VOLLEYBALL CLUBS CHECK IN: How's your spring season going with your kid's club?

[Anonymous]

DD is in her 3rd year playing Club volleyball, 2nd year with her current club. Overall it's been fine, but some dynamics are very frustrating. How is your kid's volleyball season going? What do you and/or your DD or DS love about your club? What makes you miserable? Do you want another year with your club or definitely want a new club next year, and why?

[Anonymous]

Monument is a dumpster fire.

[Anonymous]

FPYCparent wrote:As a first-timer (DD is in her first club year), I need a primer on bids. I understand that teams can earn bids at Qualifier events for the opportunity to go to Chicago. However, does each region get a certain allotment of bids outside of the Qualifiers? If so, how many (per age group and/or division? Are some clubs front-loading early (January/February) events to get a regional bid acceptance (in CHRVA, at least)?

Why aren't results from SportWrench events (Volley by the James, Capital Hill Classic) not reflected in AES? How/why does AES seem differentiate matches for national and regional recordkeeping?

I'm sure I have more questions, but I still don't know enough to ask!

There is 1 National bid through CHRVA and usually 1 American.
If a team gets a bid at Open, that supersedes National. If they get it at USA, that Supersedes American. At the end of the season, there may be some additional bids allocated to the region. Team can double qualify at qualifiers and then those bids may trickle down at the region but they only trickle down so far.
There is a bid tracker website somewhere that tracks all this.
Team May frontload regions in the season to make sure they have a good record going into regions so their seeding is high. Metro and Paramount will do the minimum regional play. I

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Monument is a dumpster fire.

The whole club or specific age groups?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

FPYCparent wrote:As a first-timer (DD is in her first club year), I need a primer on bids. I understand that teams can earn bids at Qualifier events for the opportunity to go to Chicago. However, does each region get a certain allotment of bids outside of the Qualifiers? If so, how many (per age group and/or division? Are some clubs front-loading early (January/February) events to get a regional bid acceptance (in CHRVA, at least)?

Why aren't results from SportWrench events (Volley by the James, Capital Hill Classic) not reflected in AES? How/why does AES seem differentiate matches for national and regional recordkeeping?

I'm sure I have more questions, but I still don't know enough to ask!

There is 1 National bid through CHRVA and usually 1 American.
If a team gets a bid at Open, that supersedes National. If they get it at USA, that Supersedes American. At the end of the season, there may be some additional bids allocated to the region. Team can double qualify at qualifiers and then those bids may trickle down at the region but they only trickle down so far.
There is a bid tracker website somewhere that tracks all this.
Team May frontload regions in the season to make sure they have a good record going into regions so their seeding is high. Metro and Paramount will do the minimum regional play. I

PP is right but they have added more bids with addition of Freedom division in recent years.
Here is the GJNC Link showing the bid allocation and how they allocated based on region growth from the prior year:
https://usavolleyball.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/2023-GJNC-Bid-Allocations-All-Divisions-FINALL.pdf

For BIDS:
Depends on the age group for bid allocation for the CHRVA region for USAV. For ages 14-17, this year there is 1 National Bid, 1 American Bid and 1 Freedom Bid officially allocated for CHRVA. Because CHRVA has grown so much over the past year, it puts them in higher in priority line for additional bid allocation if other regions in USAV decide not to take their particular bid. This year, CHRVA is 7th in line for a national bid (officially it is 15th but they have already reallocated the first 8); 3rd in line for an American bid; 2nd in line for a Freedom Bid. Also, CHRVA teams can get bids by going to national qualifiers. If they get a bid by finishing in one of the top spots to get a bid, and they had already gotten a bid via the CHRVA Bid regionals tournament, they will take the higher of the 2 bids (which is normally the one from the national qualifier but not always depending on what the team had tried to get at a national qualifier). The other bid (typically the CHRVA allocated one) will then trickle down to the next placed team depending on CHRVA tournament bid and then the bids will trickle down etc (for example, first place CHRVA bid team got a National bid but then went to a national qualifier and won an Open level bid which is the highest division. The National bid would then trickle down to the 2nd place CHRVA bid team, and their 2nd place American bid would trickle down to the 3rd place team and the 3rd place team's Freedom bid would trickle down to the 4th place team). If 2 other regions decide not to take their freedom bids, then CHRVA will get another (second) freedom bid because CHRVA is 2nd line for bid reallocation and that would then likely go to the 5th place team. Same if 3 other regions decide not to take their American bids, then CHRVA would also get an American bid since CHRVA is 3rd in line for an American bid. The team that got a Freedom bid originally would then get that American bid since it is higher than freedom division and then their freedom bid would trickle down to the next place team. Keep in mind, last year, some of the freedom bids came very late in the season (like in May) so teams may opt out because it is too late to plan logistically and/or they made plans to go to Orlando and too much to try to change or don't want to go to play in that division or some other reason. Last year for U14s, CHRVA should have gotten another Freedom bid but is went to the next region after CHRVA. I don't know the details of why - just the end result that it skipped CHRVA and went to the next region in line. It could be that the next place teams declined and CHRVA opted not to keep going down the line or something else.

