Custom Volleyball Team Shirts: Game Tops, Warm-Ups and Numbers for Clubs

A volleyball team’s shirt order is really three orders that share a logo. The game top is what players compete in: it gets sweated through over several matches on a tournament day, carries the numbers the officials read, and has to follow your league’s uniform rules. The warm-up or practice tee takes the most wear, from weekly practices to warm-ups over the game top, with a wash after each.

The parent and fan shirt is ordered in the biggest numbers, by people who will wear it in the stands and on the weekend. Treat all three as one garment and something gives. Put the players in a cotton fan shirt and they are playing in a heavy, wet shirt by the second set; put the parents in performance tops and you have paid for a feature nobody in the bleachers needs. Here is how we would split an order of volleyball team t-shirts.

The rest of this guide takes them in that order, then covers youth sizing, whole-club orders, beach teams and timing. If you already have a logo and a roster, you can build the game top in the free design studio and watch the price as you go.

Volleyball is short, explosive rallies in a warm gym, and a tournament day can mean several matches with short breaks between them. That is the case for polyester. A 100% polyester performance knit pulls sweat off the skin and dries fast; cotton soaks it up, gets heavy and is still damp when the next match starts.

In our studio the game top is the Team 365 TT11: 100% polyester, 3.5 oz/yd², adult XS to 5XL, in about 20 colours, from Sport Dark Navy, Sport Royal and Sport Red to Sport Athletic Gold, Sport Silver and White. Choose the t-shirt, then 100% Polyester as the fabric; it costs a little more per piece than the cotton tee. It is a regular cut rather than a fitted one, so players used to a fitted women’s top often go down a size, and the studio’s size chart gives the chest and length of every size.

Polyester also changes how a shirt is decorated. It takes less heat than cotton, and on dyed polyester, reds and maroons especially, the fabric’s own dye can creep into white or light ink over time and tint it, which the trade calls dye migration. Choosing the fabric in the studio tells our designer what the shirt is; on a quote, name it.

Names and numbers go on one shirt at a time, usually as heat-applied vinyl or a DTF print, because every back is different. The club design every shirt shares is printed by whichever method suits the fabric and the count.

The other route is a fully sublimated jersey. Sublimation dyes the whole design — colour panels, stripes, gradients, even the names and numbers — into white polyester fabric before the jersey is cut and sewn, so nothing sits on top of the fabric to crack or peel. Custom volleyball jerseys made this way are a quote job rather than a studio one: send the design and roster through our custom jerseys service. If your league only needs a solid-colour top with a logo, names and numbers, the printed polyester tee does that job, and you can design and order it yourself.

Numbers are the part of a volleyball shirt with rules attached, and names are the part that cannot be fixed after printing. The studio handles both with its Team names & numbers chart. The button sits under Add Text or Numbers; on a phone, tap Aa Text. Each row is one shirt, with a name of up to 20 characters, a number and a size.

Type the rows in, or use Paste a list and copy the roster straight from a spreadsheet, one shirt per line, such as “Smith, 23, L”. Choose whether the shirts get names, numbers or both, and the colour they print in: white, black, red, navy, royal or gold. Save & fill sizes then fills the size boxes from the chart, so nobody counts sizes twice.

On the shirt, the name runs across the upper back with the number big underneath it, and our designer lays them out with the rest of your artwork. Each personalized shirt costs a little more than a plain one. Before you pay, the studio shows the chart again with a preview of every shirt’s back, and checkout waits until you tick that every name, number and size is right; edit the chart afterwards and it asks again. Our guide to ordering team names and numbers covers spellings, duplicate numbers and character limits.

Front numbers. The chart prints on the back only. Indoor volleyball rulebooks commonly want a number on the front of the jersey as well, often centred on the chest, sometimes with a minimum height and a colour that contrasts with the shirt. If yours does, send the roster through the free quote form and say so. Leave the centre of the chest clear in the design: the club logo can sit above the number or on the left chest, which we print at 3.5″ wide as standard.

