- 2005: 1st
place in 12U, 1st place in 15U.
- 2006:
1st place in 12U, 3rd place in 16U.
- 2007:
1st place in 15U,
3rd place in 14U.
- 2008:
1st place in
12U (10 teams), 2nd place in 14U (51 teams), 2nd and 3rd place in 15U (34
teams), 8th place in 16U (96 teams).
- 2009:
1st place in 12U
(9 teams), 1st, 2nd, and 5th place in 14U (47 teams), 7th place in 16U (88
teams)
Q: If you don’t allow beginners, how do I get
started?
A: Unfortunately, we don’t have the resources to
train beginners within the Pumas season. Summer camps are a great introduction
to organized volleyball, as are local YMCA or in-town community programs. If
you live in or near Andover, contact us about local opportunities for grades
4-8. We can also provide information on how to start up a youth volleyball
program in your elementary or middle school.
Q: How do I find a good volleyball camp?
A: See our
links page, and ask other players/parents what
camps they liked.
Q: How do you determine the cost of the program?
A: The Andover Volleyball Club (AVC) is a
non-profit organization, and the directors are volunteers. Of the membership
fees paid to the club, about 50% pays for the gym space for practices and
tournaments, 25% goes to uniforms and NERVA membership, and the rest goes to
equipment and administrative costs. Power (travel) teams incur additional costs
for additional practices and tournaments, more expensive tournament facilities
(typically college gyms), and paid adult referees. (See the question on the
Open League below.)
Q:
What is the refund policy?
A:
$100 of the tryout fee is refundable if
a girl is cut or drops by notifying
the club by the cutoff date.
Any girl trying out for Power but only making Club will be refunded the
difference in the season fee. The entire season fee will be refunded if a girl
is cut from the club. If a girl incurs a season-ending injury before March 1, a
partial pro-rated refund will be issued. After March 1, no refunds can be
given. No refund will be given to a girl who pays the Power fee but whose team
plays in the Club division, they are still a power team.
Q: How do you construct the teams and make cuts?
A. Many factors go into the decision of how
to make teams. It starts with pre-registrations, which give us an idea of
how many teams we could make and how many coaches we’ll need. At tryouts,
we assemble as many coaches as feasible to evaluate player skills. We also
use coaches evaluations from prior years, and of course we have to consider the
positions the girls want to play and are good at. After
the tryouts end, the coaches meet for many hours to discuss the player ratings
and divide the teams. Occasionally we divide the teams evenly, but usually
we create AA, A, B, and C levels so that a girl’s teammates are of similar strength.
The decision to cut players is a painful one, but often necessary in the
situation where there are too many players for an age group, and/or the skill
level of a player is notably below the others.
Q: Can my friend(s) play on my team?
A: Our top priority is to provide the best possible
experience for all players. We rate players and put them on teams based on
their level of play and their position, not on their geographic location or
school. We recognize that carpooling is important to many families, but
our primary goal is to make the strongest team at each level. After teams
are built but before they are finalized, we do look to see if there are any
possible trades that could put girls from the same town together to facilitate
carpooling, but only within the same level and only if it doesn't compromise
either team's positional makeup. One of the benefits of club volleyball is
its ability to make new friendships, and this philosophy has worked extremely
well for us toward that goal.
Q: How many players do Pumas teams have?
A: Our target is 10 players per team. Some
may have 9 or 11.
Q: Are the coaches trained?
A. Every Andover Pumas head coach is required to
take a coaches training course called IMPACT - Increased Mastery and
Professional Application of Coaching Theory. Some of our coaches have
additional certification as well, such as CAP - Coaching Accreditation Program,
or USAV referee’s certification. Most have high school and/or college coaching
or playing
experience. Assistant coaches are also strongly encouraged to take IMPACT
training.
Tournaments
Q: Who determines where and when the tournaments
take place?
A: On any tournament date, there are over 30
tournaments happening at sites all over New England, with about 300 teams
participating. Each tournament is confined to one age division, and could have
anywhere from one to five courts, with typically four teams per court. In a
season, each club is required to host the same number of tournament courts as
they have teams. For example, a club with 10 teams might host two courts on
each of five tournament dates. The NERVA coordinator uses many factors to
schedule the tournaments. Obviously, the team’s rank is a primary factor, as
most teams want to play against other teams of similar strength. The
coordinator first decides what age tournament will be at each site, making sure
that the host club has at least one team in that tournament. Teams are then
assigned to that site based on ranking and geography. This can be a difficult
balance, because some clubs are less willing to travel than others, even if it
means playing against teams of very different strength. Suffice it to say, the
coordinator’s job is not an easy one.
Q: Why don’t we know tournament locations
sooner?
