Step 1: Decide how many pools
A pool of 4 plays 6 games. A pool of 5 plays 10. A pool of 6 plays 15. Pools of 4 or 5 are the usual target because they fit a morning on one court.
Divide your teams as evenly as you can. Nine teams make a pool of 5 and a pool of 4, not 6 and 3. Uneven pools are fine; very uneven ones are not, because one pool plays far more volleyball than the other.
Step 2: Fill the pools so they are fair
If you know roughly who is strong, spread them out. The usual method is the snake: seed 1 to pool A, 2 to B, 3 to C, then back the other way, 4 to C, 5 to B, 6 to A, and so on. If you do not know, a random draw is honest and nobody can argue with it.
Step 3: Rank each pool
Pool standings are mostly about wins. When teams tie on wins, a common order is:
- Head to head between the tied teams.
- Point differential in games among the tied teams.
- Point differential across the whole pool.
Settle the order before the first serve and announce it.
Step 4: Decide how many advance
Common choices are the top 1 or 2 from each pool, or everyone. Everyone-advances suits social events where the playoffs are the fun part. A cut suits competitive events where a long bracket would run past dark.
Step 5: Seed the bracket from the pools
Seed all the pool winners first, then all the second-place teams, then the thirds. Within each group, the team with the better pool record gets the higher seed.
Then place seeds in a standard bracket so that seed 1 plays the lowest seed, seed 2 the second lowest, and so on. Because the winners hold the top seeds, they open against lower finishers from other pools, and the two best teams can only meet in the final.
Step 6: Handle byes
A single-elimination bracket wants 4, 8, 16 or 32 teams. If you have 6, round up to 8 and give the two missing slots to the top seeds as byes. They skip the first round, which is their reward for winning their pool.
Step 7: Lock the pool scores
Once the bracket is built, pool results should stop changing. A corrected pool score after the bracket is drawn can change who should have been seeded where, and there is no good way to undo that mid-tournament. Have the director confirm every pool score, then build the bracket.
How Sideout handles it
Sideout splits teams into pools as evenly as possible, ranks each pool with the tiebreakers above, seeds the bracket winners first, gives byes to the top seeds, and only lets the director continue to the playoffs once every pool game is in. After that, pool scores are locked. See pool play to bracket in Sideout.