HS vs D1 Season

I posted that the HS Volleyball season in Texas was longer than the D1 volleyball season; it certainly feels that way anyway. But lets break that down a little bit and give it a few numbers and see what we come up with.

D1 - 134 total days (1 day off each week)

Starting August 6th

NCAA Tournament Starts December 2nd and ends on December 18th

D2 - 118 total days (1 day off each week)

Starting August 16th

NCAA Tournament starts on December 2nd and ends on December 12th

HS - 110 days (nothing on Sundays)

Starting August 2nd

State Championship on November 20th

85% to 86% of those days are actual activity days once you throw in the "day off" requirement from the NCAA or UIL.

Obviously not EVERY team is going to be playing into the NCAA tournament or the State Championship, so there is a little wiggle room in those numbers based on when your season is technically over or when your conference championship ends.

In the end, the HS volleyball season in Texas is not AS LONG as a D1 volleyball season.

The next topic that comes up is the total amount of matches that are played each season. Lets look at some of the 2019 schedule information for college volleyball and 2021 HS State Championship information and compare those. We will look at Texas schools only, just for fun.

College (matches played)

Texas - 27

UTSA - 30

UNT - 28

Texas A&M - 31

Texas Tech - 30

Angelo State (D2) - 32

TWU (D2) - 32

High School

Teams in the 1A - 4A Finals played between 30 and 35 matches on the season

Teams in the 5A and 6A Finals played between 25 and 29 matches on the season

High school teams do play a ton of matches, in my opinion, over the length of a season. But they do tend to match up consistently with the total amount of matches that the majority of college programs play.

Lets compare a team that plays in the State Championship with a D1 team that plays in their conference tournament (usually held Thanksgiving weekend) but loses and doesn't continue onto the NCAA tournament:

D1 team - 113 days

HS team - 110 days

Those two seasons are fairly close in terms of total length. Again, not everyone is playing in the state championship and not every college has their conference tournament the weekend of Thanksgiving. These numbers are going to fluctuate a little bit from team to team, district to district and conference to conference.

Conclusion:

The high school volleyball season in Texas is NOT as long as the D1 volleyball season. Although it does seem that way sometimes :)

The D1 season is roughly 3 weeks longer than a full high school season. The majority of that gap is during the NCAA tournament; that is something I think is worth pointing out.