A: Because each tournament is designed to contain
teams of similar strength, assignments can’t be made until the previous
tournament’s results have been gathered and rankings computed. The coordinator
must then go through the difficult process of scheduling each tournament site in
the presence of multiple constraints. This is usually completed about a week
after the previous tournament.
Q: How far away are the tournaments?
A: NERVA includes teams from Connecticut, Rhode
Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. In a large division with 80+
teams, it’s easier to schedule tournaments among equal strength teams that are
fairly local to each team. But in a smaller division (such as 12U) there are
fewer options. Being in Massachusetts, we’ve found that most tournaments are
within one hour’s drive, with two hours being the furthest, and sometimes
they’re at our home gym!
Q: How does a tournament schedule work?
A: Tournaments last from 4-7 hours, depending on
the success of your team. About half of that time is spent actually playing. A
typical arrival time is 8:30AM. Most tournaments have two phases – a period of
pool play followed by playoffs. The most common two-court tournament has four
teams assigned to each court (pool). Each of these four teams play two games
against each of the other three teams, for a total of six games. After this,
the teams are ranked 1-4 based on won/loss record. The top two teams in each
pool then move on to the playoff phase. Sometimes tiebreakers must be used
based on points, and occasionally an extra game must be played between teams
tied for 2nd, because a team can never be eliminated from playoffs
based on points alone. In playoffs, the teams play a semifinal match across
pools, and the winners meet in the finals.
Tournaments with more or fewer pools are run
slightly differently, but all eventually declare 1st and 2nd
place finishers.
Q: Are there trophies?
A: At each tournament, each girl on 1st and 2nd
place finishing teams receives a medal.
Q: What happens if a team doesn’t have enough
players at a tournament?
A: A team must have six players on the court. If a
team is short-handed, the coach may ask to borrow a player from the work team.
Pool-play games won with borrowed players still count, but a team cannot enter
playoffs without at least six regular team members.
Q: Who are the referees?
A: In general, the coaches referee the 12U
division, and the girls referee the older divisions. In the power league, there
is a trained professional head ref, and the girls do the rest. There are two
primary reasons why the girls do the refereeing. The first is monetary. The
cost of paying for adult referees at each tournament would increase every club's
fee. In addition it is believed that properly trained girls
do an equivalently good job, and they gain valuable experience in the process.
Sometimes this exposes the girls to criticism, and we have two opinions about
this. To the parents, we ask you to be aware that the purpose of Junior Olympic
Volleyball is to build self-esteem in all participants, and not to tear it
down. Loud, obnoxious behavior will not be tolerated and you may be asked by
the Tournament Director to leave the gym. To the girls, we say that the best
way to keep the fans and coaches from complaining is to be prepared and pay
attention. A mistaken call is soon forgotten, but a girl who doesn’t know the
rules or is habitually distracted while working is asking for trouble. The AVC
holds clinics for refereeing and scorekeeping, and we expect the girls to attend
and learn.
Q: What are the work team’s responsibilities?
A: Each team is usually assigned one or two work
(referee) assignments during tournament pool play. After pool play, a team not
making playoffs may be asked to work the first playoff round. Similarly, a team
losing a playoff round may be asked to work the next round.
The work team is composed of a head referee (R1),
and second referee (R2), two line judges (L1, L2), and two or three scorekeepers
(S1, S2, S3). The referees have whistles, the line judges either have flags or
use hand signals, and the scorekeepers sit at the desk with pencils, scorecards,
and the scoreboard. R1 is the head ref, and usually stands up on a platform.
She begins and ends play, makes ball-handling calls that she sees, and oversees
the rest of the work team. R2 stands on the floor at the opposite end of the
net, and focuses on net and centerline violations. She also controls player
substitutions and timeouts. L1 and L2 each control two lines. They look for
serving foot-faults, balls landing in or out with respect to their lines, and
balls touched by blockers that the referees may have trouble seeing. S1 keeps a
paper copy of the scorecard, making notations for each point scored and keeping
track of player substitutions and any illegal substitutions or rotations. S2
maintains the visible scoreboard and assists S1 with the busy task of keeping
everything in order on paper. There is a Libero Tracking Sheet that also must
be maintained, either by S2 or S3.
Q: How are team rankings determined?
A: The process changes from year to year, but
generally a team’s ranking is based on how that team fares at each tournament,
taking into account the level of the tournament. At the beginning of the
season, the AVC staff will pre-rank each team AA, A, B, or C depending on its
apparent strength. Each team will then play its first tournament against teams
of similar strength. After that, a points system is maintained based on the
position each team finishes in the tournament (considering the tournament
level), and the team’s ranking is a reflection of their point total. The better
a team performs, the higher their rank and the tougher the competition is likely
to be at the next tournament (for age divisions with multiple-tournaments).
