A new system to select which girl’s volleyball team players will be competing in Binationals was implemented this year by coach, Anibal Betancur.

Every year around Binationals, TCS coaches have a hard time selecting what players will receive a coveted spot in the tournament roster. Since all players want to participate, there’s often fights and arguments concerning who will be chosen, making it a stressful time for both the coaches and the athletes.

“This year there was greater commitment from the girls because of the Binational Games. So, it was necessary to look for strategies that were objective and fair to select the players,” Coach Betancur, said.

The system that Coach Betancur implemented not only grades the player contribution to the game, but also how the player is towards the team members.

“When creating the system I  had a lot of eligibility parameters. The first aspect is the one the school places of not failing more than one class.  I put a value to each volleyball skill and depending how good you were in that skill you received a score. The final item was character counts,” Coach Betancur, said.

Even though Coach Betancur thinks this is the most effective and fair way to choose the team he will be taking to Binationals, at the beginning when he implemented it, the girls were not used to be observed in such a detailed way.

“The girls are not used to being selected this way, which generated an additional stress load apart from the academic one. That is why we started doing it from the beginning. We started selling the idea of the system and in the end, that load of stress decreased,” Coach Betancur, said.

In the beginning, the athletes were skeptical of the meticulous score method, but after a couple of weeks, they noticed that it was actually an efficient way to select who was going to represent them.

“At the beginning I didn’t like it, but then I realize how this way of selection talks about how you are giving your support to the team, it’s not only grading your capacity and how good you are playing, it’s also showing you, as an individual, how you are behaving with the rest of the people,” Amalia Gallego, girls volleyball player, said.