For AES:
More and more, tournaments use AES rankings to seed their tournament pools. Other tournaments use a combination of AES and some other secret sauce. It did not look like USAV relied 100% off AES rankings and factored in some other things to seed the pools (at least for our age group last year - but it could have been a timing thing too but seemed they tweaked a bit knowing what they know of teams and certain regions). If a tournament was entered and tracked from the beginning in AES then all the results auto load for national and regional ranking. National Ranking looks at how the team did against all teams. Regional ranking scores only based on the team's record for how they did against just CHRVA teams. If a tournament was tracked in something else like SportWrench, it is up to the club(s) to manually enter their results (honor system). Thus, it can happen that one club may not manually enter anything but another club that beat them did to get credit for their win. That SportWrench loss will still show up and tagged with the losing team. So, it could end up with a slightly off record if they don't enter anything but other teams enter their effective losses which drop them down. It could also skew if one team manually uploaded and accidently entered or defaulted the match date and the other club entered their same results with a different date (eg Sat vs Sun date for a tournament that started on Sat). This would ding the losing team 2x in the AES ranking. The team that got dinged could reach out to the other team that uploaded in error or adjust their own so that the one match is not double counted against them. Many clubs will only enter their wins since it is manually uploaded to help with their rankings and they choose not to upload their losses. The AES (national) rankings becomes important to be able to make the cut for who gets accepted into the CHRVA bid regionals and what pool you may get placed in for tournaments in general. Just like any other brackets, higher seeded teams play lower seeded teams in pool play so that the higher seeded teams meet up later in the tournament to move toward gold bracket etc. AES does account for playing against higher ranked AES teams so multiple losses to a really high ranked team doesnt ding a ranking as bad as losing to a low ranked team. Also, if a team plays in an older age group, losses to an older team dont adversely affect your rankings but wins can help.

For CHRVA BID tournament:
CHRVA lists certain criteria for teams to be eligible for consideration for CHRVA Bid tournament acceptance. The must play in at least 2 sanctioned CHRVA tournaments before a certain date (this year it was ~3/10). At least one of those 2 tournaments must be at the CHRVA "Open" level. CHRVA tournaments have Open (highest), Club (lowest) and Mixed (both high and lost together - but not considered OPEN for bid eligibility). This is different than National Qualifier level Open which really is another level of play when comparing CHRVA levels of skills vs other regions around the country... Some teams front load because they play other nonCHRVA tournaments as the season progresses. Also with winter (and COVID), teams may enter early in case something gets cancelled and can't get rescheduled for the team to adjust their schedule to meet the play by date for eligibility. A few years ago, some clubs did not realize this and missed out because their tournaments were cancelled due to COVID High levels or inclement weather and they didn't get another one to backfill to meet the 2 tournaments and/or at least one OPEN tournament requirement.

For CHRVA Bid tournament 'acceptance,' they generally will check after tournament registration close date to see who has applied to get into the Bid tournament and if they have met the criteria (I assume they may allow for some exceptions in CHRVA bylaws somewhere - mainly to not accept, roster eligibility or something else). This year, they were able to do it right after the close date of 3/1 since all the top teams met criteria and they didn't have to wait for 3/10 tournaments since teams that may have been in those tournaments would not have changed the results/rankings enough to identify the top # of teams. For each age group, there are a certain number of max teams. Older teams, it is typically up to 16 teams. Thus, if 25 teams apply, when CHRVA went to go and against AES (the week of 3/1 this year), they sorted on National Rankings for the Chesapeake (CHRVA) region and went right on down the list of applicants until they got to the top 16 (max #) teams. In this example of 25 applicants, the other 9 would not get accepted. Teams can also withdraw/drop before or after CHRVA accepts and so a waitlisted team could then come in and play.

