Shorthanded team and back row attack, or not
 

Did a men's church league tournament tonight. Actually, it's not even as impressive as that sounds. In the men's tournament there were only two teams, and one of them only had four players. And that is where the controversy began.

We opted to play the match rather than forfeiting. My initial intention was that I would consider 3 of the 4 to be front row. The obvious choice for the back row would seem to be the server. But, the first time the server came up to hit, which was probably the third or fourth rally of the match, I changed my mind and didn't call it. I figured that they were at enough of a disadvantage, and that if the other team couldn't find a way to beat them fairly easily, that was there problem.

So, sure enough, the shorthanded team loses the first game, but pulls out the second (playing best 2 of 3). At 11-12 in the deciding game, the other team calls timeout and wants to discuss the matter. I'm having none of it, end the conversation rather abruptly, and call for serve. I'm not about to change how I'm calling the game, discuss what I'm calling and not calling, nor change how I'm calling the game at this point. If they have an issue, they should have brought it up in the first time it happened.

And, of course, the shorthanded team wins. And the other team wants to cry and whine about how they got robbed.

Sigh.

Oh well, I'm over it. :D

Anyway, I would like your opinion. Was I wrong to ignore this? How might you have handled the situation?

I would have, and probably have done so, played it close to what you did.

If you really want to do it 'right' then I think that you have to get them to agree to how to play it. Are they allowing the SH (short handed) team to play with four players (missing two), or play as four players (missing none).

The first option is messy, with ghost servers that cause a fault and awful front row implications, when the ghost players come to the net, it's an empty spot and no one is allowed to come up and play that spot. So either you have only two players max on the front row, or for half the rotations, there is only one player on the front row. What a pain.

The second option is what you seem to have opted for, then relaxed. There are three front row positions, so three players fill them each time, with only one back-row player.

Without line-ups, SK and LJ's, I believe that you gave them the best chance at a evenly officiated match.

I would have handled it very similarly and not changed the way I was calling the match from game 1 to game 3. The only difference would have been to identify who the one back row player was. The obvious choice is the server. Even if I did not identify this player to begin with, I might have still called a backrow violation on him if one occured.

I have had to ref some recreational volleyball in which a team intentially has 4 players so their best three players are only not hitting for one rotation. I don't want to give teams with 4 any more or less advantage then they should receive.

An easy way to keep it fun and social (for everyone)
 

The server is always a backrow position. There's not really any wiggle-room with that. Other topic... before heading towards 4-player w/2 ghosts vs forfeit vs other options... since there were only 2 teams anyway, and in a church tournament, meet with the 2 captains and come to agreements about the structure of the match, and simply say "any disagreements will default to the printed rules." Then you have safely washed your hands of any conflicts, and you certainly won't be blamed.:D

Au Contraire, just because it's a church tournament, it's still volleyball, the ref WILL be blamed :D

Grrller87, you ain't just a-chompin' your choppers! When we have to make a decision that someone disagrees with, we are always going to be blamed for our ruling. The best we can hope is that we know what rules we are enforcing on any given night and that the players, coaches and fans have some freakin' idea which set of rules we are playing by!

In the adult co-ed league in which I ref, we use modified USAV rules. Teams must have at least four players for the match to start and if they only have four, they must play a diamond - three up and one back with the server ALWAYS back-row.

Jan, get this, I had a situation just like that (Park District Co-Ed with modified USAV rules), but we didn't "require" a 3-Up/1-Back line-up, and the team "insisted" on playing Box Formation (2-Up/2-Back)... and yes, they lost.