Gender
As LVC’s competitive teams are integrated in the Ontario Volleyball Association’s (OVA) competitive structure, all teams are gendered in a binary way – either girls or boys. The exception can include 4v4 Rallyball teams being co-ed. Note that based on OVA policies, an athlete is able to (and by LVC values, is encouraged to) participate on any team in which best represents the gender they actively identify with. Find your pathway to love this game, whoever you are!

Age
Age remains a simple way to help organize youth into like-skilled groups. Although there are significant ranges of physical abilities and sport-specific skills within those groups, it is helpful to sort athletes by age, at minimum, during the preliminary stages of evaluation. However, age becomes significantly less helpful in organizing athletes at the younger ages, especially in a late-developing sport like volleyball. As such, all Early Contact Initiative teams–4v4 Rallyball, 6v6 Rallyball, and Traditional Less-Specialized (TLS) Volleyball–have extended age ranges to help athletes play on a team that best suits their current development. As the OVA does not allow age-identifiers in club team names, LVC has created a set list of team names to represent all groups each year, connected by the first letter of each name. For example, the 15u Girls teams are named London Fire Wild and London Fire Wrath.

Level
LVC sets out team requirements for system decisions, such as running 6-3 systems at TLS level and the serve receive format, as well as play time baselines, where athletes are guaranteed a set proportion of competition play time (across the season, not tournament specific) assuming the athlete expectations outlined in the club and team codes of conduct are met, such as training attendance and effort.