Here's the U12-U14 data as well for Metro Central

2025
U12: 4/4
U13: 4/5
U14: 3/6

2024
U12: 3/3
U13: No Team
U14: 6/6

2023
U12: 3/3
U13: No Team
U14: 4/4

In the U12-U14 age group for the past two seasons, Central's teams were last compared to all other Metro teams 3/5 times. Across all ages they were last 7/11 times. The statement made above that "Central is historically the worst region in terms of performance" is true, at least based on national ranks. In fact no other region is close to those numbers. The next closes is Metro East with 4 teams at the bottom over the past two years.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Metro has just added new makeup tryout dates across age groups and regions - in case you are still looking for a club.

Is this the Metro PR person?

I think so. Someone who just wanted to provide information would have posted this on an existing thread. They wanted another Metro thread, where only Metro is discussed.

You guys are so strange! What's wrong with starting a new thread about Metro posting new tryouts when it's Tuesday and everyone is posting about how stressful the wait is to see if more offers come in? It's useful info no matter what club someone starts a new thread about in this moment, so how weird to see it as paid/staff PR...

Of course it is PR - someone wanted another Metro thread. Everybody is posting the makeup tryouts for all the other clubs on the same thread (tryouts in real time), but Metro had to be special and get its own thread. Then act surprised when the poster gets called out. Just imagine the mess if every club would send someone to post their own tryouts on different threads.

You can’t win on here. When a robust “discussion” about Metro and/or Paramount breaks out on a thread intended to be broader than that, people complain that every thread turns into a debate about Metro vs Paramount. Meanwhile, if someone creates a thread to discuss a Metro-specific issue, it must be someone from the club trying to get more attention.

Which is it? Do we want to avoid talking about Metro on general threads and limit the Metro debates to certain threads or do we want to limit the number of Metro threads and risk a more general thread becoming yet another Metro fight?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Metro regional teams are actually pretty good if you look at AES rankings. Metro North and Metro East frequently rank ahead of other travel teams in the region.

Metro North has historically been the second best Metro team after Travel. Their location plus history has allowed them to attract good players.

East has been extremely variable, sometimes good but just as often at the bottom of the Metro teams and the lower third of the region.

South PW and South FX are similar to East but with even more variability across ages and a lower level of performance when they do well.

Central is historically the worst region in terms of performance. They usually take players that are receiving low level offers from other clubs or no offers at all.

Generally, no one would consider the Metro regionals expect North close to the performance of other travel teams, unless you count the clubs that travel when they really shouldn’t.

WOW is that some serious MISinformation! Please, share your source for this? We have a family member who's coached metro regional teams in last 5 years, (not Central), but they have helped with Central tryouts up to last year and you are SO wrong that they take players getting low level offers or none at all! The line is usually out the door for those coach conferences and most players offered a spot take it on the spot and there is no trend of accepting on the spot then rejecting when the written offer comes in.

But since you said this, please, what is your source for that? You're also wrong about Central usually being on bottom of the regional performance rankings, but anyone can look in AES over the last 4 or 5 yrs to see that for themselves that they're almost never last of Metro's regional clubs.

I'm not the person you are responding to, but for fun, I did look at AES from last year, looking only at Metro teams:
18s: 18 Central was lowest rated (44 overall)
17s: no Central team. North was lowest rated (12 overall)
16s: Central was 2nd lowest (77 overall), ahead of South FX (107 overall)
15s: Central was 2nd lowest (76 overall), ahead of East (79 overall)
14s: Central was 3rd lowest (52 overall), ahead of South PW (82 overall) and East (119 overall)
13s: Central was 2nd lowest (28 overall), ahead of South PW (69 overall)
12s: Central was 2nd lowest (28 overall), ahead of East (29 overall)

Based on this, they are consistently on the low end, though not always the *lowest*. I am a data geek by trade and fast with a spreadsheet, so I also combined the results across age groups from last season to derive this:

Branch Avg Win % Performance Tier
Travel 92.9% 🟩 Elite
North 65.3% 🟧 Strong
Central 55.7% 🟨 Moderate
East 53.9% 🟨 Moderate
South FX 50.4% 🟥 Low
South PW 49.6% 🟥 Low

Wow PP, you are my new Favorite Poster! This is GREAT! And yeah, you sure did prove my point: While North is definitely consistently the strongest Metro Regional/Select team, Central is literally the next best team (followed very closely behind by East). It's true, this last season East beat Central in a couple of age groups, so East and Central are very close though Central historically was usually better and ranked higher.

