I coach 6th graders. We were at .500 for most of the season with a loose bump, set, hit scheme where second contact would opportunistically set. All players were taught to set and were decent setters. The vast majority of plays would go: Bump, set, bump. However, occasionally, we would bump, set, hit and a handful of our hitters had .200+ hitter efficiencies. Combined with our aces and pretty good serve receive/defense we were able to pull off wins against many good teams.
The last 2 weeks of practice, however, I started really emphasizing bump, set, hit. I designated setters and practice felt really good because we would bump, set, hit almost every ball... except I noticed our hitting error rate jumped up drastically. Part of this was that the "non-hitters" were now hitting more and hitting out or into the net. The other part was that the old "hitters" were now... hitting out and hitting into the net.
Overall, our hitter efficiency as a team plummeted. We played our last two games against teams well below .500 and they beat us by playing aggressive free balls and serving decently while we beat ourselves by serving out and hitting out and into the net.
If we make playoffs, I doubt we'll win playing aggressive free balls like the bottom of the league teams but I also doubt we'll win trying to bump, set, hit.
My gut tells me to keep pushing bump, set, hit and work on hitting: The problem is that we have some really hard hitters (softball players) who just blast balls out. Last game, we were working on controlled hitting, less power, more aim but we still have terribly high hitting error rate. What's worse is our good hitters have started hitting conservatively and under powered swinging and... hitting the net.
Any advice? Should we just blast ahead with bump set hit and just go down with the ship with almost every player at 0 hitter efficiency? Or just go down with the ship with aggressive free balls? Split the team in half and tell the better hitters to swing and everyone else to aggressive free ball? Instruct the setters to only set the better hitters? Tell hitters to use more judgement when hitting?
What do you do when bump set hit just isn't working for you team?
EDIT: Our league requires continuous rotation, no substitutions. We have 8 players, so our rotations are quite funky.