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Defining the Quality of Each Pass in Beach Volleyball
Defining the Quality of the Pass in Beach Volleyball
You want to ensure that any action you stat, such as the quality of each pass, has precise definitions in its terminology. This is critical in performance analysis because it provides objective and reliable data. In practical terms, the same statistician should be able to stat the same match twice and end up with the same data (read more on when I actually did my own reliability study). So I wanted to define the quality of each pass in beach volleyball like I have done for indoor volleyball.
Process
The best way to do this is see what other people have done. I first did a Google search. It basically yielded zero results. There is so little out there in terms of beach volleyball stats, and there was even less on passing stats. I read a lot of freely downloadable journal research articles and when they were studying passing, most researchers adopted the Coleman system used in indoor volleyball of maximum attack options, limited attack options, no attack options and error. The problem with these definitions is what’s the difference between maximum and limited attack options? In indoor volleyball, the difference is generally whether the middle player is available for a quick tempo attack. However, there is only ever one player available to attack with the partner setting. So if the player is available to attack (partner is able to set), is that maximum or limited attack options? The journal articles did not provide definitions of these terms.
Kirk Pitman, Head Coach of the Australian pair of Clancy-Artacho del Solar, had a similar approach but slightly changed the definitions to primarily used setting options rather than attack options. He defined a perfect pass as three available setting options (front set, back set, on 2 attack), a positive pass as two available setting options (front and back set) and a neutral pass as one available setting option (front set). I liked this idea because there was a nice gradation between ratings. However, I quickly found that using these definitions in practice is still vague. For example, what about passes that lands 3-4 metres off the net? You could attack on 2 and you could possibly back set (in theory at least) – does that mean there are three available setting options? Or is it two since the back set is not really an option? Or is it one since players will unlikely to attack on 2 in that situation? Pitman did warn me that it was highly interpretational but he said he uses the same scoutman to help keep things consistent.
Another perspective is from Steve Matthews, who works at DataVolley. He told me that because it is so difficult to define what a perfect pass (R#) is, the official statisticians simply bypassed the issue and not use it. The highest level of pass used was therefore positive (R+).
Vangelis Koutouleas, Head Coach for the England Women Beach Volleyball team, told me that you can’t define it! For example, some teams will intentionally pass the ball towards the antennas as a tactic. They will either spike the ball on 2 or set the ball long for the partner. This means the blocker will have to block one or the other because he can’t possible do both. This will ordinarily be considered a negative/ poor pass but it is not because it was practiced and intentional, it should be a perfect pass.
Mark Kontopoulos, Owner of SideOut, gave me the most pratical advice quite early in this process. He told me the perfect pass is 1 metre inside of the passer (inside meaning right for the left passer and left for the right passer) and 1 metre off the net. This would mean a positive pass is outside the perfect zone. He did warn this that is it quite an old school way of looking at passing. However, I did use his definitions when I was statting but I had to refine it the more statting experience I had in beach volleyball.
Potential Definitions
Using my limited experience, I drew up the potential reception zones and definitions to rate the quality of the pass in beach volleyball (see below). It still doesn’t consider teams that intentionally pass to the antenna. That may require a separate chart. But I think it’s a good starting point.
Best System?
In the future, perhaps the best way to define the reception zones is to link it with hitting efficiency. For example, if we could produce a graph like below but for beach volleyball. If we know where the best zone to pass the ball for a higher attack efficiency then we could outline the appropriate zones accordingly.
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