You also proved that the MISinformation PP was wrong that Central is consistently below the Metro South 2 teams. Though one of those teams last season did really well in a couple of age groups.

I appreciate you PP. DCUM is often a wild ride because when you do know something factual about the topic, and someone else posts utter BS or pure fiction, yes you can speak to the factual truth and see who believes you, but rarely do you actually get data gathered to show the status of the situation. You did that though, thanks! Maybe at least one PP now in these convos will think twice before posing made up stuff as "fact" in a compellingly factual-seeming way

Me again, I got so excited I didn't reflect the data shown well. Central was posed by the BS poster as consistently LAST. That is not true, as stated by this data. And the last data there shows Metro as 2nd below North (not including Travel in this since this part of convo was about regional teams) with East very close behind.

Overall, Central is on the lower end but literally never last. That was what I really meant to write, but I got excited and only focused on 2nd data set. And that was incorrect, which I can admit to because I like facts and data too, unlike the "Central is consistently last!" PP.

Thanks for the data, love that we can have this discussion based on that. Lets focus on U15-U18 because that's what this thread is about -- the new tryouts for those age groups.

First, we can't use regional ranks. They are meaningless. Also, winning percentage only matters when you consider the competition. An open level team playing in a club tournament will win almost every match, a club level team playing open will lose most. That's what national rankings take into account. That's why CHRVA only uses national ranks for bid qualification and why it requires at least one open tournament in the region to qualify -- so teams can't play easy schedules and still qualify for bids over much better teams.

Second, lets look over multiple years and compare Metro Central's finishing position relative to the other Metro teams based on those national ranks.

2025
15: 6th out of 6 teams (#4159)
16: 5th out of 6 teams (#3604)
17: No Team
18: 5th out of 5 teams (#1983)

2024
15: 6th out of 6 teams (#2863)
16: 6th out of 6 teams (#3262)
17: No Team
18: 3rd out of 5 teams (#1680)

2023
15: 3rd out of 6 teams (#1636)
16: 5th out of 6 teams (#2924)
17: No Team
18: 3rd out of 6 teams (#1281)

In 2025, Metro Central's three teams finished last, last and next to last out of all of the Metro teams. In 2024 Central's teams finished last, last and 3rd out of 5th. The last year Metro Central was really competitive compared to other Metro teams was 2023, and that year their teams were still in the middle to bottom part of the rankings.

For the previous two years, based on National ranks, 4/6 Metro Central teams were last in ranking across all Metro teams in their age group. A fifth one was next to last.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Metro has just added new makeup tryout dates across age groups and regions - in case you are still looking for a club.

Is this the Metro PR person?

I think so. Someone who just wanted to provide information would have posted this on an existing thread. They wanted another Metro thread, where only Metro is discussed.

You guys are so strange! What's wrong with starting a new thread about Metro posting new tryouts when it's Tuesday and everyone is posting about how stressful the wait is to see if more offers come in? It's useful info no matter what club someone starts a new thread about in this moment, so how weird to see it as paid/staff PR...

Of course it is PR - someone wanted another Metro thread. Everybody is posting the makeup tryouts for all the other clubs on the same thread (tryouts in real time), but Metro had to be special and get its own thread. Then act surprised when the poster gets called out. Just imagine the mess if every club would send someone to post their own tryouts on different threads.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Metro regional teams are actually pretty good if you look at AES rankings. Metro North and Metro East frequently rank ahead of other travel teams in the region.

Metro North has historically been the second best Metro team after Travel. Their location plus history has allowed them to attract good players.

East has been extremely variable, sometimes good but just as often at the bottom of the Metro teams and the lower third of the region.

South PW and South FX are similar to East but with even more variability across ages and a lower level of performance when they do well.

Central is historically the worst region in terms of performance. They usually take players that are receiving low level offers from other clubs or no offers at all.

Generally, no one would consider the Metro regionals expect North close to the performance of other travel teams, unless you count the clubs that travel when they really shouldn’t.

