Volleyball help, please.

Hacky, you're a saint. Thanks.

 

You have to be careful, because some coaches keep stats wrong different. For instance, I had one coach call in a 30-21, 30-22 score (60 offensive points) and she will say Susie Lipshitz had 75 kills.

Well, she may have had 75 ATTACKS, but a kill results directly in a point, whereas a successful attack can be dug up and returned.

Same with blocks. "Lipshitz also had 22 blocks."

Well, um, a block also directly results in a point, so unless she stopped the volley with a block (some people call them 'stuff blocks'), then they aren't official blocks.

 

Most meaningful class I ever took during my college years was intro to sports information......volleyball trailed only football and men's basketball on campus at the time in terms of fan interest, so we spent a week on volleyball stats.

As for blocks, the same principle applies. It only counts as a block if the ball goes straight to the ground OR if the person trying to recover on the other side fails to get the ball to the setter.

High school coaches tend to count block stats differently than the colleges do, in that colleges have two different types of block stats. For your purposes, just go with the combined block stat that the coaches give you -- unless, of course, they are inflating like in the instance mentioned earlier.

 

At the school my paper covers, volleyball is second in interest, behind football. I think they've sold out every home match for about 10 years.

 

Played the sport for several years and covered it while in college, partly because I was the only one who understood it on the staff.

I'll vouch for everything said on here (especially service points - nothing shouts "I don't know volleyball!" more than when a coach says a player had nine service points; that's like throwing a baseball in from the outfield and not getting an out but still getting credit) but shoot me a PM if you need more help.

 

A serve that is only touched by one player on the opposing team and then goes out of bounds is an ace. Always. If it's touched by two players, its not an ace.

I coach a team and play, and have also covered a ton of volleyball matches. Here's what I do (and it's not much different from covering any sport): keep track of every play - how it starts (server) and ends, and the score after the play ends. Example: 29 team A (the number of the player who served); error team b; 1-0 Team A.
29 team A(served); 22 Team B kill (how the play ended), 1-1 (score).

You don't need to keep track of errors (when a team messes up and doesn't return the ball, or spikes out of bounds), but you should try to keep track of successful plays - kills, blocks, aces, that sort of thing.

As you get better at it, you might want to keep track of digs (sometimes there will be alot in one rally), or at least key ones, so you can give the better defensive players some credit. But that's not imperative.

You can always get the stats from the coach/stat person, but having your running play-by-play will help if you need to talk about what happened in a key run, or at a turning point in the game, etc.

That kind of stuff can really help, but like someone else said, the best way is probably to featurize on somebody. Until you feel comfortable knowing who the best players are, ask the coach who was important or what was a key play, etc.

As you cover more, you'll be more comfortable. I covered field hockey for 3 or 4 years, and at first it was a nightmare trying to understand what was going on. You'll get to know what the refs calls are as you go along (it might not hurt to get a rule book). The main violations refs will call is a lift or double contact on the setter (they aren't supposed to touch the ball for a long period of time, and also are supposed to play it with both hands at the same time). A lift is indicated by the ref's hand being held palm up. Double contact is just holding up two fingers, like a peace sign. The other thing refs call a lot are net violations (players can't touch the net) and centerline violations (players can't step completely across the centerline into the other team's court).

 

Just one small disagreement, hacky: It doesn't matter whether the ball gets to the setter, but whether it gets to ANY other player on your side of the court (if a second player is able to make a play on the ball, it's not a kill or ace), and also if the ball goes back to the other team's side and is still in play, that also means the attack wasn't a kill or ace. (I'm sure you know that, but under your definition, it's not clear).

 

Things to look for that you can write about:

If winning team had a lot of kills, that means their offense was working well. Ask coach/player why that was (most of the time it was because, as others have said, their serve-receive was very good. often, that means a player who might not have had a lot of kills was actually a key component, because they pass the other team's serve to the setter).

Another reason might be that a team has a very complicated offense that the other team couldn't stop. That ussually means they have good passing (serve-receive) and a really good setter who can spread the ball around to keep the other team from focusing on one hitter. They also can play faster (quicker, lower sets) that the other team can't react to.