You can only get a GJNC Open level bid if you play and win a bid at a National Qualifier. National level bids are only allocated at the Region level. Same with the Liberty division.
They added Liberty and Freedom divisions a few years ago - gives that many more teams opportunity to go to Nationals with growth of the girls volleyball industry. Many teams at the National level are super good but just didn't quite get the Open bid at National Qualifiers. In those regions, their representatives for 2nd place may have also been contenders in Open level tournaments but landed in the American division so they can wallop many of the other region #2s. Others have also sandbagged at National Qualifiers to ensure the club gets a National bid but they are hoping to get a higher one. So GJNC may be a wide spectrum in some of the divisions. CHRVA is not a strong region compared to many other regions around the country but you don't realize how much until seeing some of these other regions play and the level of play of even their #3 and #4 teams from top clubs. All good experiences though to just play teams from different regions regardless, whether in national qualifiers or at nationals themselves.

Here is the rank order of Divisions by most competitive to least for USAV GJNC/Nationals with the age groups for which those divisions apply:
Open (13s -17s)
National (11s – 17s)
USA (12s – 17s)
Liberty (13 – 17s)
American (12s – 17s)
Freedom (14s – 17s)
Patriot (13s – 17s) - PAY to PLAY - anyone can play Patriot if you pay the fee. There is no qualifying against other teams to get there.

AAU Nationals vs USAV GJNC:
Most argue that USAV GJNC is the more prestigious because except for Patriot, you must actually earn a bid. For AAU Nationals in Orlando, clubs pay to enter and self-select what division they want to play in. Some teams say they 'won' an AAU bid to AAU nationals by winning an AAU Grand Prix tournament. In reality, they 'won' the registration fee so the club does not have to pay to enter into the AAU Nationals tournament like other teams. There are still a ton of teams that go and some of the top teams use the AAU Nationals as warm ups for going into USAV Nationals. Not a ton of them, but some (Mad Frog, Boilermakers to name a few). With AAU and USAV competing for team attention (and the revenue with it), they are starting to have overlapping dates to make teams choose. Will be interesting in coming years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

FPYCparent wrote:As a first-timer (DD is in her first club year), I need a primer on bids. I understand that teams can earn bids at Qualifier events for the opportunity to go to Chicago. However, does each region get a certain allotment of bids outside of the Qualifiers? If so, how many (per age group and/or division? Are some clubs front-loading early (January/February) events to get a regional bid acceptance (in CHRVA, at least)?

Why aren't results from SportWrench events (Volley by the James, Capital Hill Classic) not reflected in AES? How/why does AES seem differentiate matches for national and regional recordkeeping?

I'm sure I have more questions, but I still don't know enough to ask!

There is 1 National bid through CHRVA and usually 1 American.
If a team gets a bid at Open, that supersedes National. If they get it at USA, that Supersedes American. At the end of the season, there may be some additional bids allocated to the region. Team can double qualify at qualifiers and then those bids may trickle down at the region but they only trickle down so far.
There is a bid tracker website somewhere that tracks all this.
Team May frontload regions in the season to make sure they have a good record going into regions so their seeding is high. Metro and Paramount will do the minimum regional play. I

PP is right but they have added more bids with addition of Freedom division in recent years.
Here is the GJNC Link showing the bid allocation and how they allocated based on region growth from the prior year:
https://usavolleyball.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/2023-GJNC-Bid-Allocations-All-Divisions-FINALL.pdf

For BIDS:
Depends on the age group for bid allocation for the CHRVA region for USAV. For ages 14-17, this year there is 1 National Bid, 1 American Bid and 1 Freedom Bid officially allocated for CHRVA. Because CHRVA has grown so much over the past year, it puts them in higher in priority line for additional bid allocation if other regions in USAV decide not to take their particular bid. This year, CHRVA is 7th in line for a national bid (officially it is 15th but they have already reallocated the first 8); 3rd in line for an American bid; 2nd in line for a Freedom Bid. Also, CHRVA teams can get bids by going to national qualifiers. If they get a bid by finishing in one of the top spots to get a bid, and they had already gotten a bid via the CHRVA Bid regionals tournament, they will take the higher of the 2 bids (which is normally the one from the national qualifier but not always depending on what the team had tried to get at a national qualifier). The other bid (typically the CHRVA allocated one) will then trickle down to the next placed team depending on CHRVA tournament bid and then the bids will trickle down etc (for example, first place CHRVA bid team got a National bid but then went to a national qualifier and won an Open level bid which is the highest division. The National bid would then trickle down to the 2nd place CHRVA bid team, and their 2nd place American bid would trickle down to the 3rd place team and the 3rd place team's Freedom bid would trickle down to the 4th place team). If 2 other regions decide not to take their freedom bids, then CHRVA will get another (second) freedom bid because CHRVA is 2nd line for bid reallocation and that would then likely go to the 5th place team. Same if 3 other regions decide not to take their American bids, then CHRVA would also get an American bid since CHRVA is 3rd in line for an American bid. The team that got a Freedom bid originally would then get that American bid since it is higher than freedom division and then their freedom bid would trickle down to the next place team. Keep in mind, last year, some of the freedom bids came very late in the season (like in May) so teams may opt out because it is too late to plan logistically and/or they made plans to go to Orlando and too much to try to change or don't want to go to play in that division or some other reason. Last year for U14s, CHRVA should have gotten another Freedom bid but is went to the next region after CHRVA. I don't know the details of why - just the end result that it skipped CHRVA and went to the next region in line. It could be that the next place teams declined and CHRVA opted not to keep going down the line or something else.