Sometimes point totals are published on the NERVA website, and sometimes only
the team’s rankings are posted.
Q: What is the Open League?
A: The open league was established to give the
elite players from each club the opportunity to compete at the highest possible
level. However, it’s not really a different league, it’s simply the top ranked
teams in each of the 14U, 16U, 17U, and 18U divisions at any given time. In theory,
any team could get into the open league if their ranking becomes high enough.
Before the first open league tournament, the teams who want to be in the open
league compete in a qualifying tournament to pre-rank which teams will comprise
the open league for the first tournament date. On each tournament date, the
top ranked teams (depending on the number of courts available at the site)
compete at the same site, usually a college gym, with professional NERVA refs.
For this privilege, each attending club pays an additional site and referee
fee. Some teams jump in and out of the open league tournaments as their
rankings change. If a team doesn’t get into the open league on a given date,
it plays in the next highest rated tournament for that age division.
Presumably, that is still against teams close to their ability level.
Pumas has power teams whose goal is to compete in
the open league. Power teams (aka “travel teams”), because of
their elite status, almost always practice more than once per week. Pumas power
league teams usually have one additional mid-week evening practice and enter
additional tournaments besides the standard five. This requires a higher
fee from the team members than club teams. If a Pumas power team doesn't play well enough
to make or remain in the NERVA open league, they will continue to be a power
team and attempt to win enough throughout the season to enter the open league.
Q: Wouldn’t the 12s teams win more if they just
passed the ball over the net on the first hit?
A: The short answer is yes, they might, and you
may see some teams doing this. However, this is not the path to better
volleyball and our coaches discourage this behavior. Volleyball is the ultimate
team sport, and improvement and enjoyment come from playing together as a team.
It requires much more skill to accurately pass the ball to your teammates than
to pass it over the net, and over time developing this skill will lead to more
victories.
Rules
and Equipment
Q: What are the rule differences between High
School and NERVA volleyball?
A: There are three primary sets of rules governing
indoor volleyball in the USA:
Q: Are there special rules for the younger
teams?
A: The 12U division plays with a lighter ball (Tachikara
Volley-Lite), a lower net (7’0”), and has special serving rules. If the player
misses a serve from the normal line, she is allowed a second serve from five
feet closer to the net. 12U players are generally not asked to referee unless
they are comfortable doing so, and the scorekeeping is greatly simplified. All
other age groups follow the standard rules.
Q: Why do 21-point games start at 4?
A: Great question! In order to keep the duration
of each tournament to a reasonable time, NERVA plays 21-point games instead of
25-point games. However, because the official USAV rules stipulate 25 as the
game-ending score, it was thought better to play the 21 points from 4 to 25
rather than 0 to 21. In this way, a player or coach used to 25-point games
could still view 25 as the game-ending score for strategic purposes, and
wouldn’t be caught by surprise.
Q: What are the rules about the ball hitting the
ceiling or other obstructions?
A: Different gyms have different rules, and these
are reviewed at the coaches meeting before each tournament begins. In most gyms
a ball that hits the ceiling but stays on the same side is playable, while a
ball that hits the ceiling while crossing the net is out-of-bounds. Balls that
hit other obstructions such as basketball backboards are usually a judgment by
the referee. If the ball might have been played had the backboard not been
there, the referee can signal a play-over.
Q: How many timeouts does a team get?
A: Officially, each team gets two 30-second
timeouts per game. However, if the scheduled gym time is running short, the
Tournament Director may change this rule.
Q: Why is there a player with a different
colored shirt?
A: That player is called the Libero. It’s a
defensive specialist position that must only play back-row, and is not allowed
to serve, set, or attack the ball above the net. She may substitute for any
back-row player without registering with the referees, running on and off the
court as needed between points, except that when she rotates out of the back
row, she must sit for one rally before re-entering the game.
Q: My daughter wants a volleyball. What kind
should I get?
A: With volleyballs, you generally get what you pay
for. For regulation volleyballs, the best balls are made of leather, and these
are generally the easiest on the arms. They cost $40-50. Next best is
composite leather, which costs $25-35. They are a little harder on the arms but
not too bad. We use composite balls for practices and leather balls for games.
Most balls you get in backyard volleyball sets or at department stores are
either rubber or some amazingly painful material, and will usually discourage
the player.
For younger or beginner players, a lighter ball is
recommended. The lighter weight makes bumping, setting, and serving easier. We
use the white Mikasa Trainer balls or the red, white, and blue Tachikara Volley
Lite. They are in the $25-35 range.
Q: Where can I buy balls, kneepads, etc?
A: See our
links page.
