.png)
Bringing Back Team Errors?
Who’s to Blame?
There are a few situations when it is difficult to assign an error to a particular player. These include: * A serve lands between two players – sometimes the camera angle doesn’t help but who would you blame?
* A serve hits the net and trickles over for a point – the player closest to the ball is usually assigned the error but it is usually unplayable and unfair to assign the error to that player. * A rotation error is called because two players have inadvertently switched positions on reception – both players are a fault here so who would you assign the reception error to? * A player has served out of rotation – the player who should be serving and the player who actually served are to blame. The NCAA says the service error is charged to the player who should be serving and not the one who actually served. Do you agree with this? * An opposition free ball lands between two players – it could be a situation where both players step in to take the free ball then both stop because they think the other will take it but none takes it. * A block error is called and you’re not sure who’s to blame – this can be difficult to assign even you go watch it frame by frame on video replay. * Two players goes for the same ball and clash – again, both players are to blame. * You have a really bad camera angle or a part of the court is not in view so you can’t see who got the point or made an error – it could be because you had to film from the side of the court rather than the back (see 5 simple rules of volleyball video recording) or the camcorder was knocked askew during the match so only half the court is in view. It could also be because somebody stands in front of the camcorder, blocking a part of the court.
Bringing Back Team Errors
In many cases, either two players are equally to blame or you are just not sure who to blame and assign the error to. So rather than assigning the error to one paricular player, which will affect their overall stats, it would be good to assign the error to the team. The error still counts because an error was made but no player is given the full responsibility for the error. The NCAA has Team Reception Errors (TRE) for this very purpose so why not have team errors for everything else.
The only issue with this is there’s no option to assign stats to the “team” in DataVolley. You can only assign codes to a player. However, there is a workaround for this. This was something I did when I was using StatEasy that could be applied to DataVolley. I would simply create another player named “Team” with shirt number as 50. I could then able to assign any team errors to this “player”.
I do foresee some DataVolley issues if I had a “team” player. One would be a warning because you had 13 players in the team list. However, you can just OK this warning. There would also be validation issues since the “Team” player would not be on court. I could have the “Team” player as a libero but there would be validation issues on block or serve errors. As long you are aware of this then this is ok too.
Other Considerations
When an error involves two players, the assigning error to the team doesn’t recognise which two players were at fault. However, you want to know which players were involved in the error because while neither are not solely to blame, both are partially to blame and this should count towards their stats.
When I used team errors for Polonia SideOut London in the 2014/15 season, team errors accounted for only 4.3% of total errors (37 out of 848). Is 4.3% or 37 team errors negligible that it is not worth doing?
Comments