The libero. The libero is a back-row specialist who can replace back-row players without it counting as a normal substitution, so the officials need to pick that player out at a glance, and the libero usually wears a contrasting colour. Order those tops in the same shirt in a colour that stands apart: Sport Dark Navy tops with gold numbers for the team, say, and a Sport Athletic Gold top with navy numbers for the libero. Your league’s or association’s rulebook has the exact requirement, so check it before you choose.

In the studio, a chart belongs to one design in one shirt colour, so the libero tops are a second design: the same logo on the contrasting colour, with a short chart of their own. Every colour of the same garment counts toward the same price break, so a team of 12 with 10 navy tops and 2 gold libero tops is one 12-piece count.

If your rules ask for the captain to be marked, settle how before printing, because captains change during a season. And if the club reuses its game tops from year to year, switch names off and print numbers only, so a numbered set in a spread of sizes can be handed to next season’s roster.

Warm-up shirts go on over the game top before the match and come off when it starts; practice tees are worn and washed every week. Both are simpler than a game top, with no rulebook and usually one design, and the case for polyester is drying time rather than competition. A practice tee that is dry by the next practice is the one players actually wear. The studio gives you three good options:

• The same polyester tee as the game top, in a different colour, so warm-ups and game tops never get mixed up in the bag.
• A long sleeve for cold gyms and early starts, in 100% cotton (Gildan 2400) or 100% polyester, sizes S to 3XL.
• The cotton tee for practices, which costs a little less than the polyester one.

The Team names & numbers chart works on all of them, and a name across the back of a warm-up is a common touch. For travel days, the hoodie is the layer players live in between matches: the Gildan 18500 in 50/50 fleece, or the 100% polyester Team 365 TT400, S to 3XL in the studio.

Whatever the fabric, wash team shirts cold and inside out, skip the fabric softener (it coats polyester and slows the wicking), and tumble dry low or hang dry. Never iron over the print. Cotton can shrink a little in a hot wash or dryer, which is one more reason to keep the heat down.

The fan shirt is the one ordered by the dozen, and it should be the easy one. Parents and siblings want something soft to wear in the stands and on the weekend, not a performance top, so we would put them in the cotton Gildan 64000 Softstyle: 100% ring-spun cotton, 4.5 oz/yd², semi-fitted and true to size, adult XS to 5XL in more than 60 colours. The same tee comes in youth XS to XL for brothers and sisters, under the Youth sizes link on each colour row of the design studio.

Youth sizes count with the adult tees for the price break, so 12 adult and 12 youth fan shirts are priced as one 24-piece run, and every colour of the same garment counts toward the same break. At volume, fan shirts are where screen printing pays: a screen-printed t-shirt runs roughly $12–$18 CAD each at 50 pieces and drops under $10 each in the hundreds. Keep the design to one or two ink colours and the artwork the same as the players’, and the parents’ shirts can go on the same order as the team’s.

One thing to expect: colours will not match exactly across cotton and polyester. The fibres take dye differently, so a cotton Navy tee beside a polyester Sport Dark Navy top looks like a close cousin rather than a twin, and a screen shows both only approximately. If an exact club colour matters, say so before you order. For player, bench and fan gear in one place, see sports team apparel.

This is the detail that catches youth clubs out. The polyester performance tee comes in adult sizes only, XS to 5XL. There is no youth cut in polyester in the studio; the youth tee is the cotton Gildan 64000B. So for a youth team the question is whether adult XS fits, and the answer depends mostly on age. The table compares them laid flat, in inches.

A player who wears a youth XL is close to an adult XS: the XS is half an inch narrower laid flat and 2 inches longer, which is usually an easy swap. A youth L player gains half an inch of width and 3.5 inches of length. A youth M player, roughly 9 to 11, would be in a top 1.5 inches wider laid flat (3 inches around) and 5 inches longer, which is a lot of shirt to play in. Put those teams in the cotton youth tee, or ask through the free quote form whether a youth-cut performance top is available in your colour.

