Metro vs Paramount (vs other top clubs)
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Anonymous
An algorithm is something not nothing. Our DNA is an algorithm and it means something. |
Anonymous
I get that Open is higher than National and that both Metro and Paramount make it known that Open bids are the goal, but I think it says something about the general attitude of Paramount as a club and its supporters, that they are bending over backwards to criticize these teams that won and were runners-up in the second highest division at nationals. They have been suspiciously quiet about Metro 17 Travel that brought home a medal for 3rd place in 17 Open. A PP said it further up this thread, shouldn't all CHRVA teams be rooting for other CHRVA teams to succeed? Isn't a stronger region better for all of the local clubs in the long run? I thought it was a great achievement that CHRVA had a team qualified in every Open division at Nationals. In addition to the Paramount and Metro Open bids being discussed, MDJRs 14s had an Open bid as did Blue Ridge 13s. I don't know whether that has ever happened before in CHRVA history. If CHRVA teams want to consistently be in the running for an Open national championship, then we need more competitive clubs locally. If Paramount out competes Metro and takes over the top spot in CHRVA, then great, but tearing down Metro so Paramount can take that spot is a loss for everyone. |
Anonymous
If you read this thread, you will see it's the Metro supporter who started by comparing the performance of Metro 15, 16 to that of Paramount 15, 16 at the nationals:
This is ridiculous because it's like a team who won the JV competition laughing at a team who lost the varsity competition. |
Anonymous
So it would be ok for the Metro 14s, 17s, and 18s who all finished higher placed in Open divisions than any Paramount team (even those in the “JV” divisions, like National) to be “laughing”? Just want to make sure I understand the rules Paramount follows. |
Anonymous
Nobody should laugh at nobody else. The Metro supporter laughed at the Paramount 15 and 16. Thus the response JV should not laugh at Varsity. Nobody said that Metro 14, 17, 18 should laugh at Paramount except YOU. |
Anonymous
| Dudes, calm down. Nobody should laugh at nobody. Both Metro and Paramount did well, much better than any other club in the region. Let's celebrate instead of tear down. Dismissing or making fun of the achievements of these young athletes doesn't help anyone. It just sounds bitter and selfish. Shame on you if you are club representatives. And if you are parents, stop being insecure to the point where you need to justify your club choice: you chose the right club and your DDs are doing better than 99% of the players in the area. |
Anonymous
I want to respond to this analysis because it is being quoted by some on this board as evidence that Paramount do not develop their players from their second teams. Here are regional rankings for Paramont first and second teams since their second teams were created: 2022-2023 14-1 1 14-2 22 2023-2024 12-1 2 12-2 31 13-1 4 13-2 10 14-1 1 14-2 8 15-1 2 15-2 19 2024-2025 12-1 4 12-2 9 13-1 3 13-2 5 14-1 3 14-2 10 15-1 2 15-2 3 16-1 1 16-2 33 Based on the quoted analysis, nobody from 13-2, 14-2, 15-2 moved up to 14-1, 15-1, 16-1. That's pretty simple to explain. 13-2 was ranked 10th, 14-2 8th, and 15-2 19th, many places below their first teams. However, based on this year's numbers, 13-1 3 13-2 5 15-1 2 15-2 3 It is likely that next year 14-1 may include 13-2 players and 16-1 may include 15-2 players because their second teams are very close to their first teams. It is a fact that many of Paramount's second teams are getting better and better every year, and now their first and second teams are both in the top 10 in the region in 12, 13, 14, and 15 age groups. They could not get here by not developing their second teams. I'm not related to Paramount. I'm just an observer of the volleyball clubs in the DMA area. Metro's travel teams are the best, but Paramount is catching up. The numbers are clear. |
Anonymous
Setting aside the fact that AES is not a reliable ranking system, using strictly regional rankings makes your analysis even weaker. Clubs like Paramount only go to enough regional tournaments to qualify for bid regionals. They likely only have a small number of matches against regional teams, many of which are against fairly weak opponents. If you’re going to draw any conclusions from AES (which is suspect at best), at least click the “Show National Ranks” checkbox which will use a ranking based on a much larger set of results. Putting aside AES issues, the quoted analysis was showing instances where large numbers of players left the 1s team and none of the new players added to the roster in the following year (an age group higher) were from the 2s program. This shows that if the 2s programs was intended as a training ground to develop players and give them an opportunity to move up to the 1s team, that’s not what’s happening. It also shows that Paramount is heavily reliant on players trained elsewhere to form their 1s teams. In addition to be super concerning that so many players are not moving up with a team from one season to the next, the fact that Paramount is so reliant on players trained elsewhere for their 1s team doesn’t support the idea that they are developing players over the long term. |
Anonymous
