Position in team sports refers to the joint arrangement of a team on its field of play during a game and to the standardized place of any individual player in that arrangement. Much instruction, strategy, and reporting is organized by a set of individual player positions that is standard for the sport.

Some player positions may be official, others unofficial. For example, baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

 rules govern the pitcher

Pitcher

In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throwsthe baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw a walk. In the numbering system used to record defensive plays, the...

 by that name, but not the shortstop

Shortstop

Shortstop, abbreviated SS, is the baseball fielding position between second and third base. Shortstop is often regarded as the most dynamic defensive position in baseball, because there are more right-handed hitters in baseball than left-handed hitters, and most hitters have a tendency to pull the...

, where pitcher and shortstop are two of baseball's nine fielding positions.

For information about team or player positions in some particular sports, see:

Batting sports

• Baseball fielding positions
• Cricket fielding positions

Football

• Association football positions
• Football (American) positions
  American football positions
  In American football, each team has eleven players on the field at one time. Because the rules allow unlimited substitution between plays, the types of players on the field for each team differ depending on the situation...
  
  
• Gaelic football positions
  Gaelic football and Hurling positions
  The following are the positions in the Gaelic sports of Gaelic football, hurling and camogie. Like rugby and baseball, and unlike soccer, these have set positions which haven't changed in decades...
  
  
• Rugby league positions
  Rugby league positions
  A rugby league football team consists of thirteen players on the field, with four substitutes on the bench. Players are divided into two general categories: "forwards" and "backs"....
  
  
• Rugby union positions
  Rugby union positions
  In the game rugby union, there are fifteen players on each team, comprising eight forwards and seven backs . Depending upon the competition, there may be up to eight replacement players. Early games consisted primarily of forwards that attacked plus a handful of "tends" that played back in defence...
  
  

Hockey

• Field hockey positions
• Ice hockey
  Ice hockey
  Ice hockey, often referred to as hockey, is a team sport played on ice, in which skaters use wooden or composite sticks to shoot a hard rubber puck into their opponent's net. The game is played between two teams of six players each. Five members of each team skate up and down the ice trying to take...
  
   positions:
  • Goaltender
    Goaltender
    In ice hockey, the goaltender is the player who defends his team's goal net by stopping shots of the puck from entering his team's net, thus preventing the opposing team from scoring...
    
    
  • Defenseman
  • Forward

"Service" sports

• Lawn tennis players in doubles competition alternate between two positions. That is, the service side alternates as server and partner while the receiving side alternates as receiver and partner. There is no substitution of players and the two partners necessarily divide the two pairs of positions almost equally.

• Volleyball
  Volleyball
  Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules.The complete rules are extensive...
  
   players rotate through six positions, taken on the court at the serve. But the positions are not fixed during a volley, only moderately regulated. Volleyball player specialization is highly refined and strategy focuses on how to use specialized players in unequal ways.