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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
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.[/quote]
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:

[quote=Anonymous]
[i]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][/quote]
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). [i]No players moved down from 16-1 to 16-2[/i]
- 2025 15-2, 6 new players, 8 returning (all from 14-2). [i]No players moved down from 15-1 to 15-2[/i]
- 2025 14-2, 9 new players, 5 returning (1 from 13-1, 4 from 13-2). [i]1 player moved down from 13-1 to 14-2[/i]
- 2025 13-2, 8 new players, 5 returning (3 from 12-1, 2 from 12-2). [i]3 players moved down from 12-1 to 13-1[/i]

- 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?  
[i]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 [u]worse[/u]. 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.[/i]

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
[u]Every one of these teams improved in rank, with an average improvement of 115 ranking spots.[/u]

Three teams kept more players (16-1, 17-1, 15-2) and one team added as many as it kept (15-1).
[u]This group had an average performance decline of -21 ranking spots.[/u] 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:
"[i]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.”[/i]

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.[/quote]
Thanks, that must’ve been a lot of work to compile. No notes.[/quote]

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