Thank you for the data. It allows an unbiased, fact-based review of performance rather than the typical emotional responses you often see. And your last sentiment that the numbers are clear is an excellent way to have a discussion. Your hypothesis is that:
Granted, Paramount's second teams are getting better. Your claim is that they must be developing their second teams to reach that level of performance. Implied in that statement is that the prior year players must be improving substantially to account for such a large improvement in regional rankings. That is clearly not the case. The data below argues that the primary driver of Paramount's improvement isn't their ability to develop the majority of their returning players for either their 1s or 2s teams. Rather, it is more likely the performance improvement is driven by combining a small set of returning players with a large number of new players coming from other clubs. Here's the analysis of their 2s teams last year: - 2025 16-2, 8 new players, 5 returning (4 from 15-2, 1 from 16-2). No players moved down from 16-1 to 16-2 - 2025 15-2, 6 new players, 8 returning (all from 14-2). No players moved down from 15-1 to 15-2 - 2025 14-2, 9 new players, 5 returning (1 from 13-1, 4 from 13-2). 1 player moved down from 13-1 to 14-2 - 2025 13-2, 8 new players, 5 returning (3 from 12-1, 2 from 12-2). 3 players moved down from 12-1 to 13-1 - 13-2, 14-2, 16-2 didn't return enough players to complete a starting lineup. (63% of the rosters were new players) - The 15-2 team is the only team that returned more players than it added. This could potentially prove your hypothesis for this age group. - No returning players on the 2s was considered good enough by Paramount staff to play on the 1s after at least 1 year of development by the previous Paramount coaching staff. For your hypothesis to be true given these facts, you have to believe: 1) Returning 2s players improved enough to significantly raise the performance of the 2s team, but none improved enough to make a 1s team. That is really hard to believe, especially when 57 players played for those 2s teams last year and instead of moving any of them up they added 27 new players to their U13-U16 1s teams. If Paramount training is good enough to move a team from outside the top 12 (bid eligible) to inside the top 12 in just one year, you would expect at least 1 player to make a 1s team the next year. Instead a lot of the new 1s players come from non-bid earning teams. 2) The improvement of the 2s teams is due to their coaching and player development both from prior years and during the current season. Your analysis compared the performance of the prior years' 2s team to this years 2s team of the same age. But if we are trying to isolate the effectiveness of player development, we can't ask if this years 15s team performed better than last years 15 team. Those are independent events with no overlapping players. We need to compare the performance of the prior age 2s team to the current age 2s team, because that gives you the relative performance improvement of the teams year over year, taking into account the players that move with the team. If last years team keeps more players and improves in ranking, that implies the team is improving through coaching. If last years team add players from other clubs and improves in ranking, that implies the team is improving through recruiting. Let's use national ranks for the comparison because it is generally a much better predictor of performance, and is especially appropriate for top teams because the data set is significantly larger than the regional ranks. And as another poster said, no one uses regional ranks due to their inconsistencies. 2025 16-2: 900 (added 8 players, kept 5) 2024 15-2: 1100 2025 15-2: 530 (added 6 players, kept 8) 2024 14-2: 388 2025 14-2: 478 (added 9 players, kept 5) 2024 13-2: 596 So what's going on here? In national ranking, the Paramount 2s teams that added more players than they kept performed better the next year. The one team that kept more players than it added performed worse. The 15-2s team that showed the performance improvement year over year in your regional data was actually the only team to decline in national rank. You'll find the a similar trend in the 1s team data: 2025 17-1: 179 (added 3, kept 11) 2024 16-1: 86 2025 16-1: 39 (added 6, kept 7) 2024 15-1: 50 2025 15-1: 116 (added 7, kept 7) 2024 14-1: 319 2025 14-1: 96 (added 9, kept 6) 2024 13-1: 211 2025 13-1: 142 (added 7, kept 4) 2024 12-1: 196 In summary: Four teams added more players from other clubs than they kept from last year: 13-1, 14-1, 15-1, 14-2, 16-2 Every one of these teams improved in rank, with an average improvement of 115 ranking spots. Three teams kept more players (16-1, 17-1, 15-2) and one team added as many as it kept (15-1). This group had an average performance decline of -21 ranking spots. One team improved slightly, one improved significantly, two decreased significantly Why is this important? This isn't a Metro vs. Paramount debate - although if you run the same analysis on the Metro teams you'll find they actually increase in national ranking every year, generally correlated to the number of players they retain on a team. This is actually a Paramount vs. Paramount's marketing debate. What we are really examining is the truth of Paramount's claims about why their performance is so good. This quote from the Paramount website is what they claim: "On the court, Maureen felt that