As a frosh volleyball coach i am trying to find the most fair way to divide up my girl's playing time?

Question

being a newbie to coaching i never had to worry about this before, but recently my benched players have been asking for play time every game and i am not sure it is a good decision yet. my philosophy is to put the best players in the game and only sub when i need to, but without playing time i don't think there will be any development. i have been talking with other people and they have suggested that by letting the less skilled players have equal game time, they will not have an incentive to improve their skills because they do not have to compete for it. again this is a frosh team, so i am not sure how to go about doing this. if i were the varsity coach, i would not have any problems with this decision, but at this lower level, i dunno? what do you guys think?

Answer 1

Obviously you have to put in your best players more than other players! I think that you should still give everyone a chance to play. That's the only way they'll learn and feel more comfortable on the court. Besides, it's only freshmen team!

Answer 2

don't high school volleyball isn't recreation...go for the wins.

Answer 3

put in your starting 6, then if somebody misses a serve, sub them out.  (make sure to tell them this before the game starts!)  this encourages they to make their serve.  start a new 6 every match...then find your top 6 players.  start them every time, (unless another girl improves) and just sub girls in...good luck!

Answer 4

ok i was on a club team last year, and i was one of those bad players.  our coach, Courtney Catt, put people in that would make an effort even if they failed.  or people that wouldn't knock down the whole team's spirits by  refusing to shake off their mistakes.

Answer 5

mix it up- put some good players in with the bad ones so they can teach eachother

how many freshmen do you have on the team ?

Answer 6

my coach plays the starters for the first round then on the secend one plays the worst players after that she plays mostly the starters and subs

Answer 7

When I coached club teams, I had different outlooks.  

I coached the top 14 team and the top 18 team for different clubs, wins were the most important thing.  I only subbed to get people on the sidelines so that I could coach them for several plays and get them back inside.  

I coached the bottom team, I had a different idea.  Everyone paid the same amount of money, so I tried to have even playing time.  My setters always had more playing time.  My best players seemed to get their time off against the worst opponents.  Wins were still important, but I wanted to develop everyone.  I was coaching the 13 and under team, but most of my players were 10 or 11.  I did not want to sit them on the bench and leave them there.  I wanted them to be with the club the following year.  

Talk with your varsity coach.  See how important freshman team wins are to the varsity coach.  I would not think that you should go for equal time.  Your varsity coach would probably want some more playing time for your bench.  But not equal.

Answer 8

im a freshman and in the vball team. there are 14 girls in our team and my coach plays the same 6 girls like 95% of the time. and she always puts the same 2 or 3 ppl to sub. it really sucks for us girls that are benched because we bust our butts at practice every day and we dont even get to play. its just a waste of our time and our parents who come to watch us play. if i was a vball coach i would give everyone playing time becasuse its not fair for the 'benchwarmers'.