Fall 2024 Mailbag - Part 2

Sideout standards, coaching in Europe, and preventing aces.

In case you missed it, Part 1 is here.

Let’s get right to Part 2.

A high school coach asks and I respond:

---

A college coach looking to update some of their statistical standards asks two questions:

Do you happen to have stats for the NCAA Women’s game for side out % based on the quality of the pass? For example, on a perfect pass, teams side out 60% of the time or on a good pass they side out 25% of the time.

And I wondered what your thoughts are on using a different passer rating scale like what is discussed in this blog.

There's going to be some slight variation conference-to-conference, but the ballpark numbers I use are:

67% - Perfect Pass (3 or 4-point)
60% - Medium Pass (2-point pass)
53% - Bad Pass
30% - Shank/Overpass

This coach was not in the Big 10, so there’s a good chance that, as you go a bit lower in the level of women’s volleyball, conference sideout numbers are going to drop a bit. However, I think that 67/60/50 is a reasonable good guess, and those numbers are relatively round (67 is 2/3... 60 is 3/5 or 6/10.... 50 is 1/2 or 5/10) so they fit well into drills.

As for your question about passer rating, I do like that! I've written about it before, actually.

What I like about this is you can compare your "Expected Sideout" to your actual sideout. For example, say you pass 10 balls:

5 Perfect
3 Medium
1 Bad
1 Error

Your Expected Sideout is:

[ 67*5 + 60*3 + 50*1 ] / 10 = 56.5%

And if you actually sided out 4 times out of 10, you would say, "okay, our offense is sort of underperforming our passing, we passed well enough to create 5 or 6 sideouts and we only got 4." On the flip side, if you sided out 8 times out of 10, you would say, "wow our offense is way overperforming, we only passed well enough to expect 5 or 6 sideouts and we got 8."

You need a DataVolley person or at least a solid stats assistant to translate that data because it's a little more complex, but I do like it for an NCAA team that has the resources.

---

A reader asks:

I am embarrassed to ask this question... Because I feel like I should know it, but even on Gms I have not found a specific answer. 

I understand the step tempos of the different hits,  but I struggle with a cue to educate the hitters about when they should start their approach on sets that require they "go" before the set. I have been using "when the pass goes over your shoulder", but that is still dependent on the pass height etc. 

Or is it all just feel and experience, and therefore impossible to actually teach.

Mostly the last sentence. I would say it more like:

It can’t be taught, only learned.

Other things that fall into this category are setting touch, how to hit a floater just right, etc. You can't give an exact timing, because, as the question notes, there's variations in pass height, and even variations in the speed of approach of different hitters. You can tell the hitters where they need to be when the ball is in the setter’s hand (1st step for a high ball, 2nd step for a tempo pin set, 4th step for a fast quick, etc), but they need to learn how long it takes for them to get on that step.

I think generally, for middles, following the ball to the peak of the pass and then going is not a bad starting point. For some, they might end up too late or too early like that, but they might get in the right ballpark. The coach asking is a high school coach, so she’s likely in a scenario where she’s teaching some middles who have never hit a quick before. In that case, I think, “peak of the base,” is a decent starting point to adjust from.

---

A soon-to-be-college-grad asks:

I was wondering what your advice would be to a young soon to be college grad who has a dream of coaching professional volleyball in Europe. How do you get started ? What are the best ways to get contacts ? What are ways to supplement yourself because I’m assuming when you first start out youre not getting paid much if at all. And anything else I should know? Is it feasible or just a dream

Some thoughts on this: