Club Month: U-15s Analysis
Working up the ladder
November is Juniors Month at Smarter Volley. Juniors clubs have been underway in Europe for a little while now, and in North America most boys have already started and girls are just now getting going. Because of that, most of the content this month will be geared around the Juniors game and be directly applicable for Juniors coaches. But, a lot of it will be useful for coaches at other levels, including this one. Enjoy!
(Reminder if you’re on the East Coast to consider registering for the Offensive Concepts seminar weekend Dec 17-18 in Wilmington, DE.)
Last week we looked at data from U-13 National Championships and found some takeaways.
You need to be able to control the ball in serve and serve receive. On average, winning teams missed fewer than 2 serves out of 25. And both winning and losing teams were aced fewer than 3 times per set.
Be clean in your First Ball phase. You don’t necessarily have to kill every ball (the way you might at the higher levels), but you can’t give away points. Make Them Play.
Train to terminate in Transition. Don’t just get the ball up and give a downball or tip back. Improve your dig quality, improve your non-setter setting, and look for opportunities where your blockers can release off the net in a freeball/downball situation to have better approaches.
Today we’ll look at data from 3 years worth of U-15 AAU National Championships and see if these hold true or if there are any changes as we advance forward 2 years in age and level.
Here’s some of the raw numbers. Again, we see the same 25-19 average margin. And just watching those matches made me see how important the ability to reset and not let the game run away from you is at the younger levels. I can watch these players and almost see the fluctuation in skill level from early in the set to the middle of the set and then the end of the set. As a coach, what tools do you have to help your players reset when the energy is off?
Looking at the numbers, what are some differences between U-13 and U-15?
Blocking doubled from 1.2 per set to 2.4. That’s per team. At U-13, losing teams actually outblocked winning teams 1.3 to 1.1. At U-15, winning teams outblocked losing teams 2.8 to 2.0. So blocking is becoming a bit more important as we get 2 years old.
Aces plummeted! Teams averaged over 2 aces per set at U-13 and now under 1 per set at U-15. This feels a bit small-sample-sizey to me, but could be also indicative of a bit of a meta-game: the teams that are reaching the highest level at U-15s are getting better at passing, but also likely prioritizing athletes capable of attacking and blocking at a future-collegiate level, which might mean that some of the best servers (who might be less physical at the net) are not on the best teams.
Errors dropped (from 5.4 to 4.8) and Kills climbed (from 11.7 to 12.0). This is what you’d expect as the skill level increases. This is more of a comment on the U-13 level of play, but I’m surprised that the slope is this gradual. The majority of high school teams average over 10 errors per set (combined attacking and serving), but the U-13 teams were at 7. Just goes to show the level of play that can be accomplished at a young age.
Looking at the portions of each phase:
We see just how low the amount of Terminal Serving is. That’s a bit below NCAA levels. Again, it could be small sample-size. It could be the fact that you spend most of your training and competition time on smaller sportcourts without much serving room (I was surprised at how many players were hitting very mediocre standing serves), it could be that emphasizing attacking/blocking is a faster route to success and just keeping the ball in play with the serve is the way to go.
That’s a bit of speculation that I don’t have a concrete takeaway for just yet. But what I am really interested in is this next piece:
I highlighted both First Ball (in Red) and Transition (in Green) on the same chart, because what we’re about to see is nearly the same phenomenon we saw at U-13.
In U-13, winning teams still had more First Ball Kills, but here the losing teams actually had more FBKs than the winning teams! Now, that’s partly because they had more chances to receive. If we change to FBK%, the winning teams are more like 28% and the losing teams are more like 26%, but still, it shows that, as the level gets higher, everybody is capable of killing the ball in First Ball.
The difference here was in First Ball Stops. The winning teams averaged 4.5 First Ball stops while the losing teams averaged just 1.5. The winning teams blocked 2 balls per set while the losing teams essentially never blocked a ball. The losing teams also made more unforced errors.
But when we look at Transition, it’s the opposite. The losing teams made 4.8 Transition Stops to the 3.6 Transition Stops of the winning teams. But the gap in Transition Kills made up for it.
So despite the two years in age difference, the three main takeaways from U-13 still hold almost exactly:
You need to be able to control the ball in serve and serve receive. On average, winning teams missed fewer than 2 serves out of 25. And both winning and losing teams were aced fewer than 3 times per set.
Be clean in your First Ball phase. You don’t necessarily have to kill every ball (the way you might at the higher levels), but you can’t give away points. Make Them Play.
Train to terminate in Transition. Don’t just get the ball up and give a downball or tip back. Improve your dig quality, improve your non-setter setting, and look for opportunities where your blockers can release off the net in a freeball/downball situation to have better approaches.
Be clean in First Ball and Make Them Play. Create Transition opportunities and be aggressive, don’t give the ball away in Transition. And, whatever you do, don’t get aced!