Splitting a youth squad: 26 children, how many teams?
There are 26 children on the list and by September they have to be in teams. That is not a tactical puzzle but an organisational one: the number of teams, the axis you divide on and the way you explain it together decide whether you still have 26 children in March. And those three decisions are almost always taken in the wrong order.
Splitting a squad is a club question, not a position question
Most coaches start with the question they know: who is the setter, who can play middle, who passes steadily? That is the right question the moment you are putting one team together — how many players you need per position is covered in building your squad. It is the wrong question when you are dividing a whole youth group over three teams. Then you first decide how many teams there will be, next who stands alongside whom, and only last who plays where on court.
That order is not a detail. Start with positions and you end up with a split that adds up on paper and empties out in November: no coach for team 3, and six parents who never heard why their child is in it. Below are the decisions in the order in which they become irreversible — first the number, then the axis, then the people, and finally the message.
The selecting itself does not belong here: setting criteria and assessing players is covered in running a tryout day. This article is about what you do with the names that come out of it.
Step 1: count your coaches first, then your court hours, then your children
The number of teams is not a wish but the outcome of three counts. And the order of those counts is exactly the reverse of what everybody does.
- Coaches. You have as many teams as you have coaches, not as many as you have children. A third team without a permanent coach is not a team but a waiting list with fixtures attached. Only count people who have committed for the whole season — an "I'll see how it goes" counts as a half.
- Court hours. Reckon on an hour and a half per team per week. Three teams is therefore 4.5 hours. If you have three available, two teams train at the same time on one court and you cut the game part into twenty-minute blocks per team. Work that out in advance: a team that genuinely has a full court for forty-five minutes a week is not going to learn six against six.
- Children. Divide the number by nine. 26 divided by 9 is 2.9 — so three teams of 9, 9 and 8. Round down if you are short on coaches or court hours, round up if you are short on playing time.
Why nine? Below eight, every round of flu is a cancellation. Above eleven you can no longer share out the minutes fairly and somebody turns up for nothing every match — exactly the pattern described in sharing out playing time fairly. Eight to eleven works, nine or ten is the most comfortable. How many players you may list per match differs from federation to federation; check that in your own competition regulations before you settle on twelve.
The temptation to make it two teams of thirteen is strong, because two coaches are easier to find than three. Do the honest arithmetic first: thirteen children means seven on the bench every match and far less playing time per child than in a team of nine. Three teams of nine with a less experienced third coach is almost always the better trade.
Step 2: do you divide by year of birth or by level?
Your federation decides which age category a child may play in, and where that line falls differs by country: one splits by year of birth, another by age on a reference date, and the rules on playing up or down vary as well. Look that up once in your own federation's regulations and treat it as a given from then on. Within that category you are free, and there are two axes: age and level.
A workable rule of thumb: up to about twelve you divide by age and keep the teams evenly matched; from about thirteen, level may take the lead. The reason is practical. With young children the training need barely differs — everybody has to learn to pass, to serve and to play the second ball — while the social gap between a nine-year-old and a twelve-year-old is enormous. From around thirteen that flips: the difference in what a player needs starts to weigh more heavily than the difference in age.
Be careful with the child you want to move up a category because they stand twenty centimetres above the rest. Height at twelve says little about who somebody is at eighteen, and a child in the middle of a growth spurt is temporarily clumsier than they were — see what a growth spurt does to a youth player. Divide by height and you are in effect dividing by birth month: within one year group the oldest child is almost a year ahead of the youngest, and that gap closes by itself over the years. The same trap explains why you do not split youth teams by position; the reasoning is in when to choose a fixed position.
Step 3: one strong team or two evenly matched ones?
The moment you get two or more teams out of the same category, you have to choose. There are three models and each has a price.
- The pyramid. Team 1 gets the strongest nine, team 2 gets the rest. Advantage: the top end gets opposition at its own level and the pathway is clear to everyone. Price: team 2 becomes a leftover category. A child who hears in August that they are "in the second team" and stands at zero wins in December does not sign up again in May.
- Two evenly matched teams. You spread the strongest players over both teams and enter them in the same division. Advantage: nobody gets a label and both teams win now and then. Price: your four best players spend a season training below their level, and they drop out in a different way.
- Evenly matched teams, split training group. Match teams evenly matched, but one block a week in which the top half of both teams trains together and the bottom half does the same. This takes the most organising and is usually the best outcome with 26 children: everyone wins matches, nobody trains structurally too easily.
There is one test you run before you enter the teams, and it takes five minutes. Write down for each team where you expect it to finish. If you cannot name two opponents a team is capable of beating, then either the split or the division is wrong — a team that loses week in, week out goes on to lose members. The reverse holds too: a team you expect to win almost every match is a division too low and will be bored by January.
And do not fix the split for twelve months. Announce straight away that the winter break is the correction point, and then actually use it: two or three players moving up keeps the pathway alive. How to back up a step like that instead of taking it on gut feeling is covered in backing up a promotion recommendation.
The thin year group and the thick one
Almost every club has them: the year group with seven children and the one with thirteen. Those are two different problems.
Seven children. Seven is too few for a season of six against six — one injury and you have no team. You have three ways out. Combine with the neighbouring category if your federation allows it (that differs by federation and by division, so look it up before you promise it). Enter a smaller court format if your competition offers one: four against four is often more instructive for this group than six against six with two guest players. Or agree with the team next door that two players train with you permanently and are allowed to fill in — written down, with names, and attached to each individual match night as a fill-in player from another team.