the CHRVA Region was significantly behind in terms of technical training, and that most clubs in the area lacked the ability to provide intense, game-like practices that prioritized skill development. Hence, Maureen established Paramount under the motto, “Practice Like You Play.” Paramount Training = Unique, CHRVA training = Bad. This heavily marketed claim is that training is what is driving their bid and regional success. In reality what Paramount is doing is assembling 1 year all star teams that combine a few players from the previous year Paramount teams with the best players from the other clubs. There is no argument that those teams succeed, and you can congratulate their coaches on how they get those all stars to perform. But you cannot make the argument that they are rapidly developing players. The reality is: - No 2s player made a 1s team this year, despite having ample space for it to happen. - The 1s teams that keep more players tend to perform worse. - The 2s teams that keep more players tend to perform worse. - The 1s teams that added the most players (as a percentage of their total roster) saw the most significant improvement in performance. - The 2s improvement is coming from the same source as their 1s team success -- recruiting players from other clubs. - The vast majority of players will leave within 2 years, most of them going to teams with lower national rankings and less likelihood to win a bid. It turns out the opposite is true: CHRVA training = Good. And Paramount relies on it heavily to drive its success. |
Anonymous
Thanks, that must’ve been a lot of work to compile. No notes. |
Anonymous
Some people say that AES regional rankings are not good, so I redid my analysis using AES rankings/Show National Ranks and then translated them to relative ranks in the region for Paramount's first and second teams: 2022-3 14-1 1 14-2 18 2023-4 12-1 4 12-2 37 13-1 5 13-2 9 14-1 6 14-2 11 15-1 1 15-2 24 2024-5 12-1 3 12-2 8 13-1 2 13-2 5 14-1 3 14-2 9 15-1 2 15-2 7 16-1 2 16-2 19 The conclusions have not changed. Paramount's second teams rapidly improved in ranks in the region. A year ago their 12-2, 13-2, 14-2, and 15-2 teams were ranked at 37, 9, 11, and 24. This year's 12-2, 13-2, 14-2, and 15-2 teams finished at 8, 5, 9, and 7. Paramount's first and second teams are all top 10 teams in the region in the 12, 13, 14, and 15 age groups. This is a remarkable achievement. Next year Paramount plans to add 14-3 and 15-3 teams, and Metro will add 15-2, 16-2, and 17-2 teams. We'll have many more Metro vs Paramount competitions very soon. |
Anonymous
I believe you have one number wrong. In 2024 Paramount 16-1 was ranked 275 (not 86). That means using your methodology, the 2024 16-1 team (275) improved in 2025 as 17-1 (179), not declined as you claim.
You claim that the following numbers show that the more Paramount kept its players the worse the team performed in the next year: 2025 15-2: 530 (added 6 players, kept 8) 2024 14-2: 388 If you talk about a team going from 10 to 20 (a top team), that may be meaningful, but you are talking about 388 in 2024 to 530 in 2025. We don't know how many teams were inserted or deleted between 388 and 530, and we don't know whether the algorithms changed from 2024 to 2025. A slight change in algorithms can make a hugh difference for lower ranked teams. When I look at the national ranks translated to relative ranks in the region, I see that this team improved in local ranks from 11 to 7 even though the national ranks declined from 388 to 531. 2025 15-2: 7 2024 14-2: 11 2023-4 46 Metro 14 Travel 193 Blue Ridge 14 Blue 197 Columbia 14 Black 306 MVSA 14 Force 309 LEVBC U14 National 319 Paramount VBC 14 Maureen 323 Delaware United 14 Navy 336 VA Juniors 14 Elite 337 MOCO Magic 365 Metro 14 South PW 388 Paramount VBC 14 Cozad 2024-5 25 Metro 15 Travel 116 Paramount VBC 15 Maureen 146 Blue Ridge 15 Blue 298 MVSA 15 Charge 406 VA Juniors 15 Elite 497 BRYC 15 Royal 531 Paramount VBC 15 Cruz Furthermore, the 15-2 team just earned a National bid this year. And you are talking about "The 15-2s team that showed the performance improvement year over year in your regional data was actually the only team to decline in national rank." Getting a National bid as a second team is not good enough for you? You drew a lot of conclusions that are not supported by data. I'm giving you two rebuttals for now. |
Anonymous
You are correct, the number was wrong. If you recalculate the group that 16-1 was in (kept the same or more players than they added), you get the following adjustment: Teams in this group improved at an average 42 ranks vs prior year. Compare this to teams from the other group where more players were added than stay, and improved an average of 115. This means the relative improvement of teams that added more players was 2.7x more than those that didn't. Note this doesn't mean that the teams were 2.7x better, just that their ranking improvement was that much. We could run the relative movement of the teams as well compared to where they started. It is reasonable to assume that it is harder to improve and already good team than it is a poor team. There is also reasonable debate to be had about the inclusion of the 15-1 team in the "kept more than they added group". If you exclude that team from their group and pull it from the data set, you find the teams that kept more than they retained had a relative movement of -12 ranks, even with the corrected data.
