between z6 and z5, etc. The only thing I generally don’t mess with is the setters, because they are in a clean 50/50 competition and they want to be setting on the serving side. But if you do a 6-2 and your setters hit, then you need to plan accordingly. More on that in a future article.

What do you do if the receiving team gets wiped?
Every now and then the receiving team melts down and loses 20-25 or 21-25. This will happen less if you change the server every time, because most of those beat-downs tend to be because they couldn’t handle a server. But it’s still kind of unsatisfying. You have 2 choices:

1. Give them another chance.

2. Just move on.

I usually choose option-2. Option 1 is playing with fire. They get beat down, you give them another chance…. and they get beat down again. Yikes. Or what do you do when another team gets beat down. Do you have to give them another chance? You can really spiral your whole practice plan and lose your timing, etc. So I do, every now and then, choose Option 1. But I want to be pretty sure that they will rally and get a better result.

Otherwise, I just choose Option 2 and move on. BUT… leading to the next question.

What rotation does the receiving team start in?
When you play 1-Way, you rotate every time you score a point. So if you get to 24, you hit all 6 rotations. But sometimes that doesn’t happen. So if you always start in Rotation 1 (and I hope to god you don’t, at least not without supporting statistics), then your Rotation 1 will end up getting significantly more practice. So I often change up the rotation that the receiving team starts in.

And finally, less of a question and more of a piece of advice… explain that you’re going to play a whole bunch of rounds and you’re going to rotate through all these different lineups. Whether you use my rounds or another plan, just explain it to the kids. For example, in my rounds, Libero 1 plays the first 6 and Libero 2 plays the next 6. If you don’t explain this, they will read all sorts of voodoo into that. Am I not starting anymore? Am I never going to get the chance to serve/pass/whatever? Do you hate me????

But if you explain, “okay in these rounds, you’re on the X side, so that’s your chance to work on Y. And then you’re going to get the same amount of opportunity to go over to the A side and work on B,” then the players usually get it and even appreciate that.

Enjoy! Play some FBK. Let me know how it goes.