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DataVolley Professional Mid-Season Report | January 2016
Introduction
Happy New Year everybody. It has been a while since my last post so I thought it was time to write another one. The only development since then has been the use of DataVolley Professional. I have used the volleyball software for 11 matches now (two Legacy Cup matches and nine regular season matches). So far, I have learnt a lot but I still have a far ways to go.
Before I start, since this blog is about DataVolley, I will use the word to describe the action of inputting data. It is essentially the same word as in SportsCode, in StatEasy and in Dartfish. Below are some of the problems I’ve encountered, some of the things I’ve learnt and some more things to do on DataVolley.
Problems I’ve Encountered
Inputting incorrect opposition shirt numbers. I normally notice this when I try to sub in a player but DataVolley won’t allow me to because that player/ shirt number is not on the team list. When that happened, I made the decision to skip the substitution scout and scout everything else like normal. I just modify the scout after the match to correct any errors. DataVolley also won’t allow you to enter a starting line-up if a player/ shirt number is not on the team list. In that situation, I check the team list and put in the shirt number I have for that player. I still scout their actual shirt number and after the match, I change the team list number.
Getting the shirt numbers wrong actually happened three times and all were slightly different ways of getting it wrong. a) I looked in the match day programme for the shirt numbers, which was wrong. b) I looked at the team’s actual team list, the one they have to hand in to the scorer/ referee, and some of them were wrong. c) I asked somebody who knew the players for their shirt numbers and somehow I got a player’s shirt number wrong.
Now I just have to check the official team list handed in by the opposition AND then cross check it by eyeing the players on the court. This should be easier the second half of the season since I have now seen all the players at least once.
Scouting Polonia as the home team when they are the away team. For the past three seasons when I used StatEasy, I would designate Polonia as the “home” team, despite playing home or away. It was because it made compiling the season stats a lot easier. This season, Polonia played their first five matches at home so we were the home team. So when I scouted Polonia’s first away match and Polonia was the designated away team, I ran into issues because I would scout Polonia as the home team and vice versa. Sometimes I even knew as I’m typing that I forgot to key in “a” to signify it is an away team’s action. It was particularly exacerbated when some of the key hitters on both teams had the same shirt number. This is a problem because if I suggest to the coach to make a change based on the live stats, e.g. player #1 is not hitting well so why not sub in player #2 to give them a chance to see what they can do, but what if the live stats is not reliable? One or two wrong data can make a difference in the numbers and how I view things. I should get better with more practice in away matches.
Incorrect first server. This is one of the times when I scouted Polonia as the home team when they were the away team. I would notice it (sometimes a couple of rallies in) because the next server is wrong. For example, you code home #9 to serve but opposition #9 is actually serving. If the opposition/ serving team wins the rally and you award the point, DataVolley will rotate the opposition/ serving team because it thinks they are receiving when they are in fact serving. If the home/ receiving team wins the rally and you award the point, DataVolley assumes #9 is still serving when in fact, it should have rotated the team and the next person is serving. There is a quick fix where you can rotate back the teams manually. You can fix up the scout after the match.
Incorrect orientation of the teams. You orientate the teams on court so you can award points to the right team. So if the team on the left wins the point, you key in “\” (far left on the keyboard) or if the team on the right wins the point, you key in “,” (far right on the keyboard). One time I had the orientation the wrong way round and when I awarded the first point, I actually awarded the point to the wrong team and it messed up the score and the team’s rotation. I was able to change the orientation then and I just manually adjusted the rotation and score so it was correct. I cleaned up the scout after the match.
