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Old Fri Jan 24, 2003, 06:32pm
Homer Homer is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 73
I kinda fall in the middle.

I do think that when you've got one or both teams with less than optimal ball handling skills, you've gotta move the standards down a little bit - just to let the kids play ball if nothing else. I'm not talking about allowing the truly ugly stuff but about the borderline stuff. No one, not even the winning team, wants stand around and watch some old guy blow a whistle every other time the ball goes to the weaker team's side of the net. 15-0, 15-2, 15-3 isn't even fun for the winning team, especially when half the points are awarded on ball handling faults.

OTOH, if you move the line down a bit in the interests of letting the kids play, you've got to move it down for both teams and make an effort to call it the same on both sides of the net. Anything else is just not fair competition and is a recipe for getting in trouble. You'll never call it -extactly- the same on both sides of the net (even when you haven't "moved the line") because no two "iffy" sets are "iffy" in exactly the same way. But you should strive to apply identical standards to both teams.

Moving the line seldom has any significant effect on the outcome - skill disparities between teams are seldom limited to the setter only. Moving the line down almost always only turns a 15-0, 15-2, 15-3 match into one where its 15-5, 15-6, 15-4. But the kids do get a chance to work up a sweat and feel like they actually got to play a volleyball match. As opposed to watching the old guy toot his whistle.
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