Thirteen children. Thirteen in one team is a playing-time problem that comes back to you in October. Two teams of six or seven is not an alternative. The practical solution is to keep nine in their own year and move four, on level, to the category above or below. Watch the direction: upwards because a child is ready for it in playing terms, downwards only if the child and the parents are behind it themselves. Moving a child down a category without consultation reads as relegation, however sensible it is.
Friendships and transport: the two factors you may not wave away
Coaches call this "the soft side" and treat it as an afterthought. With eleven- to fifteen-year-olds it is not an afterthought: a child with nobody familiar in their team drops out sooner — first from practices, then altogether. You do not have to give in to it, you only have to weigh it — and one question is enough for that.
Before you make the split, ask every child for two names of team-mates they would like to play with, and promise to honour one of them. That is the whole procedure. Two names give you room to manoeuvre, one promise is deliverable, and because you phrase it that way up front, nobody is surprised afterwards. Never ask who a child does not want to play with; that produces a list you are not allowed to use and are obliged to keep.
Transport is the second one. A youth team playing away on Saturday usually needs two or three cars per match. Put all the children without a driving parent in the same team by accident and you have created a problem that has nothing to do with volleyball — and the coach solves it again every Saturday. So count per draft team how many parents can drive before you finalise it, and then fix the driving in a driving rota instead of in the group chat. In the same round, ask about fixed clashes with the training night as well: a child with a music lesson on Tuesday does not belong in the Tuesday team.
The timeline: when does what become irreversible
Count back from the first league match instead of working in months — that way it fits any federation's calendar.
- Week -12: counting. Children, coaches, court hours. The number of teams falls out of this. Nothing else.
- Week -10: entering teams with the federation. The deadline differs per federation, so look it up; it is about the number of teams and the division, not about the names. From here on the number is fixed.
- Week -8: draft split. On paper, internal, with the friendship and transport question already collected. If you work with Koach you do this in the club section: making a team split for the new season stays a draft until you finalise it.
- Week -6: testing it. One round past all the coaches, one round of changes, then closed. Two rounds lead to leaks.
- Week -4: announcing. Everybody at the same moment, players and parents together — preferably in a single club email to all members, so that nobody hears it from a team-mate.
- Week -2: first practice in the new line-up. That still leaves time to repair whatever really does not work.
- Winter break: the correction point you announced back in week -4.
Something that is often forgotten at this stage: last season's attendance figures are useful here. If you ticked off in Koach who was at each practice, then in week -12 you can see which children were structurally absent — more relevant to the split than the best spike on tryout night.
Who decides, and who calls back
Settle this before you start, because it is the question that only gets asked once things have already gone wrong. A workable division: the coaches advise, the technical committee decides, the board guards the preconditions (court hours, volunteers, entry fees). Name one person in advance who cuts the knot when two coaches want the same player — by name, not by job title.
Just as important: agree who calls back when somebody objects, and make sure that is not the coach. One contact person, one story, and everybody else pointing to that same person.
The message to parents, word for word
The split itself is rarely the problem; the way it lands is. Send one message, to everybody at once, with the reasoning in it. Roughly like this:
"Dear players and parents, here is the team split for next season. We have 26 players and three coaches, so we are playing with three teams of 9, 9 and 8.
We made the split in this order. First we made sure every team is complete and coachable. Then we spread the level between the teams so that every team can win matches. Then we honoured as many friendship requests as possible: everybody gave two names and everybody got one of them. Last, we looked at transport and training nights.
The split applies to the first half of the season. In the winter break we will look again, and players who are ready can move up. We would like to hear any questions or objections before [date] via [name and phone number] — not through the coaches, so that they can concentrate on the first practices."
Three questions are certain to come, so prepare the answer. "Why isn't my daughter in team 1?" — give one argument about what the team needed and one about what she is going to learn over the next six months, and never compare her with another child. "Can she still move up in the winter break?" — yes, and say what you will be looking at. "Why isn't she with her friend?" — name which of her two names you did honour; that is exactly why you asked for two. How to steer conversations like these more generally is covered in parents on the sideline.
Key point: count your coaches first, then your court hours, then your children — in that order. The split that looks best on paper is worth nothing if there is no coach left for team 3 in November. And always announce the correction point along with it: a split that runs to the winter break draws half as many objections as a split for a year.
Frequently asked questions
How many players should you put in a youth team?
Eight to eleven works best in practice, with nine or ten the most comfortable number. Below eight, every match falls over as soon as two players pull out; above eleven you can no longer share out the playing time fairly. How many players you may list per match differs by federation, so check your own competition regulations.
Do you split youth teams by age or by level?
Up to about twelve by age, with teams that are evenly matched among themselves; from about thirteen, level may take the lead. With young children the training need barely differs while the social gap is enormous, and from around thirteen that ratio flips.
Is one strong team better than two evenly matched ones?
That depends on what you do with the bottom end. A pyramid gives the top end good opposition but turns team 2 into a leftover category. Evenly matched teams with one split training block a week usually combine the best of both, provided you have the organisation for it.
What do I do with a year group of only seven children?
Combine with the neighbouring age category if your federation allows it, enter a smaller court format if one exists, or agree with a nearby team that two players train with you permanently and are allowed to fill in. Put that last one in writing with names, or it will evaporate by October.
Should I take friendships into account when splitting the squad?
Yes, but within limits. Ask every child for two names of team-mates they would like to play with and promise to honour one of them. That way the social side counts without dictating your split, and nobody is surprised afterwards.
When does the team split have to be finished?
Count back from the first league match: around week -12 you count, around week -8 there is a draft, and in week -4 you announce it. Your federation entry deadline usually falls somewhere in between and differs by country, so look it up once and work towards it.
