All About CGVA Draft Leagues
CGVA facilitates draft leagues throughout the year. These leagues are a great way for individuals to sign up for play without needing a full team, which is especially helpful for players new to the league or new to Denver. Draft teams have a special spark because they're almost impossible to recreate. You'll play with your team for one season, then go your separate ways. Or you might make the right friends to join or form a CGVA Pick-Your-Own-Team (PYOT) league the following season!
This page details how the process works.
During Sign-up
During sign-up - see our calendar to learn when our sign-ups take place - you'll be asked several important questions.
Division
Draft leagues do not work like our PYOT leagues, so we do not use the same division labels. Division A is for our highest-skilled players and it goes down from there to Division B and Division C. We provide some guidance that Division A roughly matches to our Red and Orange PYOT divisions, Division B roughly to Orange and Yellow, and Division C roughly to Yellow and Green. See our divisions definitions for more detail on those levels. But draft leagues can vary wildly from those guidelines depending on who signs up, how teams end up forming, and how many people are open to "waterfalling" down to a lower division, which will be explained below.
At sign-up, select the division you'd like to try out for. This guarantees that you'll have a chance to show your skills on draft night and try to make a team. It does not guarantee that you'll be picked, though! We recommend that you try out at or slightly above your skill level. If you're newer to the sport, trying out for A division might be a frustrating waste of time. However, you can sign up to try out in any division.
Waterfalling
CGVA operates a "waterfall" draft. We set a number of teams for each division that is appropriate to our available space and the number of players that we have for the division. Captains pick their teams, and once they're done picking, there will be players who were not selected. If those players opted in to our waterfall process, they will move down to the next division and be available when the next division captains begin their draft picks. We understand that this may not meet what our players hope for, so we also allow players to opt out of this process, meaning they will be refunded if they do not make a team in the division they selected.
Please make sure you opt-in or out correctly. Once the draft is complete and you are placed on a team, we can no longer offer the opt-out refund. We will inform you before we move you to a different division, as long as you are present when your division's draft completes. We strongly encourage everyone to opt in, though, to increase the level of play and competitiveness across all of our divisions.
Being a Captain
You can volunteer to be a captain for our draft league during sign-up. CGVA makes an effort to select diverse captains from those that volunteered, and we try also to get new captains as we are able to mix things up. Volunteering as captain does not guarantee that you'll be selected, but it's a helpful indicator to know you're open to the conversation. We may not finalize our captain selections until you arrive at draft night, since we first have to wait for registration to close & set the number of teams.
Position
You'll be asked for your first and second preference for position. You have a stronger chance of being selected for a team if you put anything other than "All Around" or "Not Sure", but those options are available if you truly need them. This will guide captains as they are filling out the roles on their teams.
Experience
We ask about your volleyball experience and preferences, and this information is shared directly with captains while they are making their selections. The more detail here, the better!
Photo
Having a clear photo of your face helps our captains remember you from tryouts or even from playing in the park on the weekends. It's another way to boost your visibility to captains. We don't attempt to keep photos, share them, or use them in any way outside of our draft process.
During Draft Night
Draft night takes place one week before the start of regular season play. We start with the A division during the earliest block so that waterfalling can happen appropriately.
You'll check in for your division and receive a bib with a player number to help captains identify you.
During each division's tryouts, captains will observe while players participate in various drills as well as short scrimmage games. All players have equal opportunity to demonstrate their ability. Throughout the tryouts, CGVA will facilitate selection rounds for captains to begin filling out their teams. Captains are individuals and all use their own unique criteria for selecting their team; CGVA simply facilitates the process. Once captains are done filling their teams, CGVA draft facilitators will inform the players that tryouts have concluded and will separately contact the players who were not selected so that they can continue with the waterfall draft (or not, if they opted out). Then, the following division tryouts take place until all divisions are complete.
Importantly, no one is completely cut from our draft league. All players are guaranteed a spot after successful registration, but not necessarily in the division they initially tried out for. There is no cap on the number of players in our C division.
After Draft Night
Enjoy your new team! You'll receive your new team roster and schedule in LeagueApps, and you'll play as a team for the season and the end-of-season tournament. Make sure you are communicating with your team, especially if you have to miss a game. Your team needs time to find a sub to replace you for the night, so please don't ever ghost them.