[wsuweaver]

Intersesting thread here. I think this really depends on the level of play as well to be honest. Here in the Northwest on the grass scene, reverse coed (women's height, men hit behind 10') is king, always the most competitive and widely attended events. At the upper levels (A/AA/Open) as a proven upper level men's player you can expect to get maybe 1-4 out of every 10 serves in a match. (I have gone through whole games getting 2-3 serves) Most of the top games (finals, etc...) come down to which female can better handle the opposing male's jump serve. This si just the way it is here and what makes the ladies "open" if they can hang there, the ability to handle the heat from an open level male. Most of them love the challenge as well I might add. Only teams that can rely on the girl to carry the team (at least for some significant periods) offensively can hope to get to the end of a big event here. A REALLY tough guy can carry a team with a weaker female partner but it is few and far between. Our girls would be quite offended if we made special rules to avoid their participation. They love having a chance to dish out some punishment against the guys and carru a coed format. In fact I have played few, if any, coed style sports relative to reverse coed volleyabll where the woman gets to have this much impact without rules that force her to match up versus other females on the other team or have rules limiting how she is involved. Obviously the men are off the net but for the top guys this is little to no deterent in terms of hitting power/effectiveness (also makes for a tougher serve as detailed on this thread). On that subject I had heard on the East Coast most of the coed events are on a men's net. This would seem to me to make the females passing/defense/setting dummies for the most part (with some exceptions of course). How much fun is that for them?

Just my two cents of course.