The Team names & numbers chart lists the garment’s adult sizes, so a roster of cotton youth tees with names and numbers is easiest sent through the quote form as a spreadsheet. Ages in the table are our estimate from Gildan’s body chart, not Gildan’s own, and two 13-year-olds can be a size apart, so collect real sizes with the roster. The studio’s size chart has adult and youth tabs, the kids’ clothing page has the full youth chart, and our t-shirt size guide goes further into fit.

A club with several teams should order as one club, not as six separate teams. Large orders get volume pricing. In the online design studio the per-piece price drops at 12, 24, 50 and 100 pieces, and every colour of the same garment in one order counts toward the same price break. Orders in the hundreds are usually screen printed and quoted directly — through the free quote form, by email or by phone — and a large order gets the same free mockup and human designer check as a single shirt.

Say a club fields six teams of 12. That is 72 game tops, 60 in the club colour and 12 libero tops if every team carries two liberos, plus 72 warm-up long sleeves and perhaps 150 parent and sibling tees. In the studio the 72 game tops are one count at the 50-piece price, whichever colour each team wears and even if each team’s design differs. The long sleeves count on their own, because different garments do.

Altogether that is an order in the hundreds, which is the point to send it through the free quote form: one sheet per team with name, number and size, plus the fan-shirt sizes as a table. On a quoted screen-printed run, each separate design, print location and ink colour is its own setup, so the most economical club order shares one front design across every team and lets the backs carry the individuality.

Sizes are easiest collected with the roster, and our guide to organizing a group apparel order covers the form and the deadline. School teams work the same way: the school spirit wear page covers team jerseys, bench wear and the spirit shirts that go with them, and our guide to custom sports team apparel in Ottawa walks through kitting out a whole club.

Beach teams want something different. On sand in full sun, a light-coloured polyester tee is the practical choice: light colours absorb less heat than dark ones, and polyester dries far faster than cotton between matches. White, Sport Silver, Sport Light Blue, Safety Yellow and Melon are all on the performance tee’s colour card. If the league does not ask for numbers, a beach team shirt is mostly a team name and a colour everyone can spot across the courts.

Two honest limits. Tank tops, which plenty of beach players prefer, are a quote rather than a studio garment, so send the design through the free quote form; the studio makes the tee. And for a summer social league, the cotton tee is perfectly good if the shirts are more for the team photo than for playing in.

Club rosters usually settle after tryouts, and the first tournament can follow within weeks, so plan the order backwards from that date. Standard turnaround on clothing is 1–2 weeks. Most apparel orders can rush — 4–5 business days or 1–3 business days, priced at checkout — and every order shows the dates it will be ready before you pay. A whole club’s order in the hundreds belongs on the standard schedule: big runs are planned, not rushed, and the time to agree a date is when you book.

Split the order by what you already know. Fan shirts, warm-ups and anything without names can go as soon as the design is approved; game tops wait for the final roster, unless you print numbers only. Add a couple of spare tops in common sizes, without names, for late additions. There is no minimum on DTF and DTG — we will print a single shirt — so a player who joins mid-season can be added later, as long as the blank is still made in that colour.

To order custom volleyball t-shirts, open the design studio, upload the club logo, choose the t-shirt and its fabric, add the Team names & numbers chart and check out. Every order gets a free digital mockup on the actual product before any payment, and nothing prints until you approve it. A human designer reviews every order before it goes to press, checking resolution, colour, sizing and placement. Our logo placement guide covers where the crest sits, and the t-shirt printing page covers print methods.

Studio orders are printed and decorated in-house in Ottawa, Ontario, so a club anywhere in Canada gets no cross-border customs holds or surprise duties. We ship Canada-wide, including the Greater Toronto Area and Greater Montreal; shipping is quoted for your postal code and shown before you pay, or ask us about pickup in Ottawa. We serve customers in English and French. To talk it through, phone 613-666-YAYA (613-666-9292), WhatsApp the same number, or email order@yayaprints.ca.