We do know the number of U14 and U15 teams included in the AES rankings for those years. 2024 U14=6578, 2025 U15= 5830. This matches historical trends in the decline in the number of volleyball players that starts in U15 and continues through U18. That decline in teams means the average rating of a U15 team should increase ~10% if there are no other factors at play. Of course, more players leave the sport from the bottom teams than the top teams so I doubt it has that big an uplift impact. I do doubt that the decline the total number of teams hurt Paramount's ranking though. Regarding the algorithm, according to AES the same algorithm is used for every team in every age group in every region. If the algorithm changed it should impact all teams equally.
Agree that the 15-2s improved in relative regional rank year over year. Now consider this scenario: A team finishes just outside the top 12 the region last year and doesn't win a bid. This year it wins a bid. In between the seasons, the team cuts 60-70% of its returning players, doesn't promote any players from its lower team, and then replaces all of its starters with new players from other clubs. Would you claim the club is good at developing its players? This is an extreme example to make it clear why controlling for player movement is the only way to compare relative ranking movements in the region. The whole point of the post was that assembling a good team through recruiting results in larger gains for Paramount than keeping their existing teams (or even 50% of their existing teams) and training them up.
No, I never said that getting a nationals bid as a second team wasn't good. I said "The 15-2 team is the only team that returned more players than it added. This could potentially prove your hypothesis for this age group", acknowledging that it was a standout in the data. But since the 15-2 argument is important to your premise, lets take a look at the starting lineup for the 15-2s at nationals. Here's where the starting lineup played last year: Paramount, BRYC, VA Elite, VA Juniors, Paramount, New Player, Paramount Paramount added six new players to the 15-2s team. 4 of them were starting at Nationals. Of the 8 returning players, only three were starting. Double checking this at an earlier tournament in the season as well, the numbers stay basically the same. Again, if Paramount training of their 14-2s was so good that they could improve the team from not winning a bid in 2024 to getting a bid at U15, why did they need to replace 60% of their starting lineup with new players to do so? Don't take this as suggesting that some turnover in lineup isn't reasonable, it certainly happens. And if it was 1-2 players that came in and took starting spots, we could gladly say that internal player development of last years 14-2 team was the likely reason for their improvement. Hence the comment that the 15-2s could prove your hypothesis for this one age. But even with the adjustment on the data mistake (thank you), and acknowledging that despite the decrease in national rank the 15-2s actually improved in regional standings, the data supports the conclusions. In fact, the addition of 4 starters to the 15-2s lineup bolsters the argument that outside recruiting is the primary driver of Paramount's success, not internal training. |
Anonymous
What about the 6 players who left? Did they move to first teams somewhere? Maybe they prefer to be starters on first teams? Were there players who played down at 14 and decided to move up to 16? That's pretty common. Did any of them move out of the area? Did any find the commute too long? Did any want to focus more on academics? Maybe they don't like the coaches... There are many, many possible reasons why they left. If some of the starters left for various reasons, the team has to replace them with others. The team was ranked 11th in the region in 24. There were quite a few teams ranked above them, and recruiting better players from other teams to improve their team is expected. Replacing 6 players (including starters) in one year is not unusual for a second team ranked 11th. Yes, Metro has a core group that stays with the club from 14. But Metro is number one. There aren't many players better than their core group. You can't be so extreme to say: you can't actively recruit new players because that proves your training is not good enough. Recruiting and training are both needed to build a better team. |
Anonymous
Not the PP poster although I love all the statistics. Really wish we could require clubs to publish this type of info to help us with club selection. If the data is right, 70+ players out of ~130 left Paramount last year. Is there any club in CHRVA that has that level of departures? Are there any in the top 10 teams? In statistical terms I'd be willing to bet Paramount is 3+ standard deviations away from the turnover rates at other top clubs in the region. Why do you think that is? Every club faces exactly the same challenges that cause player departures that you list so why is Paramount the outlier here? |