Basketball is weird because of the limited number of spots and playing time. Ideally, coaches like to have an 8 or 9 man rotation at the varsity level. Meaning, those 8 or 9 players will get the vast, vast majority of the competitive minutes in games. If you are playing more than that you don’t really have a team and if you are playing fewer, your starters are getting gassed. Coaches will roster around 13-15 on varsity depending on the school.

Generally speaking, you want at least half the varsity team to be seniors. The remainder will be juniors and talented freshman/sophomores *who will actually play*. No sense in putting a Fr/So on the bench at varsity. Stick them on JV where they will get minutes.

Ideally, the vast majority of your JV is made up of sophomores with a few freshmen sprinkled in. If you have a junior who is on the fence, who might develop or who you can’t play much now but you will need him as a senior on varsity, you leave him on the JV (should be a rare occurrence and rarely more than one junior).

Generally, you expect the vast majority of your freshmen team to make JV and the real harsh cut is JV to Varsity.

If you have a weird year where a particular class year is not very talented, you can end up in a scenario where you have, for example, twelve juniors and only three seniors on varsity that year. Coaches want to avoid this, but sometimes it works out that way.

Ironically, I have seen this imbalance setup one great year at the expense of two other years. Imagine a scenario where the class of 2030 has just 3 seniors on varsity, 2031 has twelve juniors on varsity.

I have seen coaches essentially write off 2030 in this scenario and get crushed by playing their juniors heavy minutes in 2030. You come back the next season in 2031 where you now have a very experienced, senior heavy team and you make a great run. But 2031 comes at the expense of the 2032 team, too, because all those seniors in 2031 eat up playing time and when 2032 are seniors they are lightly experienced at the varsity level and the team regresses.

Coaches figure this problem out early on in their careers so they try to balance winning now with giving playing time to players they project as future contributors, but sometimes the talent imbalances between class years force their hands.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here- I should mention it's a public school

It depends on which public. My kid’s school recruited 6 new varsity players from out of state his sophomore year, so DS got bumped back down to JV.

How does that work for public? Aren't there rules barring this?

At my kid’s public, coaches basically openly flouted the rules. This was years ago, so maybe it’s better now.

I also think it’s not uncommon. A public coach in another district offered to fake residency paperwork so my kid could play for him.

I saw a lot of shady stuff that I’m surprised wasn’t enforced more, like kids getting paid to practice in the summer or the whole varsity team playing as an AAU team in tournaments and being coached by the regular varsity school coach.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here- I should mention it's a public school

It depends on which public. My kid’s school recruited 6 new varsity players from out of state his sophomore year, so DS got bumped back down to JV.

How does that work for public? Aren't there rules barring this?

Anonymous wrote:OP here- I should mention it's a public school

It depends on which public. My kid’s school recruited 6 new varsity players from out of state his sophomore year, so DS got bumped back down to JV.

It will depend on where he lands on the JV team. Is he a starter? Is he a position the V team needs etc.

Most of them will move in to varsity.

My kids played JV and Varsity at a large NOVA public. The best players make Varsity in 9th and 10th grade. My kids moved up to Varsity in 11th and were one of 2 or 3 JV players who made it. DS never started but DD does.

OP here- I should mention it's a public school

Depends on the school and if they recruit?

If they recruit kids to varsity like many of the catholic schools do, very few kids will move to varsity. As most of the recruits are recruited up to varsity to start. Then a few, perhaps 3-5 may move up to varsity for JV.

The. The next year the JV bench players may become JV starters unless some really good freshman come in behind them?

Also depends on how many seniors are on Varsity and are graduating next year?

DS made the JV team which is freshman heavy at a moderate size high school. There are a lot of strong players on the jv team. How many of these players will eventually go onto play varsity? How does that typically play out?