As I said the week before at the reading session, I’d do a bit on positioning when receiving. I put in the Karasuno team again to hopefully make it a bit easier.
Summary
For the general naming of the positions on the court you start with the serving position as “1” and then name the other positions anti-clockwise in increasing order. As you’re moving clockwise when rotating for the serve the position “2” moves to become the new position “1”. Thus the positions in the front row are “2”, “3” and “4” and those in the back row are “1”, “5” and “6”.
During the game the setter moves to position “1” or “2”, the middleblocker to “3” or “5” (technically the MB would move to “6” in the back row but as he gets subsitutted for the Libero, he moves to “5” for better defense as that position normally takes the brunt of WS-attacks) and the wingspiker to “4” or “6”.
Obviously the players aren’t always standing on their designated attack positions when the team serves. But you can change position once the server hit the ball.
The general purpose of this positioning is to keep the setter out of the receive so they’re free to make the second touch for the toss. When the setter is in the front row that’s no problem, you’d just move the positions in the front a bit closer together so their way to their designated position for attack/setting is shorter. It’s a different matter when the setter is in the back row.
One important thing to take into consideration is that the player of the front row must not stand further to the back than the opposing player of the back row (e.g. “5” keeping further to the back than “4”) and the players in each row have to keep their order as well (e.g. “2” more to the right than “3”); though they can stand really close together as it only has to be at least one foot.
Setter on 2: That’s Karasuno’s starting order against Aobajousai. There isn’t really much to do, though Hinata would probably move a bit to the middle to have a shorter attack way. The attackers would already make their first attack after the receive at their designated positions.
Setter on 1: There are two options for the setter to keep out of the receive.
a) Kageyama moves to the front (needs to keep further to the back than Tanaka) and to keep three players for the receive Daichi would move to the back row (needs to keep more to the front than Asahi) with Asahi and Nishinoya shifting a bit to the right to fill in the position Kageyama left vacant (Nishinoya needs to keep more to the left than Kageyama).
b) Kageyama moves even further to the back with Tanaka moving back as well to cover him and do the receive instead. Daichi would stay in front and Asahi and Nishinoya keep their positions as well.
For both positions Daichi and Tanaka would do their first attack on the position they’re currently occupying and change afterwards.
Personally I prefer the setter moving to the front row as he’d have a shorter way for him to his designated position and less risk of him getting caught up in the receive. For Karasuno I think it would make more sense as well as Daichi would be part of the receive and he does it best after Nishinoya.
Setter on 6: Kagayama would move just behind Daichi (keeping between Tanaka and Nishinoya) while Nishinoya shifts to the right to fill the vacated spot and Asahi filling up the back row (keeping more to the front than Nishinoya). Daichi and Hinata would probably directly attack from their designated positions.
Setter on 5: Basically the mirrored version of setter on 1. Kageyama moves to the front behind Tsukishima. Asahi already moves to that side as well for his first attack already coming from the left side. Tanaka and Nishinoya shifting to the right fo fill in Kageyama’s vacated spot (Tanaka keeping more the the right than Kageyama) and Daichi moving to the back row the cover the third spot in the receive (keeping more to the front than Nishinoya).
I always considered this the hardest position while receiving as the setter has the longest way to his designated position and still needs to turn himself around for the toss. Also when doing a short serve the ball might fly right in the direction of his way of moving.
Setter on 4: Not much to do here except Kageyama and Asahi moving a bit closer to Tsukishima to make their way shorter as Asahi would already attack from the left for the first attack.
Setter on 3: Not much to do here either. Just Tsukishima and Kageyama moving a bit closer together to make for an easier switch in positions.
During the game your team would often call out the current positioning of the opposing setter to remind the team wether they have two or three attackers on the opposing front row.
What confused me a bit was that they’re starting with Tsukishima on the serve. In my league teams would most often start with the setter on position 1 if they got the serve when starting the set. With the setter on position 1 you can start right away with three attack-players and keeping at it for the longest time until the setter moves to the front. When starting the set with receiving, teams would place the setter on position 2 (here Oikawa starts on 3) while trying to take the point right away and therefore moving the setter to position 1. So I’m wondering if that’s some typically japanese thing to do here. Though for me it makes more sense to start with Kageyama on the serve as he’s got the strongest serve so far.
Ch 51 sign up is ready.
Quite lively with more characters talking instead of just Oikawa (though he still has the bulk of the talking). Expect a lot of actions!
In reference to p.144 today’s topic is: Help, the setter did the receive; who’s going to toss?!
Summary
Obviously you don’t want the setter to do the receiving as he’s the one who’s specially trained to do the toss for the attack. But sometimes it happens, either ‘cause the ball goes astray (e.g. after a one-touch of a block) or because you opponent aimed for it. Honestly it’s one of the best positions to hit the ball at if you can’t do a proper attack because it’ll obviously put your opponent in a pinch. (Other positions are: short behind the MB aka right in the middle or a really long ball in the far left corner.)
So what can you do?
Generally you’d still try to bring the ball to the setter’s position. It’s generally the opposite/right WS’s job to sub in for the setter when the setter can’t make the toss. Just what Daichi did here. Of course they’re not as well trained so a quick would usually not be something to do and they’d generally just do the easiest toss, meaning they’ll send it to the left WS. (Though I’d like to think my “normal” set to the middle wasn’t that bad.) A back attack is also an option.