For AES:
More and more, tournaments use AES rankings to seed their tournament pools. Other tournaments use a combination of AES and some other secret sauce. It did not look like USAV relied 100% off AES rankings and factored in some other things to seed the pools (at least for our age group last year - but it could have been a timing thing too but seemed they tweaked a bit knowing what they know of teams and certain regions). If a tournament was entered and tracked from the beginning in AES then all the results auto load for national and regional ranking. National Ranking looks at how the team did against all teams. Regional ranking scores only based on the team's record for how they did against just CHRVA teams. If a tournament was tracked in something else like SportWrench, it is up to the club(s) to manually enter their results (honor system). Thus, it can happen that one club may not manually enter anything but another club that beat them did to get credit for their win. That SportWrench loss will still show up and tagged with the losing team. So, it could end up with a slightly off record if they don't enter anything but other teams enter their effective losses which drop them down. It could also skew if one team manually uploaded and accidently entered or defaulted the match date and the other club entered their same results with a different date (eg Sat vs Sun date for a tournament that started on Sat). This would ding the losing team 2x in the AES ranking. The team that got dinged could reach out to the other team that uploaded in error or adjust their own so that the one match is not double counted against them. Many clubs will only enter their wins since it is manually uploaded to help with their rankings and they choose not to upload their losses. The AES (national) rankings becomes important to be able to make the cut for who gets accepted into the CHRVA bid regionals and what pool you may get placed in for tournaments in general. Just like any other brackets, higher seeded teams play lower seeded teams in pool play so that the higher seeded teams meet up later in the tournament to move toward gold bracket etc. AES does account for playing against higher ranked AES teams so multiple losses to a really high ranked team doesnt ding a ranking as bad as losing to a low ranked team. Also, if a team plays in an older age group, losses to an older team dont adversely affect your rankings but wins can help.

For CHRVA BID tournament:
CHRVA lists certain criteria for teams to be eligible for consideration for CHRVA Bid tournament acceptance. The must play in at least 2 sanctioned CHRVA tournaments before a certain date (this year it was ~3/10). At least one of those 2 tournaments must be at the CHRVA "Open" level. CHRVA tournaments have Open (highest), Club (lowest) and Mixed (both high and lost together - but not considered OPEN for bid eligibility). This is different than National Qualifier level Open which really is another level of play when comparing CHRVA levels of skills vs other regions around the country... Some teams front load because they play other nonCHRVA tournaments as the season progresses. Also with winter (and COVID), teams may enter early in case something gets cancelled and can't get rescheduled for the team to adjust their schedule to meet the play by date for eligibility. A few years ago, some clubs did not realize this and missed out because their tournaments were cancelled due to COVID High levels or inclement weather and they didn't get another one to backfill to meet the 2 tournaments and/or at least one OPEN tournament requirement.

For CHRVA Bid tournament 'acceptance,' they generally will check after tournament registration close date to see who has applied to get into the Bid tournament and if they have met the criteria (I assume they may allow for some exceptions in CHRVA bylaws somewhere - mainly to not accept, roster eligibility or something else). This year, they were able to do it right after the close date of 3/1 since all the top teams met criteria and they didn't have to wait for 3/10 tournaments since teams that may have been in those tournaments would not have changed the results/rankings enough to identify the top # of teams. For each age group, there are a certain number of max teams. Older teams, it is typically up to 16 teams. Thus, if 25 teams apply, when CHRVA went to go and against AES (the week of 3/1 this year), they sorted on National Rankings for the Chesapeake (CHRVA) region and went right on down the list of applicants until they got to the top 16 (max #) teams. In this example of 25 applicants, the other 9 would not get accepted. Teams can also withdraw/drop before or after CHRVA accepts and so a waitlisted team could then come in and play.

