Out of formation?
 

I'm more of a baseball umpire then volleyball referree but do help out some of the schools in the area with their games.

Had a situation the other day where one of the teams didn't rotate on a sideout. I called the serving team for being "Out of formation" and awarded the point to the other team.

However, the offending team still didn't rotate to the correct positions. I simply left the situation and we continued with the game. Should I have kep calling the now receiving team again for "Out of formation" until such time as then do rotate??

There is no "out of formation" violation. What is sounds like you had was an incorrect server - other possibility was an illegal alignment. When you make this call you then need to correct the problem, i.e. have the players move to where they should be. With the move to rally scoring there is also no longer a "side out" - it's now called "loss of rally" (LOR) and always results in the awarding of a point to the opponent. A team rotates when it gains the serve as the result of a LOR by their opponent.

What level was this?

It was a junior varsity game.

Its been a while since I played the game and been a while since the last formal training session but I thought that when a team has an "illegal alignment" as you call it the officials have no responsibility to put the offending team into proper alignment.

i.e. Only if the offending team asks to see the lineup card does the U2 then go over the positions with the team. Otherwise the call is made and it is up to the players to know where they are suppose to be on the court. I remember playing and being called three straight points for not being in the proper positions, until we finally asked and it was confirmed that U2 was mistaken and we were correct the whole time.

If you're going to call an illegal alignment, you really should identify exactly *who* was illegally aligned. I'm not saying you should necessarily do a complete lineup check as well, but whenever I call an illegal alignment, I point out the two players involved (setter needs to be behind left side, for example).

Now, if they choose not to fix it, you would have to call it again. But that (hopefully) wouldn't happen if you identify the illegal alignment from the start.

tibear, as Felix indicated, once you call an illegal alignment, it behooves us to indicate who is overlapping (out of position) and then make sure that they correct themselves before the next serve. Coaches are not really very appreciative if you call a rotation fault on one play and then proceed to call another one on the very next serve.

How would you declare players who are out of the court boundary at the time of authorization for service and server makes ball contact?

Upon contact of the serve, the Umpire (R2) blows the whistle and indicates "illegal alignment" and indicates the player on the receiving team or the Referee (R1) blows the whistle and indicates the player on the serving team (other than the server) who was off the court at the moment of contact.