Volleyball technical committee: who decides what, and when

In September it turns out nobody made the call. The player who was supposed to move up is still in her old team, the coach of the under-15s only heard in mid-August that he had the under-15s, and the father who emailed three times in June never got a reply. That is almost never ill will. It is a club year in which nobody knew exactly who was allowed to decide what, and when.

The problem isn't an org chart, it's a calendar

Nearly every club has a diagram with boxes somewhere: board at the top, a technical committee below it, a youth committee, and then the coaches. That diagram solves nothing, because it says who is responsible for something and not when the decision falls. Clubs get stuck on the same four moments every year, and always for the same reason: the decision was taken at the point where it could no longer be postponed, by whoever happened to be at the table.

This article lines up those four moments, with, per moment, who decides, who prepares and who communicates. I count in weeks around the first playing day, not in months: week 0 is the weekend of the first league match, so week 20 before the start is twenty weeks before that. The calendar date of that first playing day differs per federation and per country, and the registration deadlines move with it. Work the weeks back once from your own federation's calendar and you have a club year that holds anywhere. The season checklist for coaches runs through the year the same way, but from one team's point of view; this is the layer above it.

Five roles, and what each may decide on its own

Before you can divide up the moments, it has to be clear what a role may do alone — without consultation, without a meeting. Five roles appear in almost every club:

• The board. Handles money, space and people: budget, membership fees, gym hours, contracts and whether a coach gets paid. The board does not decide who plays in which team — the moment it does, every squad list is a board decision from then on and therefore an appeal procedure.
• The technical committee. Handles the sporting line: how many teams, in which division, who coaches which team, how the teams are put together and who moves up. Three or five members works best — an odd number, so a vote actually ends.
• The youth committee. Handles everything the youth do alongside the sporting line: tournaments, activities, supervision, contact with parents. This is where things fall between the cracks most often, because two committees each assume the other handles the youth squad lists. Write down one sentence: the youth squad lists belong to the technical committee, with the youth committee advising — or exactly the other way round, if you prefer. Just not both, halfway.
• The head coach or technical coordinator. Guards the learning line, advises the technical committee and is the point of contact for the coaches. May arrange moves within his line during the season, provided he reports them.
• The team coach. Decides everything within his own team: lineup, playing time, practice content, substitution policy. Decides nothing about who is in his team.

The rule that holds this together fits in one sentence: a decision belongs to the role that has to live with it all season, not to the role that heard about it first.

Moment 1: registering teams, 20 to 14 weeks before the start

This is where you decide how many teams you enter, in which division and in which age category, and whether you merge two teams or withdraw one. What goes wrong is almost always the same: you register on last year's membership list instead of on the members who have confirmed they are staying. Come September you have a team of five.

The repair costs one email. Four weeks before the registration deadline, every member gets one question with three answers: are you playing with us next season — yes, no, don't know yet. Only "yes" counts towards the total. Add a margin on top of that, because somebody always drops out between May and September: only register a six-a-side team once you have nine confirmed yeses, a four-a-side team at six. If you stay below that line, merging with another team is a decision you take now, not in September under pressure.

The technical committee decides the number and the division. The board checks only two things: does it fit the budget, and are there gym hours for it. The registration date itself, and what a late withdrawal costs, differ per federation — look those two facts up once and put them in the club calendar, because they set up your entire spring.

Moment 2: assigning coaches, 18 to 10 weeks before the start

The classic order is: form the teams first, then look for coaches. That is precisely backwards. In the weeks your committee is still puzzling, the good candidates have already said yes to a club that called earlier. Turn it around: no later than 18 weeks before the start, ask every current coach whether he is carrying on, and ask for a yes or no in writing. "Probably" is a no in disguise.

Give everyone who says yes one sheet of A4 with six things on it: which team, how many practices a week, which gym slot, which match day, what budget there is for a course, and the name of the person he can turn to. That last one isn't a courtesy but a decision: a coach with a contact point calls in November when things go wrong, a coach without one quits in November.

Two questions have to be answered in advance. Who cuts the knot when two coaches want the same player? The head coach advises from the learning line, the technical committee decides. Never the two coaches between themselves — that becomes a trade rather than a decision, and the player hears about it later. And what if there is still no coach 10 weeks before the start? Then that vacancy moves to the board, because from that point on it is about money: a paid coach, a shared coaching job, or a team that plays in a lower division. Leave it with the technical committee and it gets solved in August by whichever member is worst at saying no.

