StatEasy: Your Stats at Full Potential | A Review

What is StatEasy? StatEasy is a paid volleyball analysis software (http://www.stateasysports.com/volleyball.html).  I have used it to analyse roughly 10 matches and it is an incredible bit of kit.

What is the best function of StatEasy that I have not seen with any other computerised analysis software? 1. A vast amount of analysis can be done with StatEasy that is specific to volleyball.  There are various statistical reports that are pre-installed.  The raw data, e.g. kills, blocks, aces etc, can be viewed via player, rotation or by set number.  It can be customised to create other reports according to your needs.

2.  It recognises the sequential nature of volleyball.  For example, it can calculate the number of digs that got converted in kills.  It can calculate your statistics on your serve or the opposition’s serve.  It can calculate your attack statistics depending on the quality of your pass or dig.  The attack statistics after a perfect pass (all attack options) may lower than the attack statistics after a good pass (1 or 2 attack options), which should not happen.

3.  Several teams can be added and their statistics collected.

4. It has a database of the … data.  It has a neat function where you can see the statistics for the season or something more specific like the last five matches or home games only.

5. Exporting data is easy.  It is just a matter of copy and paste.  However, whilst other software systems has this function, you don’t need to create an intricate spreadsheet where cells are linked to other cells in a proverbial house of cards situation, i.e. where one change can mess everything up.  Things like season totals and performance indicator calculations are already done for you so you can just copy and paste and then dress the dashboard/ match report up to how you like it.

6  Statistics can be taken live.  Although other analysis software can do it, this has the added function that the action variables and performance indicators are calculated live with every new data entry.  It also does not need to linked to video (although this can be done later).

7.  Customer service is fantastic.  Mike Ressler, the software developer and co-founder of the company, replies within 24 hours (even a few days after Christmas day, which was a week after having a baby!).  They are also able to help with any requests which may require minor changes in the software.  It included having a pause, fast-forward and rewind functions (although this may be in the pipeline already).

What other common functions does it have in line with other computerised analysis systems?  1.  Statistics are linked to video.  Thus, if you or a player wants to see all of a player’s kills then with a click on a button you can.

2.  These clips can be associated with a playlist.  That playlist can be exported out as a video file.

3.  It is customisable. New action variables can be added (e.g. rating an attack on a 5 point scale or a freeball stat) as well as the statistical report mentioned previously.

How can it be improved? 1.  The encoding process to get the video into the software takes too long (several hours).

2.  With the variety of analyses, it is crying out for some graphs.  Even simple bar or line charts would be enough for system.

3.  One analysis that I would like to see is player or team statistics as seen on a match by match basis.  Player and team statistics are only calculated as a total.

4.  The link to video can be cumbersome, especially if it is linked to several video files (or it may be the case I am using my netbook and it may not have enough computing power to deal with it).

5.  It would be nice if there was a playlist editor where titles can be added.

6.  Exporting a playlist out as a video file also takes some time (hours?  Again, it may be the netbook).

7.  No spatial data is available.  This would have been useful for attack or serve direction etc.

8.  I would also like to see matches played and sets played totals.   In addition to seeing how many matches players have competed in, it would be useful for calculating per match and/or per set averages.

What is my favourite bit about StatEasy? My favourite bit about StatEasy is the deep level of analysis and that it can hold a season’s worth of data.  This means I am able to view data in many different ways.  This also means I don’t need to spend many hours building another intricate and elaborate spreadsheet.  Creating the dashboard/ match report is a relatively simple job.

However… This is the first volleyball specific software programme I have used.  Comparisons can’t be made properly until I have used other volleyball specific software programmes.  I haven’t used Data Volley (seems to be the leading volleyball software out there), Mercury (by SportsTec) or Dart Volley (by Dartfish).  There may be a few others out there that I haven’t heard of also.  Cost wasn’t considered for the same reason.