Alternatively instead of the opposite subbing in, that toss could also be done by the MB. That’s what our coach was trying to teach us for the last seasons that I played. Though it’s quite hard to relearn that after doing it one way all your time. ^^’ I think the reason was that the MB could give the toss to both sides (right and left WS). At least when the MB turns himself in the designated direction (and doesn’t go for a back toss), it’s the same kind of toss for both WS, therefore the MB wouldn’t have to differentiate between different tosses and compared to a toss for the MB it’s definitly easier to do.
Depending on the position of the setter and how easy the receive is, the setter could also do the toss right away. Meaning doing the toss with their receive and the second ball contact already becoming the attack. Your players have to be ready for that though and the receive obviously can’t be too difficult.
Another option, especially if the receive goes off to the left side, is for the libero to do the toss (obviously not a toss whith hands up but rather the move when you do a receive (not sure how that’s called in english; in german it’s “baggern”)). He’s already trained to have a good control of the ball with that movement, so bringing it properly to any position other than the setter shouldn’t be too hard. It also gives you the advantage of technically having all positions free to do an attack.
TBC as there’s a comparable scene in the next chapter (had a somewhat long train ride recently) but I don’t want to do spoilers.
So, i started on the vocab list for this chapter and right on p.150 i stumbled upon:
何で後々脅威になる奴を自分の手で造（こさ）えなきゃなんないのさ！
I do get the meaning of what Oikawa’s saying here but I got quite confused when trying to look up 造えなきゃ. 造る seems to be an alternative form for 作る, though it’s still read as つくる. On the other hand I found 拵える which can be read either as こしらえる or こさえる.
As both would actually fit with the meaning here, do you think this is one of the occassions where what’s written in kanji and being said in furigana slightly differs for better understanding of what is said? Like last chapter 神業速攻 being read with furigana こい「来い」?
I think this is right. Or at least a good explanation of the nuance being attached to the “manufacturing” aspect. Oikawa doesn’t want to build up his future rival with his own hand. If 造る is used in the context of large-scale buildings, maybe that places emphasis on the “hugeness” of Oikawa’s impact.
Continuing from here: what to do when the setter receives as it’s now Oikawa’s turn on p.166
Summary
As you can see by the jersey’s color it’s the libero who’s doing the setting. What might be a bit difficult to see, especially if you’re not looking for it, is the white line in the down right corner indicating that he’s doing the toss from behind the attack(3m)-line.
As the libero is a back-row player exclusively, there are a few rules when he’s interacting with a front-row attack. There are no limitations when he’s digging the ball from below but he can’t to an over-head toss when he’s in the 3m-attack-space. Otherwise the attacking (front-row) player isn’t allowed to hit the ball with his hand above the net-line. Thus having to hit the ball from below resulting in a higher arch and making it easier to receive.
He’s however free to do the toss above the head with no restrictions to the attacker as long as he stays behind the attack-line.
In a later play/game Seijo’s libero is kinda doing the toss from the front-row. But he can only do that because he’s tossing the ball while jumping and he started the jump from behind the attack-line. So technically he’s still doing the toss from behind the attack-line, same as the back-row attack that Asahi’s doing.
The libero also isn’t allowed to do an attack above the net-line himself when he’s in the 3m-attack-space, same as any back-row player.
So I was thinking something like the above to archive the previous volumes starting with volume 6.
It’s a shortened version of the typical first post. Just the start date, cover, schedule, and sign-ups.
And then in the first post, we can have links down to them if folks are curious. That way the first post is also a little cleaner to edit.
@rainysunday this is what I had in mind during the watch along today
How do y’all feel about something like this?
Edit: first post also updated with Vol 7 info.
Are the dates accurate?
Thank you @potatonaught! This is what I had in mind as well, this way we can both easily access and edit the volume we’re reading at the moment and we have a record of the previous volumes. The dates are accurate, I think^^
Volleyball-trivia corner: in regards to Ch.55, p.32/33 (when Shimada’s talking about the serve and making points)
Summary
About 20 years ago being able to serve well was even more important than today because the rules for serves and making points were a bit different.
Today you already get a point when you take the serve from the opposing team. Back then you could only score when it was your turn to serve. Therefore you needed consecutive serves by one player to even get any points. (Unfortunately my team was really bad at that; we could take the ball from our opponents but we couldn’t score because we would somehow miss with the second serve or otherwise loose the ball again.)
Also the toss was not allowed to touch the net at all; so no (accidental) “roll-overs” that could just drop right behind the net. It also did matter where you stood behind the base-line: there was a marked area on the right side of the court from which you could do your serve. (Basically the rule for the proper positioning of players before the serve was extented beyond the actual court to the server as well.) Although you were allowed to let the ball drop from the serve-toss when you tossed bad, as long as you didn’t catch it and didn’t go over the 8 sec time allowance for tosses.
As is was quite hard to score, sets only went up to 15 winning points instead of today’s 25. They changed that with the rule change for scoring as the game would have otherwise been over too soon if they kept it at 15. The “drop-of-a-bad-toss” is no longer allowed but the ball is allowed to touch the net. Also you are now no longer restricted to that small area for the toss but can use the whole width of the court.
Another rule that got relaxed a bit, is how you are allowed to touch the ball. Before you really were only allowed to touch the ball with your hands or arms, nothing else; no chest, head or foot. Today it’s basically ok to touch the ball with any body part other than the hand as well, as long as you don’t add momentum to it’s movement. So no kicking or header (like in football/soccer).
It’s probably a good thing that changed, as otherwise we wouldn’t be able to enjoy Nishinoya’s awesome safe at the end of Ch.46 against Datekou.
… Awesome illustration 
to archive the previous volumes starting with volume 6.
thanks! And finally Vol 7…