Things I’ve Learnt
Getting the starting line-up. Previously, it was a bit of a rush to get the starting line-up before a set starts but now I find there’s enough time to do it. When the players goes on court and the second referee checks the rotation slips, that gives me enough time to get the opposition team’s rotation. For our rotation, I would ask the coach or check the rotation slip before it is handed in to the second referee. Fact checking the scout using match video. Some data you can just work out. For example, a libero makes an invalid action of attacking the ball. This usually means the other team with the same shirt number made the attack. Some data you just need to check via the match video. For example, you scouted a player who received the ball but she are not on court. You need the video to see who actually received the ball rather than guessing. DataVolley doesn’t actually allow you can’t sync up the scout to a match video. This is what DataVideo is for. However, when you sync up the video to the scout in DataVideo and go back to DataVolley, the sync is not there. I found that when you open a scout in DataVideo, it actually creates a copy of the scout so any changes you make in DataVideo, i.e. the sync to video, is made on the scout copy and not on the original scout. So to get the sync in DataVolley, I would simply copy the DataVideo scout copy and paste it in the DataVolley folder. This means when I open the match video in DataVolley, the scout is synced to the match video and I can check the stats. However, any scout changes I make in DataVolley, e.g. I found out who actually received the ball, is not reflected in DataVideo. Thus, I would have to copy the DataVolley scout and paste it in the DataVideo folder. This is clearly one of the weaknesses of having two programmes instead of one.
Building my own analyses. I said it before how I think the DataVolley match report is terrible(Update 20 January 2021 | I wrote a blog post on how I would improve the DataVolley match report. Click on this link). I have since build my own analysis table with data I think are the most useful. This meant I had to write the right code to get what I want. This is similar to what I did in StatEasy (see link for attack directions example) but with slightly different codes. For attack directions chart, it was a lot easier since it is all there.
Don’t use DataVideo in live scouting. In the first two matches of the season when I opened up DataVideo for a feed of the match, it crashed the laptop both times. It takes several minutes to override the power off button and start it up again. Both times, it happened those couple of minutes before the first set starts and those several minutes takes forever! You miss the first couple of rallies and then you are already flustered and behind! I think it is because I put the laptop in power save mode and the laptop can’t handle it. I continue to use Kinovea for the delayed feed.
Printing each analysis as a PDF is time consuming. You have to individually open up each analysis and print it as a PDF. This is a bit annoying because there is about 20-25 analyses to print. I would then use a website to merge all of the PDFs together into one PDF so it’s easier to have it in all one place. I wish DataVolley has a function where in a touch of a button, you can print all the analyses you need into one PDF.
More Things To Do
Scout more specific data. This is really for the middle attackers to distinguish whether they are hitting a quick, slide, reverse quick, shoot etc. Each type of attack has its own code. Right now I scout every attack as coming from a high ball set (V code). This means a quick attack in the middle is scouted as a V3 (high ball set to zone 3). However, a reverse quick is scouted with the same (V3). So I would not know which type of attack is more effective. Also, slides and right sided attacks are both coded as V1 (high ball to zone 1), which means I can’t separate the effectiveness of the slide compared to the normal right sided attacks. The other thing is scouting more data on the serve. I don’t find serve direction important (although I might do it anyway) but certainly I would like to know the type of serve. Some players have two types of serves: the jump top spin and the jump float. I would like to distinguish the type of serve so I can see how effective the jump top spin serve is. I think I would have to practice on a match video first before doing it live.
Building more analyses. There are a few other analyses I need to build. The first is my analysis table but by rotation (so far I have by players and by set). I don’t always find that useful but the coach does. There was also one time where I felt we got stuck but I didn’t have any rotation stats to back it up. There is also the setter distribution table. Right now, DataVolley doesn’t recognise the middle attacks since I scout quick attacks as V3 (high ball to zone 3) so there is a blank space and the distribution is off. Once I start to code those quick middle attacks then I can use the distribution table. There are other things I want to build that I feel will be useful.
DataVolley client. DataVolley allows you to scout a match live while another computer can view those live stats. This would be useful because another assistant coach can view the stats more closely. I have my analysis table open but I only really look at the attack and reception stats. This is mainly because I feel these are the most important stats but also I don’t have the space on my screen for anything else. However, the assistant coach/ head coach can look for patterns in attack directions, rotational stats, last hits etc.
Conclusion
I want to have a lot of these things in place by March before the season hots up. Our last two matches of the regular season in mid-March are against our two toughest competitors. After that, there’s the National Cup Finals (we should get there) and then the Play-Off Finals. Expect another blog post around that time to see what I have done.
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