WOW is that some serious MISinformation! Please, share your source for this? We have a family member who's coached metro regional teams in last 5 years, (not Central), but they have helped with Central tryouts up to last year and you are SO wrong that they take players getting low level offers or none at all! The line is usually out the door for those coach conferences and most players offered a spot take it on the spot and there is no trend of accepting on the spot then rejecting when the written offer comes in.

But since you said this, please, what is your source for that? You're also wrong about Central usually being on bottom of the regional performance rankings, but anyone can look in AES over the last 4 or 5 yrs to see that for themselves that they're almost never last of Metro's regional clubs.

I'm not the person you are responding to, but for fun, I did look at AES from last year, looking only at Metro teams:
18s: 18 Central was lowest rated (44 overall)
17s: no Central team. North was lowest rated (12 overall)
16s: Central was 2nd lowest (77 overall), ahead of South FX (107 overall)
15s: Central was 2nd lowest (76 overall), ahead of East (79 overall)
14s: Central was 3rd lowest (52 overall), ahead of South PW (82 overall) and East (119 overall)
13s: Central was 2nd lowest (28 overall), ahead of South PW (69 overall)
12s: Central was 2nd lowest (28 overall), ahead of East (29 overall)

Based on this, they are consistently on the low end, though not always the *lowest*. I am a data geek by trade and fast with a spreadsheet, so I also combined the results across age groups from last season to derive this:

Branch Avg Win % Performance Tier
Travel 92.9% 🟩 Elite
North 65.3% 🟧 Strong
Central 55.7% 🟨 Moderate
East 53.9% 🟨 Moderate
South FX 50.4% 🟥 Low
South PW 49.6% 🟥 Low

Wow PP, you are my new Favorite Poster! This is GREAT! And yeah, you sure did prove my point: While North is definitely consistently the strongest Metro Regional/Select team, Central is literally the next best team (followed very closely behind by East). It's true, this last season East beat Central in a couple of age groups, so East and Central are very close though Central historically was usually better and ranked higher.

You also proved that the MISinformation PP was wrong that Central is consistently below the Metro South 2 teams. Though one of those teams last season did really well in a couple of age groups.

I appreciate you PP. DCUM is often a wild ride because when you do know something factual about the topic, and someone else posts utter BS or pure fiction, yes you can speak to the factual truth and see who believes you, but rarely do you actually get data gathered to show the status of the situation. You did that though, thanks! Maybe at least one PP now in these convos will think twice before posing made up stuff as "fact" in a compellingly factual-seeming way

Me again, I got so excited I didn't reflect the data shown well. Central was posed by the BS poster as consistently LAST. That is not true, as stated by this data. And the last data there shows Metro as 2nd below North (not including Travel in this since this part of convo was about regional teams) with East very close behind.

Overall, Central is on the lower end but literally never last. That was what I really meant to write, but I got excited and only focused on 2nd data set. And that was incorrect, which I can admit to because I like facts and data too, unlike the "Central is consistently last!" PP.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Metro regional teams are actually pretty good if you look at AES rankings. Metro North and Metro East frequently rank ahead of other travel teams in the region.

Metro North has historically been the second best Metro team after Travel. Their location plus history has allowed them to attract good players.

East has been extremely variable, sometimes good but just as often at the bottom of the Metro teams and the lower third of the region.

South PW and South FX are similar to East but with even more variability across ages and a lower level of performance when they do well.

Central is historically the worst region in terms of performance. They usually take players that are receiving low level offers from other clubs or no offers at all.

Generally, no one would consider the Metro regionals expect North close to the performance of other travel teams, unless you count the clubs that travel when they really shouldn’t.

WOW is that some serious MISinformation! Please, share your source for this? We have a family member who's coached metro regional teams in last 5 years, (not Central), but they have helped with Central tryouts up to last year and you are SO wrong that they take players getting low level offers or none at all! The line is usually out the door for those coach conferences and most players offered a spot take it on the spot and there is no trend of accepting on the spot then rejecting when the written offer comes in.

But since you said this, please, what is your source for that? You're also wrong about Central usually being on bottom of the regional performance rankings, but anyone can look in AES over the last 4 or 5 yrs to see that for themselves that they're almost never last of Metro's regional clubs.

