I'm trying to decide on a press or presses to use for the high school team I am coaching. What I would like from the coaches who respond is an over view of how they choose a press. Why a 1-2-1-1 instead of a 1-2-2 or 1-3-1. Why a zone and not the run and jump? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each? How do you match a press to your personnel or do you try to match the press to your opponent?

We ran two presses... one being m2m and IF you cant cover anybody it wont make any difference which press you run, be it m2m or a zone.

If we really wanted to get after people we ran a full court m2m press with no defender on the ball, he was our center fielder.... in both our zone and m2m press we always looked for a trap just over half court. Reasoning... we were never bigger than anyone so the element of surprise was on our size ( I hoped )

We ran a 1-2-2 zone press which you can see on this site...
http://www.coachesclipboard.net/122Press.html
Pretty self explanatory.

Thanks Coach,
If I understand you correctly, it really doesn't matter what press I choose as long as my players play it well.

As long as they know YOU believe in it and teach it to them well... I would say yes. Every coach has his own favorite philosophy... but I do believe that somewhere along the line you are going to have to cover them m2m also.