You can only get a GJNC Open level bid if you play and win a bid at a National Qualifier. National level bids are only allocated at the Region level. Liberty division is only available via National Qualifier like Open division.
They added Liberty and Freedom divisions a few years ago - gives that many more teams opportunity to go to Nationals with growth of the girls volleyball industry. Many teams at the National level are super good but just didn't quite get the Open bid at National Qualifiers. In those regions, their representatives for 2nd place may have also been contenders in Open level tournaments but landed in the American division so they can wallop many of the other region #2s. Others have also sandbagged at National Qualifiers to ensure the club gets a National bid but they are hoping to get a higher one. So GJNC may be a wide spectrum in some of the divisions. CHRVA is not a strong region compared to many other regions around the country but you don't realize how much until seeing some of these other regions play and the level of play of even their #3 and #4 teams from top clubs. All good experiences though to just play teams from different regions regardless, whether in national qualifiers or at nationals themselves.

Here is the rank order of Divisions by most competitive to least for USAV GJNC/Nationals with the age groups for which those divisions apply:
Open (13s -17s)
National (11s – 17s)
USA (12s – 17s)
Liberty (13 – 17s)
American (12s – 17s)
Freedom (14s – 17s)
Patriot (13s – 17s) - PAY to PLAY - anyone can play Patriot if you pay the fee. There is no qualifying against other teams to get there.

AAU Nationals vs USAV GJNC:
Most argue that USAV GJNC is the more prestigious because except for Patriot, you must actually earn a bid. For AAU Nationals in Orlando, clubs pay to enter and self-select what division they want to play in. Some teams say they 'won' an AAU bid to AAU nationals by winning an AAU Grand Prix tournament. In reality, they 'won' the registration fee so the club does not have to pay to enter into the AAU Nationals tournament like other teams. There are still a ton of teams that go and some of the top teams use the AAU Nationals as warm ups for going into USAV Nationals. Not a ton of them, but some (Mad Frog, Boilermakers to name a few). With AAU and USAV competing for team attention (and the revenue with it), they are starting to have overlapping dates to make teams choose. Will be interesting in coming years.

Oops - same poster again - made an update to show that Liberty division is only available via a National Qualifier event, and not via regional bid tournament.

[Anonymous]

Anyone with a player at Evolution volleyball? My understand is that it is not as intense as club, but I don't know if people are happy with it or not; my 14 year old wants to play more next year after the high school season.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Monument is a dumpster fire.

The whole club or specific age groups?

Whole club. Disaster starts from the top.

[Anonymous]

MOCO is not responsive to parent concerns. Communication is lacking. Some coaching is great, other coaching not so much.

[Anonymous]

Spiked DX is a disaster wrapped in a cruel joke. Run far, far away.

[FPYCparent]

Thanks for the breakdown on bids. Much to learn, I have.

[Anonymous]

With Boys, AAU is becoming more prestigious....

[Anonymous]

CHRVA Bid Regionals Results:

U12: MDJRS, MVSA, Paramouint
U13: Metro, Liberty Elite, MVSA
U14: Paramount, Blue Ridge, Metro
U15: Paramount, Metro, MVSA
U16: Metro, Paramount, Blue Ridge
U17: Blue Ridge, Paramount, MDJRS

What has happened to VAJrs? None of their teams earned bids this weekend at Regionals and none of them are even in relatively good positions to earn reallocated bids later in the season...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:CHRVA Bid Regionals Results:

U12: MDJRS, MVSA, Paramouint
U13: Metro, Liberty Elite, MVSA
U14: Paramount, Blue Ridge, Metro
U15: Paramount, Metro, MVSA
U16: Metro, Paramount, Blue Ridge
U17: Blue Ridge, Paramount, MDJRS

What has happened to VAJrs? None of their teams earned bids this weekend at Regionals and none of them are even in relatively good positions to earn reallocated bids later in the season...

I believe they won the 18s, but only because Metro and Paramount weren’t there.
Jnrs is a dumpster fire, and the word is out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With Boys, AAU is becoming more prestigious....

USAV dropped the ball with Boy’s GJNC a couple years ago, and since then AAU’s have become the prime event for the best boys teams to go to