As volleyball coaches, most of us are aware, and make regular use, of the game Winners – also known as King or Queen of the Court. There is a variation of the game much favored by John Kessel from USA Volleyball which is known as Speedball. That one, though, requires the right numbers to do properly. I also sometimes use yet another variation in which it is individual players rather than groups (teams) of players who operate in the winners fashion.
Something I started doing with Svedala was another variation on winners that allowed for more positional specialization. It started by having fixed setters, but otherwise playing winners around them. Simply put, the setter who won the rally went to/stayed on the winners’ side.
At times I also had the MBs fixed. That was in order to have the middles and setters working directly with each other – and against each other. So like with the setters, the MB whose team won the rally went to/stayed on the winners side.
Now, I only had two setters and two MBs in the team, so the switches were pretty straightforward. Just two players swapping places.
There were times, though, when I had some extra players in training. In those cases when I wanted to do the fixed MB system I basically had them rotate through like a more normal winners idea. The middle who won the rally was the winner, the losing middle came off, and a middle waiting on the side came in on the challenge side.
So basically what this turned into is a triple Winners rotation. The setters were on a rotation. The middles were on their own rotation. Finally, the rest of the players where in the bigger rotation. Usually, in those situations I had the game played in 4s. That means there was a pair of players from the collection of OHs, OPPs, and Liberos joining up with an MB and a Setter in each team.
I came to like this winners variation because it allowed for more specialized positional work. It’s one of the ways you can take the winners idea to a higher level.
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