Lineups Part 2 - 5-1s

Making everybody perfectly 100% happy with play time. Right? Right???

It’s winter. That means club volleyball season is here for juniors volleyball coaches in the USA. Therefore, much of my content is tailored for club coaches. In the past, these have been some of my most popular posts. Check out this summary post which has links to last year’s Club Winter posts.

Winter Wrap-Up

If club isn’t your primary coaching domain, don’t worry, there’s plenty here in these articles that applies outside of the juniors club environment.

Webinar Info: Next Friday, Dec 20, I’m putting out a NCAA Finals Preview! I’ve done variations of this for the AVCA Convention in previous years and those were always really popular seminars. Since I’m not at the AVCA in-person this year, I figured I would put this out as a webinar. I’m traveling that Friday evening, so what I’ll do is open up a Subscriber chat or an Open Thread for Premium Subscribers to drop comments and questions. I’ll have some pre-recorded stats and analyses and then I’ll do some live Q&A of the questions/comments from subscribers.

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Previous Posts
Part 1

Last year I wrote an article about managing lineups that dealt mostly with practice. Check it out. In this article, we’ll talk more about setting lineups in-match, with a particular emphasis on juniors club volleyball.

Lineup Combinations

As I mentioned earlier in this post, here are 12 lineup combinations that can be made out of a 12-player lineup:

1. S1 - L1 - O1 - H1H2 - M1

2. S2 - L1 - O1 - H1H2 - M2

3. S1 - L1 - O2 - H1H2 - M3

4. S2 - L1 - O2 - H1H2 - M1

5. S1 - L1 - O1 - H1H3 - M2

6. S2 - L1 - O1 - H1H3 - M3

7. S1 - L2 - O2 - H1H3 - M1

8. S2 - L2 - O2 - H1H3 - M2

9. S1 - L2 - O1 - H2H3 - M3

10. S2 - L2 - O1 - H2H3 - M1

11. S1 - L2 - O2 - H2H3 - M2

12. S2 - L2 - O2 - H2H3 - M3

(Note that O1 and O2 denote opposites and H1, H2, H3 denote outside hitters.)

You’ll notice one significant flaw in the above combinations: they only have 6 players and thus, are all 1 middle short of a 7-person lineup needed for a match. And if you incorporate an everybody-plays-with-everybody attitude, you’re going to go from 12 lineups to 36 (there’s 3 ways that 3 middles can be combined, so 12 x 3 = 36).

The problem is: you can’t get any meanginful information by cycling through 36 lineups. Assuming you play a different lineup in each set of pool play at a tournament, and assuming you play 6 sets 25-point sets in a day (we’ll exclude the 15-point 3rd sets), then it will be 6 tournaments before you work your way through. That’s way too many lineups to work your way through. The right number of lineups to work with is about 6*. I say 6 with an asterisk because sometimes you’re going to have 6 player combinations that actually become 12 because you switch which 2 players “stick together” from one tournament to another. That’s the only way I like to go more than 6. More on that below.

What Do I Mean By “Different Lineups”?

When I talk with players, I try to actually not say “different lineups” but instead say, “different player combinations.” Players (and parents) like consistency and players (and parents) respond negatively to feeling like, “coach is just throwing out a different lineup every game.” In fact, in my informal surveys where I talk to coaches, club directors, players, parents from all over the country (via camps, clinics, Substack, attending events, etc), one of the most common criticisms that players and parents have for coaches is essentially, “she kept changing the lineup and we didn’t know what we were doing.”

I’ve found that that there’s a separation in how coaches think about lineups and how players and parents think about lineups. Understanding this difference will help you avoid confusion and losing the confidence of your team.

Coaches like to have different lineups because they want players to develop different skills and in different roles. For coaches, mixing the lineup up is usually about player development. Players (and parents) on the other hand, like consistency because consistency correlates with clarity. Players want to, “know what I’m doing,” and also players don’t like when, “my teammates don’t know what they are doing.”

When club coaches, in an effort to get everybody playing time and opportunities create lineups that are a significant change from game-to-game, what parents can sometimes see is a coach that doesn’t have a team prepared to play.

Here’s where I differentiate between Lineups and Player Combinations. Let’s say we practice a 5-1 and we get to the tournament and run a 5-1. We get to our first match. In the first match, in Set 1 the lineup is:

S1 - L1 - O1 - H1H2 - M1M2

In Set 2, the lineup is:

S2 - L1 - O2 - H1H2 - M1M2

I’d argue that you’re basically running the same Lineup but with a couple Substitutions that created different Player Combinations.

You may win or lose that 2nd game. But odds are, nobody is going to be confused about what position they are playing and where they are supposed to be. Parents may still be upset about your Substitutions but they are likely to frame any criticism around the issue of, “what is the proper amount of playing time for everybody,” which is a much more resolvable issue than, “coach didn’t have the team prepared and everybody is confused.”

And setter is a big change! Let’s say you run a 6-2 and your Player Combinations are:

S1/O2 - L1 - O1/S2 - H1H2 - M1M2
S1/O2 - L2 - O1/S2 - H1H3 - M1M3

So in these situations, all 12 players played. Everybody is going to feel like you played a consistent lineup, you just substituted some different player combinations between set 1 and set 2. Libero 1 got Set 1 and Libero 2 got Set 2. H1 got to play both sets and H2 and H3 swapped between Set 1 and Set 2. Same thing for middles; M1 got to play both sets and M2 and M3 swapped between Set 1 and Set 2.

It starts to feel like a “different lineup” when players have different roles from set to set. For example, if Johnny plays setter in game 1 and then switches to middle hitter in game 2, that feels very different because his role is so different. And if he’s changing roles, it might now mean that a middle is playing rightside and maybe a rightside is playing outside. That’s going to feel different.

Another way for a lineup to feel different is how the position is subbed. For example, in set 1 you sub a DS in for the opposite and the outsides play all the way around. In set 2, the opposite plays all the way around and you DS an outside. That’s not a massive change, but it will create a bit of a different feel to the rotations. It’s better if you do something like:

—Match 1—
S1 - L1 - O1/DS - H1H2 - M1M2
S2 - L1 - O2/DS - H1H3 - M1M3
—Match 2 —
S1 - L1 - O1 - H1H2/DS - M1M2
S2 - L1 - O2 - H1H3/DS - M1M3

In this case, your Match 1 serve receive rotations will be similar between Set 1 and Set 2, just with some different players. And Match 2 will have a similar feel to the rotations, just with some different players subbing in. It would be a more disruptive change if you took those same 4 player combinations and arranged them like:

—Match 1—
S1 - L1 - O1/DS - H1H2 - M1M2
S2 - L1 - O2 - H1H3/DS - M1M3
—Match 2 —
S1 - L1 - O1 - H1H2/DS - M1M2
S2 - L1 - O2/DS - H1H3 - M1M3

The ideal here is: consistent system with variable personnel.

Practical Applications: 5-1 Rotation

Okay, let’s see what this would look like for a club team running a 5-1. Let’s assume you have 10 kids, in the following combinations: