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Statting a Beach Volleyball Match For the First Time
Prologue
So there was some talk that I could be the Performance Analyst for the England Beach Volleyball Women’s National Team for the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham 2022. If it works out then it would be amazing. However, I never statted a beach volleyball match so I thought it was time to try for the first time. So I dug up an old SideOut Grand Prix Finals match last summer (see link) and I had a go. Below is what I learnt from that experience.
What I Learnt From Statting That First Match
Determining Attack Combinations
I learnt from the SideOut Beach Volleyball Camps (see Rhodes 2014 and Athens 2017 reflection) that you should set close to the setter (within 2 metres). However, when I was on the FIVB Level 1 Beach Volleyball Coaching course in Cyprus, I learnt that there are variations of the set that include the speed of the set (high/ slow, medium, quick), distance from the setter (close, medium, wide to the antenna) and whether it’s front or back set (see below setting diagram). To include that plus the attack origin zone (6 zones with zone 1 being the far right side to zone 6, the far left side), it was too complex, especially if starting out. In the end I just went with statting everything as a high ball (“V” code) plus the attack origin zone (1 to 6).
Defining the Quality of the Pass
Again, during the SideOut training camps abroad I learnt that the perfect pass (R#) is about 1 metre inside the court and about 1 metre off the net with a good ball trajectory from where ever the ball contact is made from. So the perfect pass from a ball that is served line does not land in the same zone if to a the ball that is served to the middle of the court. I went with that and I had to figure out what is meant by a positive pass (R+) and neutral pass (R!) with practice. Negative pass (R-) and reception errors (R=) I thought was easy to understand.
Players will be assigned #1 and #2 in elite volleyball but it is not so strict in the Volleyball England Beach Tour. So I simply went with the order the names were written in the Facebook stream. However, I soon found that although I knew all the players, it took me a second or two to see player list on who is #1 and who is #2. If you ever statted before, this is an eternity because you miss the next action and you have to catch up (or stop the video and rewind). I then thought it would be better that the blocker is #1 and the defender is #2. It was much easier to code players when I thought of this way.
Determining The Starting Players and Determing Who is the Setter
When I set up the starting line-up (see below), I wasn’t too sure who to put in position 1 and who in position 2. I simply put it as #1 in P1 and #2 in P2. When I saw the court diagram (see below below), I actually thought it with who is on the left and right side. I soon realised it actually was to do with who is serving.
I also had to determine who is the setter. This didn’t make sense to me because both players will have to set. I didn’t determine a setter for the first two sets and I had issues because the teams sometimes didn’t rotate properly so I had the wrong server. When I did determine a setter (the blocker) for the third set, teams rotated properly. When I did the match report, you also need to determine the setter for rotation stats.
DataVolley Does Not Change Sides For You
Teams change sides after a certain number of points (7 points for a 21 point set and 5 points for the final set) so there’s no advantage in playing conditions (the sun in the eyes being a major issue). However, DataVolley does not do this automatically like it does for the fifth set in indoor volleyball. You have to do this manually (the arrow up and down in the picture above). Ideally, things should be done automatically when it can be, e.g. teams will rotate automatically when the opposition team loses serve, and this can be another one.
Occasionally Confusing the Right (Zone 1 +2) and Left (Zone 6 +5) Attack Origin Zones
This is the attack origin zones I used for indoor and I just copied it for beach. However, I did find myself confusing between the right and left sides of the court, e.g. I would stat zone 2 when it should have been zone 5. I think this is because I’m used to back sets to the right side in indoor volleyball whereas players would normally face the right side and front set for their partner in beach.
Passing Quality For a Two Touch Attack
So a perfect pass should be 1 metre inside the court and 1 metre off the net. So when the ball is tight to the net, this would be a negative pass. However, there were times when this happened and the partner spiked the ball hard for a two touch attack. I know this is a common tactic in beach volleyball. So this would ordinarily be a negative or neutral pass but it should be better because the partner was able to spike the ball hard.
Practicing the New Attack Combinations for First Contact (Overpass) Attack and Second Contact (Setter) Attack
I created an updated attack combination codes (see previous one) for first and second contact attacks for the new indoor volleyball season that includes the origin zone (left, middle, right) whereas previously I did not. This fitted well with the beach but it takes some getting used to as they are brand new attack combination codes. Again, it takes a couple of seconds to remember what those codes are and that is an eternity when stattting.
How to Stat a Delibrate Overpass to Score a Point
It’s a fairly common tactic in beach volleyball to pass (from a serve) or dig (from an oppositional attack) the ball straight over the net into the (hopefully) empty court in an effort to score a point. How would you reflect that in the statting? Since I don’t code digs/ defence, I would probably code a first ball contact attack. However, for the overpass, that’s trickier.
The DataVolley Match Report
I found DataVolley uses the same match report for indoor and beach. It was quite disappointing because some indoor things doesn’t relate to the beach. For example, there’s only two players but there’s so much space in the players section. There’s also the points won-lost differential by the two rotations but six rotations are shown.
Final Thoughts
It was an interesting exercise. The thing that slowed me down was actually the new attack combination codes for the first and second ball contact attacks, as they were new. This is where I had to stop and rewind the video to stat correctly. Rating the quality of the pass wasn’t too bad as I first thought. Some looked clear cut and some were tricky. However, since I don’t have a clear definition of each pass quality, the reliability may not be too high on this.
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