I'm not the person you are responding to, but for fun, I did look at AES from last year, looking only at Metro teams:
18s: 18 Central was lowest rated (44 overall)
17s: no Central team. North was lowest rated (12 overall)
16s: Central was 2nd lowest (77 overall), ahead of South FX (107 overall)
15s: Central was 2nd lowest (76 overall), ahead of East (79 overall)
14s: Central was 3rd lowest (52 overall), ahead of South PW (82 overall) and East (119 overall)
13s: Central was 2nd lowest (28 overall), ahead of South PW (69 overall)
12s: Central was 2nd lowest (28 overall), ahead of East (29 overall)

Based on this, they are consistently on the low end, though not always the *lowest*. I am a data geek by trade and fast with a spreadsheet, so I also combined the results across age groups from last season to derive this:

Branch Avg Win % Performance Tier
Travel 92.9% 🟩 Elite
North 65.3% 🟧 Strong
Central 55.7% 🟨 Moderate
East 53.9% 🟨 Moderate
South FX 50.4% 🟥 Low
South PW 49.6% 🟥 Low

Wow PP, you are my new Favorite Poster! This is GREAT! And yeah, you sure did prove my point: While North is definitely consistently the strongest Metro Regional/Select team, Central is literally the next best team (followed very closely behind by East). It's true, this last season East beat Central in a couple of age groups, so East and Central are very close though Central historically was usually better and ranked higher.

You also proved that the MISinformation PP was wrong that Central is consistently below the Metro South 2 teams. Though one of those teams last season did really well in a couple of age groups.

I appreciate you PP. DCUM is often a wild ride because when you do know something factual about the topic, and someone else posts utter BS or pure fiction, yes you can speak to the factual truth and see who believes you, but rarely do you actually get data gathered to show the status of the situation. You did that though, thanks! Maybe at least one PP now in these convos will think twice before posing made up stuff as "fact" in a compellingly factual-seeming way

To the PP thank you. There is a lot of misinformation on this board re metro regional teams and they are definitely stronger than a lot of folks give them credit for. And Central is not the weakest by far.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Metro regional teams are actually pretty good if you look at AES rankings. Metro North and Metro East frequently rank ahead of other travel teams in the region.

Metro North has historically been the second best Metro team after Travel. Their location plus history has allowed them to attract good players.

East has been extremely variable, sometimes good but just as often at the bottom of the Metro teams and the lower third of the region.

South PW and South FX are similar to East but with even more variability across ages and a lower level of performance when they do well.

Central is historically the worst region in terms of performance. They usually take players that are receiving low level offers from other clubs or no offers at all.

Generally, no one would consider the Metro regionals expect North close to the performance of other travel teams, unless you count the clubs that travel when they really shouldn’t.

WOW is that some serious MISinformation! Please, share your source for this? We have a family member who's coached metro regional teams in last 5 years, (not Central), but they have helped with Central tryouts up to last year and you are SO wrong that they take players getting low level offers or none at all! The line is usually out the door for those coach conferences and most players offered a spot take it on the spot and there is no trend of accepting on the spot then rejecting when the written offer comes in.

But since you said this, please, what is your source for that? You're also wrong about Central usually being on bottom of the regional performance rankings, but anyone can look in AES over the last 4 or 5 yrs to see that for themselves that they're almost never last of Metro's regional clubs.

I'm not the person you are responding to, but for fun, I did look at AES from last year, looking only at Metro teams:
18s: 18 Central was lowest rated (44 overall)
17s: no Central team. North was lowest rated (12 overall)
16s: Central was 2nd lowest (77 overall), ahead of South FX (107 overall)
15s: Central was 2nd lowest (76 overall), ahead of East (79 overall)
14s: Central was 3rd lowest (52 overall), ahead of South PW (82 overall) and East (119 overall)
13s: Central was 2nd lowest (28 overall), ahead of South PW (69 overall)
12s: Central was 2nd lowest (28 overall), ahead of East (29 overall)

Based on this, they are consistently on the low end, though not always the *lowest*. I am a data geek by trade and fast with a spreadsheet, so I also combined the results across age groups from last season to derive this:

Branch Avg Win % Performance Tier
Travel 92.9% 🟩 Elite
North 65.3% 🟧 Strong
Central 55.7% 🟨 Moderate
East 53.9% 🟨 Moderate
South FX 50.4% 🟥 Low
South PW 49.6% 🟥 Low

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Metro has just added new makeup tryout dates across age groups and regions - in case you are still looking for a club.

Is this the Metro PR person?

I think so. Someone who just wanted to provide information would have posted this on an existing thread. They wanted another Metro thread, where only Metro is discussed.

You guys are so strange! What's wrong with starting a new thread about Metro posting new tryouts when it's Tuesday and everyone is posting about how stressful the wait is to see if more offers come in? It's useful info no matter what club someone starts a new thread about in this moment, so how weird to see it as paid/staff PR...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Metro regional teams are actually pretty good if you look at AES rankings. Metro North and Metro East frequently rank ahead of other travel teams in the region.

Metro North has historically been the second best Metro team after Travel. Their location plus history has allowed them to attract good players.

East has been extremely variable, sometimes good but just as often at the bottom of the Metro teams and the lower third of the region.

South PW and South FX are similar to East but with even more variability across ages and a lower level of performance when they do well.

Central is historically the worst region in terms of performance. They usually take players that are receiving low level offers from other clubs or no offers at all.

Generally, no one would consider the Metro regionals expect North close to the performance of other travel teams, unless you count the clubs that travel when they really shouldn’t.

WOW is that some serious MISinformation! Please, share your source for this? We have a family member who's coached metro regional teams in last 5 years, (not Central), but they have helped with Central tryouts up to last year and you are SO wrong that they take players getting low level offers or none at all! The line is usually out the door for those coach conferences and most players offered a spot take it on the spot and there is no trend of accepting on the spot then rejecting when the written offer comes in.

But since you said this, please, what is your source for that? You're also wrong about Central usually being on bottom of the regional performance rankings, but anyone can look in AES over the last 4 or 5 yrs to see that for themselves that they're almost never last of Metro's regional clubs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m glad Metro created the National level. It opens up more spots for the mid-level teams to get new players to trickle up through the clubs.

I still don't get the National team!! Is it "better" than Metro Travel? Or is it like Travel 2 teams? Is the concept different? Like do they have to do the same number of required CHRVA events?

It feels like it will just make certain regional Metro teams weaker, but time will tell.

Travel are still Metro’s top teams. National will run similar to Travel with a few less qualifiers, so I think it is an attempt to create something between the regional teams (now rebranded as “Select “) and Travel, probably in response to Paramount adding more 2nd teams that are geared towards getting bids. Metro also added 11 Travel this year after a successful first season for 12 Travel.

It’s important to understand that there is no standardization of all of the terms clubs use to name their teams. Different clubs use different words to describe similar things. Some clubs use “Open” or “National” to describe their top teams. Metro uses “Travel”. Some clubs use words like “Elite”, a color, a coach name, or a sponsor name to designate their top teams. One way to tell whether it is a club’s top team is to look in the AES ranking and click on “Show Team Code” - usually a club’s top team has a 1 in the code.

It is also useful to understand that “club” volleyball and “travel” volleyball are the same thing. That said a team called “travel” probably will travel more than a team called “regional”, but many “regional” teams still go to few tournaments a year requiring hotel stays, but maybe not flights.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m glad Metro created the National level. It opens up more spots for the mid-level teams to get new players to trickle up through the clubs.

I still don't get the National team!! Is it "better" than Metro Travel? Or is it like Travel 2 teams? Is the concept different? Like do they have to do the same number of required CHRVA events?

It feels like it will just make certain regional Metro teams weaker, but time will tell.

It’s a travel 2s team.

Anonymous wrote:I’m glad Metro created the National level. It opens up more spots for the mid-level teams to get new players to trickle up through the clubs.

Agree! There are a lot of strong Metro Regional players who are loyal to the club but not strong enough to make the Top 12 for Metro Travel. This gives them a chance to move up instead of leave. Most clubs have an A and a B travel team, so why wouldn’t Metro?

Anonymous wrote:I’m glad Metro created the National level. It opens up more spots for the mid-level teams to get new players to trickle up through the clubs.

I still don't get the National team!! Is it "better" than Metro Travel? Or is it like Travel 2 teams? Is the concept different? Like do they have to do the same number of required CHRVA events?

It feels like it will just make certain regional Metro teams weaker, but time will tell.

I’m glad Metro created the National level. It opens up more spots for the mid-level teams to get new players to trickle up through the clubs.