Difference between low level volleyball and high level volleyball

Last year, I decided to give youth volleyball officiating a shot.  I was unemployed at the time and thought doing something new would be fun.   In fact, it was pretty fun.  There were some bad games but there were also some competitive games that were fun to officiate.

This season, due to various things, I just haven't been able to officiate as much.  However, this past Friday, I officiated the best game I've ever seen in my short career.   It was an 8th Grade Division 1 game between two playoff bound teams.  One team was definitely the better but the other team was very solid.

The difference between the game this Friday and the others I had previous done?  The two teams friday were were very skilled.  They kept rallies alive and were doing the bump, set and spike all night long.  Plus  some of the young ladies were spiking the ball HARD.   Most of the youth volleyball I see is the serve and bump the ball around type which makes for a slow moving game.

The slow moving game was what I was used to and officiating those kind of games is not too difficult because you can anticipate where the ball is going and officiate appropriately.  With the level of play on Friday, I had to make some adjustments.

I had to watch net play more as girls were trying to save balls, spikes and block spikes.  The other change was that I HAD TO RELY on my line judges more.  The balls were flying around fast and there was no way I could see everything.  Fortunately, I had two great line judges to work with.

One disadvantage I had was there was no stand to work from at the gym.  I was ground level and that proved to be difficult see some of the net play.  However, I did the best that I could.   Overall, the game was quite enjoyable and I'm glad for the opportunity.  I've going to brush up more on my volleyball rules as I know I have some knowledge gaps.  Perhaps I'll take up the challenge of officiating high school volleyball (time permitting) in the future.