Club Month: U-17 Analysis

The transition to the next level

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!

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(Reminder if you’re on the East Coast to consider registering for the Offensive Concepts seminar weekend Dec 17-18 in Wilmington, DE.)

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In the previous two weeks, we’ve analyzed some of the Triangle data for U-13 National Championship matches as well as U-15 National Championship matches. We found that the takeaways from the U-13 analysis:

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.

Help up well after reviewing the U-15 matches. Let’s break down the numbers from a sampling of U-17 AAU National Championship matches. I’ll put them together in one image to compare better.

Okay, so what do we notice? First let’s highlight what doesn’t really change:

1. Service errors stayed pretty much constant. Teams missed a bit under 2 serves per set in U-13, U-15, and U-17. This implies something in the ballpark of a 93% Serve-In rate. I always like the concept of, “can you serve 23 out of 25 serves in?” because (a) to win a game, you serve about 25 times and (b) this is 92% Serve-In. It’s good to see another data set match up with what I’ve already been doing. Confirmation bias!

2. Transition Kills. Surprise! 6.4 to 6.2 to 6.3. Virtually no change. Arguably there is a change there as winning teams decreased a bit and losing teams increased. But the combined transition kills was about 13 (between both teams) in the U-13 matches and about 13 in the U-17 matches.

3. There was a step-wise change in getting aced from U-13 to U-15, which stayed pretty similar from U-15 to U-17. The teams that won games at U-15 and U-17 National Championships were getting aced less than once per set. That’s bigtime! NCAA numbers are just a shade higher, but this matches up pretty well with what we see at the higher levels. First rule of volleyball: Don’t get aced!

Okay, now let’s look at some trends, in graphical form.

So, this is a pretty clear description of, “level of play.” (Unforced) errors go down and First Ball Kills go up. I’ve discussed this previously, but this is the big transition that we see from even very good U-13s volleyball toward levels closer to collegiate-level volleyball. The game becomes more First Ball-oriented. The level of Transition Kill stayed about the same, while teams made fewer overall errors and killed the ball more frequently in Transition.

There was a steady march upward in the portion of the game played in First Ball. 38% of rallies at U-13 were FB Kills or FB Stops. 40% of rallies at U-15 were FB Kills or FB Stops, and that number climbed to 44% at the U-17 level. Accordingly, the Transition % fell just a bit, until at U-17, equal amounts of the game were played in First Ball and Transition.

Another interesting phenomenon: at U-15, we saw that the difference between winning and losing was more heavily weighted toward: “Play clean in sideout, and look for opportunities to kill the ball in transition.” In the U-17 National Championship matches, the losing teams were a bit higher-error, but the number of First Ball Stops and Transition Stops were pretty comparable between winning and losing teams. The difference was in the Kill %. In particular, when you account for the fact that losing teams get more chances to sideout, the FB Kill % was much higher for winning teams.

This all makes sense and shifts toward what we start seeing at the NCAA level. There are great offensive First Ball teams and great defensive First Ball teams. It’s not necessarily either/or. So let’s reflect back to those initial 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.

I think this is a really good roadmap for most Juniors volleyball. Remember that teams that are comparable to U-17 National Championship contenders are less than 1-in-1000 at the Juniors level. If you are approaching that level, the next 3 takeaways for me are:

Pass quality becomes more important. The first step toward volleyball competency is just winning the Aceball game. But as the ability to FBK becomes more important, we need to upgrade some medium passes to perfect and run some middle attack.

Stop serving the liberos! These are very good club teams and I couldn’t believe how many times the liberos were served. If you don’t want the other team to be in-system, start by targeting your serves away from the liberos.

Be able to block some balls In-System. At U-17, we’re starting to see hitters get pretty terminal. As much coaches who have coached at the pro level can attest to, hitting usually develops before blocking. While watching these U-17 matches, you can see the blockers are pretty overwhelmed by the offense when the pass is in-system. Developing some basic competency in read blocking and other tactics can help your teams stand up against offenses that are starting to get really good.

Did you have any takeaways from these numbers? Drop them in the comments and I'll share them in a future mailbag.