NCAA volleyball changes: “We just wanted to make sure we got it right”

Just imagine: No fans screaming “Double! Double!”

Well, in all likelihood, the double in NCAA women’s volleyball will be a thing of the past.

That’s because the NCAA women’s volleyball rules committee last week, recommended “allowing players to contact the ball more than once with any part of the body in a single attempt on a team’s second contact when the ball is played to a teammate.

“However, if the ball is played over the net in this type of scenario, it would be ruled a fault, and the team would lose the point.”

That was one of a handful of changes for next season, including the use of two liberos, allowing snug-fitting nose rings (seriously) and ear cuffs, and adding contact between opponents above the net to be challengeable with video review.

All of the changes must be approved on February 20 when the NCAA playing pules oversight panel meets. Normally these things are rubber stamped.

The third-year chair of the committee that met last week in Indianapolis is Northern Colorado coach Lyndsey Oates. The only other Division I coach on the committee is Nebraska’s John Cook. The entire list follows.

Losing the double is no small thing.

“We talked for hours, knowing that this is a pretty significant change,” said Oates, who has been on the committee for four years and comes off August 31. “But we just didn’t see a lot of downside. The argument to keep calling it is that there might not be good enough skill in our sport, and that was what we kept coming back to, would it really change that. Coaches who are training the sport still don’t want a setter to not deliver a ball with rhythm and consistency and clean. There’s still an advantage to training it at a very high skill level. I don’t think we will lose that. I really don’t. It’ll just add a little more athleticism, a little less judgement for the officials, we won’t lose the skill in setting. It’s still important to set a clean ball.”

As with most rules changes at the higher levels, it will trickle down. Inevitably the double will then go away for club. As it is now it’s rarely called in men’s volleyball.

“That was part of the discussion, that maybe we can be a little bit more well rounded and not specialized so early,” Oates said. 

“Kids who don’t have good hands early when they are learning the sport are pushed away pretty quickly because a whistle is going to blow every time  in a game. So, yeah, that may trickle down and allow more people to learn to set early in their careers and not specialize so early and get pushed away from setting, because it is one of the true skill positions in our game.”

Oates said she was not allowed to say if the decision was unanimous or not, but the committee considered all the ramifications it could muster.

“I would say it was a very good discussion. I mean, we talked for hours. Hours. We just wanted to make sure we got it right. It’s a fairly significant change and we wanted to make sure we thought of everything.”

Specifically: “Unintended consequences or if this does trickle down to other levels and how does it impact the officials. And what are the details of it. So we said it has to be set to a teammate. Well, there’s still some judgement there. If a ball is intended for a teammate but it goes into the plane of the net, and the blockers touch it first, then they still can call the double, so they’re still evaluating the double. There was a lot of discussion in the weeds of it, and we have to get into the weeds when we’re making a decision like this.”

First-ball multiple contact has been legal for a while. 

“With more TV matches and more commentators helping explain that at the college level, I think it will move a little quicker than it did with the first-contact rule,” Oates said. 

Two liberos add “flexibility”

Two liberos has been around in club volleyball for a while but is not commonly used.

Two liberos, I think each division, Division I, II and III, will use it very differently. Division III has been wanting more subs for a long time, so this is a way,” Benson said. “I don’t know that we will see it a whole lot in Division I. If you have a phenomenal libero, you’re not going to take them off the court. You’re not gonna use two liberos. I think it gives flexibility. That’s what I think we were looking for with this rule.”

Nose rings and ear cuffs

Oates, the former Lyndsey Benson who played at LSU through 2002, was an assistant at Samford for a season before returning to her home state as a UNC assistant in 2003 and 2004. She was one of the youngest in the country when she took over as head coach at the school in Greeley, Colorado, in 2005, and has compiled a record of 347-226 and been to seven NCAA Tournaments. 

The Big Sky Conference veteran does not coach with a nose ring.

“It’s such a small change and really a technical thing,” Oates said with a laugh, “but what happened was we allowed small jewelry last time (two years ago). It was a good change, but officials were having a hard time, saying ‘It’s really small, it wraps around the ear, I don’t want to get into having to dissect what type of jewelry this is.’

“It just gives the officials the grace to say it’s not a hazard, it’s small, let it go. That’s really it. It’s kind of a wording change to just not have officials have to get so close to players during warmup. If they don’t see big hoops, they’re probably going to let it go.”

Tick, tick, tick … no changes to challenges

No changes were made to the challenge format and subsequent video replays that take so long in college volleyball.

“As far as the length of time, we haven’t changed very much, good or bad, and we’re getting just slightly quicker, and I think that’s because of the cameras and the quality of the cameras,” Oates said. 

“No other sport puts a time limit on challenge review at any level and that is our hestitancy from an NCAA perspective. They really discouraged us to not try and do that in volleyball. 

“I get it. Those ones that seem to go on forever and really break the momentum are frustrating. I think we’ve go to keep working with best practices for the cameras. That’s the key. The better the cameras are the quicker the challenges are.”

NCAA rules committee members

The makeup of the rules committeee includes, according to the NCAA:  

Nine members. Four Division I, including each subdivision: two Division II, two Division III and an additional member shall be secretary-rules editor. Quota of 25 percent administrators: Quota of 50 percent coaches: Each division will adhere to the 50 percent coaches independently.

Finishing in 2024 are Oates and Ben Somera, the coach at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, which is a member of the New England Small College Athletic Conference.
Only one member comes off next year, Nebraska coach John Cook. 

Those on board through 2026 are Annie Fiorvanti, the senior women’s administrator at Connecticut of the Big East Conference; and Matthew Cribbin, director of volleyball at American International College of the Division II Northeast-10 Conference. Fiorvanti played Providence College.

Three members are on through 2027, Kelley Hartley-Hutton, the athletic director at Purdue Fort Wayne of the Horizon League; Julia Rowland, the senior women’s administrator at Coker College of the Division II South Atlantic Conference; and Kurt Vlasich, the coach at Claremont McKenna-Harvey Mudd-Scripps College of the Division III Southern California Intercollegiate Conference. Hartley-Hutton previously coached at PFW. Rowland played at King. 

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