If a team gets a lot of blocks or digs, then you might want to focus on the defense. If they're getting a lot of blocks, was it because they had a good idea what the other team was going to do? Did they have a go-to hitter that winning team knew they had to stop? Was the other team predictable?

If they're getting a lot of digs, that probably means there's a defensive player/s that made a difference.

If the losing team makes a lot of errors, it may be that the winning team had an aggressive serving strategy that forced them into the errors. If they have trouble passing the ball to their setter, the setter has trouble getting the ball to the hitters, who then have trouble getting a powerful attack. If they're bumping the ball over the net, giving the opponents an easy play (its called a free ball), that also could be the result of aggressive serving.

 

So, a player can step on part of the line and that is OK? It is only when their entire foot crosses the line that it is a foul?

Also, do rotation errors always result in points?

And digger, are you a libero?

 

Digger has lots of great points above.

I too would suggest trying to featurize the story as much as possible. If you cover the same team you'll get to know who is good at hitting different types of sets or are good at certain situations. Try to pick a player and figure out why they did well that night either offensively or defensively. Maybe the other team was giving a double block on one side, so that opened up a 1-on-1 for the opposite and she had 15 kills. Or maybe the middles intimidated the opposing offense so much that they kept on giving free balls.

Keeping track of runs is good, but don't let your story get bogged down it. Just like gamers for any other sport you don't want to say team X tied the game at 5, then team B went on a 7 point run, but team A came back...

Something else I would always do is talk to the setter. They are basically the quarterback on the court. They have to read the defense and pick a play. They will be able to explain the strategy and tell you why one hitter was successful early on, then a different one was later in the game. When I covered college vball for two years I was lucky to have an all-American setter on the team. She was my go-to quote because she would dumb things down and say that outside hitter who normally dominates was being double team, therefore the middle blockers were open and that's why they had career nights in kills. Talking to the setter will help you figure out who else you need to talk to.

 

Ha! The screen name is kind of ironic, defense has always been my worst area. I know someone who has that real nickname, though, and I always thought it was cool.

On the centerline, the foot has to completely cross the line for it to be a fault. If you're on it (or hovering above it, say, if you're on you're tiptoes but the back of the foot is still over top of the line) you're ok. For serving, or 10-ball (back-row) attacks, if the foot touches the line before contact with the ball, that's illegal.

The rotation errors question is a good one - they always result in points (assuming this is rally scoring, not sideout scoring) when the ref blows the whistle for them. One example would be a wrong server (the team or a player get confused about where they are in the rotation and they don't follow the order - this isn't as rare as you'd think it is, I've seen really good, experienced teams do it). Another would be an overlap (players set up in the wrong position at the time the ball is served). Examples of this would be if the player who is supposed to be in the back left position starts the play in front of the person in the front left position. This most commonly happens with setters "cheating'' up to the front of the court and being in front of the front-row person she/he is supposed to be behind. It can also happen when teams have a sophisticated serve-receive that relies on two or three main passers and who thus have to each cover a big chunk of the court.

The reason I say it's a good question is that a lot of times overlaps happen, but aren't called (and therefore aren't a point). It's like the umpire in baseball who said "It ain't a strike until I say it's a strike''. Sometimes refs aren't good enough to recognize an overlap. Plus, they'll let "minor'' ones go on purpose, part of a recent trend in the game toward having the officials be more lenient to allow more actual play. (they're also allowing net violations that are not considered part of the play - say if the left side player somehow accidently touches the net for some strange reason when the set goes to the right side player. (it's extremely rare to have this actually happen).


Edited to put in a couple words where I didn't complete a thought! (in the centerline part)

 

Also good points. Setters are often one of the smarter players on the team, especially very successful ones - they have way more to think about than everyone else. (who to set, who's where on their own team, who's where on the other team, etc.).

Another angle you could take with a story - who does the setter go to when the game is tight? It might be Player A only has 5, 6 kills in a match and Player B has 10, but Player A was the person who got the key kill to give the team a 17-16 lead, or to get them out of a bad streak, or at the end of the 25-23 win. The good setters are going to set their go-to hitter in those situations, and it often isn't the same person who gets a lot of kills when there's no pressure.