How To Leverage Volleyball Stats & Crush The Competition
As a coach, you should always be looking for ways to improve your team and come out on top of every game your team plays. When it comes to your volleyball statistics, you may know all the numbers and you may know how to calculate the statistics, but do you know why you are doing it and how it is helping you? Having a list of numbers that you don’t know how to utilize won’t help your team. It just gives you some cool facts to rattle off. If you are new to volleyball stats, here’s how you use them to create the winning team you need to crush your competition.
Why Do You Need Volleyball Stats?
The short answer to this question is that it tells you what your team needs. It is easy to see when your team is struggling, but it can be a little more difficult to see exactly how to fix the problems you are having. Likewise, if your team is doing well, but they need that extra little push to be great, you may feel like you are guessing at what needs to be done. If you find yourself in either of these positions, volleyball stats may be the answer you need. Numbers paint a clear and accurate picture of what you are seeing on the court. Looking closely at stats can help you determine which players to select for your team, where to place them, and what kind of skills you need to be focusing on right now.
What Volleyball Stats Do You Need?
There is no shortage of the kinds of stats you can compile for your team. You could spend hours and hours compiling stats and putting together information, but if it isn’t something actionable, you probably shouldn’t be focused on that. So what are the most important volleyball stats to be looking at?
- Hitting Percentage: measures the efficacy of the hits. Hitting percentage is calculated by kills minus errors, divided by the total attempts. You should aim for different percentages depending on where the hit is coming from, but anything above .200 is good, while .300 is great. A negative hitting percentage means your player is scoring for the other team.
- Serving Percentage: measures the ability to serve ball in play. Serving percentage is calculated by serves minus errors, divided by the total attempts. You should aim for a serving percentage of .90 or higher.
- Pass Quality Rating: measures how well a player passes. Pass quality is calculated on a scale from 0-3, with 0 being a service reception error and 3 being a perfect pass.
- Serve Quality Rating: measures the quality of a serve. Serve quality is calculated on a scale from 0-4, with 0 being a service error and 4 being a service ace.
Put together, these stats give an accurate view of how your team is performing and where you need to improve. While they may not be the stats your players want to brag about in their highlight reels, your focus as their coach is on finding and improving on your team’s weaknesses.
There are plenty of other stats that you can track, including kills, blocks, assists, digs, and sets played. These help round out the picture to see how your team and each individual player are performing. Just remember to look at your stats within the context of the numbers. If two players have similar stats, but played a different number of sets, you need to take that into account when evaluating their performance.
What Do You Do With Volleyball Stats?
Now that you have your volleyball stats, what should you do with them? Like we mentioned earlier, just having the numbers without taking any action isn’t very effective. Effectively using your stats allows you to create and train a killer team. If you are looking to recruit new players, start by taking a look at their stats. If they don’t have a good performance history, having them tryout may not even be something you want. If they have great stats, you may want to roll out the red carpet a little and see what you can do to make your team more attractive to them.
If you already have a great team put together, stats can help you and your players see what they need to improve on. Take the time to compile team stats for the stats listed above. Once you have those numbers, sit down with your team and set goals for the areas that need improvement. Setting clear goals with your team and structuring your practices to achieve those goals in your games is a great strategy for a winning record.
Similar to recruiting players, individual performance stats show the strengths of each player and where they need some extra help. When it comes to figuring out your strategies and plays, you need to know how each team member performs so you can make sure they are in the best position to get everything right.
How Do You Get Volleyball Stats?
So how do you get these volleyball stats that can help you put together and train your winning team? Most people will tell you to grab a pen and scorecard and to mark it during each game. Some teams have the coach do it, some have assistant coaches or parents, and some even have players on the bench keep track of stats. While this is a good thing, and can give you a good in-game way of tracking how things are going, when it comes to formulating a long term strategy and stats analysis, it isn’t enough. People make errors, and they may miss things or record them incorrectly. So what should you do about that?
The answer is QwikCut’s volleyball game film storage and statistical analysis software. Not only will QwikCut allow you to store and share your game film, it will also analyze it for you and provide an in-depth statistical analysis of your team’s performance. They have everything you need to see your team’s strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to formulate the winning team and strategy you need.