Moment 3: putting the teams together, 8 to 2 weeks before the start

This is the moment with the most emotion and the least procedure. Note: this is only about who decides and in what order. How to build an individual recommendation on its merits is in backing up a promotion recommendation, and the multi-year view behind it in long-term player development.

1. 8 weeks before the start: every coach submits a recommendation per player, all in the same format. Different formats make comparison impossible and hand the most influence to the coach who writes best.
2. 6 weeks before the start: the technical committee lays out the draft squads. All teams on the table at once, never team by team — one player moving up leaves a hole in the team below.
3. 4 weeks before the start: the conversations with everyone whose recommendation differs from their expectation. Held by the coach who gave the recommendation, not by a committee member who has never seen the player play.
4. 2 weeks before the start: publication, in one go, to everyone at the same time.

The most important rule sits between steps 3 and 4: not a single name goes public before every differing recommendation has been delivered in person. A list circulating earlier turns every conversation afterwards into a defence. If you run a day of trial sessions, the approach for that is in organising a tryout day.

Sort out the appeals route in advance too, because it will come. One address (the technical committee, not the coach), one deadline (two weeks after publication), one form of reply (in writing, by the same committee member). Escalation to the board is only possible on the procedure — was the agreed order followed — and never on the content of the recommendation. Without that line, every squad list ends up on the board's table within two seasons, and from then on the board decides about volleyball.

Moment 4: reviewing, 28 to 32 weeks after the start

The fourth moment is really the first. Anyone who reviews in June having registered in May is reviewing for the archive. So put the review in the last weeks of the league season, well before the registration deadline for next season — then it isn't a look back but the preparation for moment 1.

Ask every coach for half a sheet of A4 with three answers: is this team staying together next year? Who is no longer in the right place next season, up or down? Are you staying on as coach? Nothing more. You get three questions back; you don't get ten.

Put the club-wide numbers alongside: attendance per team, the number of cancellations, and who stopped during the season and in which month. A team where three people left in November tells you more about last year's squad list than any final table can. Coaches working with several teams can put those attendance figures side by side and forward them to the committee as a file — how that works is in managing several teams as a coach. The review inside the team, with the players themselves, is a different conversation: that is the end-of-season review.

And then the part clubs skip as standard: the committee reads those documents in one sitting, within two weeks of receiving them, and decides something on the back of them. A review that sits around for three months has become a form.

The responsibility table

This is the heart of the agreement. Not who holds which post, but who decides about the eleven things that fall between the cracks in practice. Two columns are enough: who cuts the knot, and who carries it out or picks up the phone.

If someone wants a fourth column for "who gets informed", let it go. A club of volunteers keeps two columns up to date; three is already ambitious.

The test: does one name sit against more than three roles?

Now fill the table in again, but with names instead of roles. Then count how often each name appears. If one name comes up more than three times, you don't have a club, you have a person. That works as long as that person is there, and it is immediately your biggest risk: he is also the only one who knows why something was decided in March. If he drops out through a move, a burnout or a conflict, it isn't one task that stops but the whole club year.

Repairing it goes in three steps, in this order:

1. Take the executive tasks away first, not the decisions. Calling, emailing, scheduling and administration can be handed to someone who volunteers today. Handing over decisions costs a season of induction.
2. Put two names against each of the four moments. Not as a backup, but as a pair doing it together — that is the only handover that happens by itself.
3. Write it down on two pages at most and re-adopt that document every year, in the weeks before registration. Anything written down once and never looked at again has become habit rather than agreement within two years. Those same two pages are also the best start for a handover to a successor.

Two evenings and you have it in place

You don't need to write a policy document for this. Evening one, roughly 22 weeks before the first playing day: go through the five roles and fill in the table with names. Count on an hour and a half, an hour of which is discussion about three rows — usually the squad lists, the gym hours and the angry parent. Evening two, two weeks later: put the four moments in the club calendar with real dates, counted back from the first playing day in the federation calendar, including the meetings that go with them. After that it is maintenance: adjust it once a year, usually on one or two rows.

You only notice the result in September, and then through something that doesn't happen. No player hearing it from a teammate. No coach finding out at the first practice which team he has. No parent emailing three times.

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