Sandy Sundays: 5 Beach KPIs

What to measure this beach season

In lieu of the full-on Beach Weeks from last year, this spring I’ll be doing one beach post each week.

The NCAA Beach season is underway this weekend. I’ve consulted with the LMU team for the past several seasons. I have less of a pulse on the NCAA Beach scene than normal right now, but with my time here in Korea wrapping up soon, I’m looking forward to diving back into… the sand. Alright, shoddy metaphors aside, let’s take this idea of Getting Started and build some indicators for the beach season that many of you are just getting into.

KPI #1: MTP

I’ve talked about Make Them Play a few times previously.

MTP (“Make Them Play”) is basically the test of, “they served in, did we get the ball back over the net?”

Even for good NCAA teams, simple MTP is surprisingly predictive. Now of course, if you’re just shoveling the ball over the net to maximize your MTP, you’re not going to win much. But nobody is really going to do that.

I almost visualize it like this:

Your attack physicality determines the level you can play at.
Your MTP determines your success within that level.

NCAA teams tend to have difficulty winning if they aren’t consistently above 80 and the teams with the best record often get into the high 80s in MTP.

KPI #2: MTRP

So you can Make Them Play but can you Make Them Really Play?

What we’re doing here is just adding the requirement that you have to get an attack attempt. So an overpass doesn’t count, a shanked pass that leads to a freeball doesn’t count, etc. This also picks up on bad sets that lead to freeballs. Or maybe even more importantly: how good your setting is on those “bad but not terrible” passes where a good set can get you at least the ability to shoot or roll into the court and a bad set means you have to just bump the ball over.

The actual MTRP number is going to be pretty variable here but the gap between MTP and MTRP is what really interests me. Good teams are going to be less than 10%. Many high schoolers will be 20 or even 30% because they struggle to better a bad pass with a hittable set.

I like MTRP because it also helps guide you as a coach. If you coach high schoolers who have less than 3 seasons on the beach, there’s a good chance many of your pairs are below 50% MTRP. And therefore, you’re also playing against teams that will be under 50% MTRP. At this level, learning how to send tough freeballs is arguably more valuable than learning a new way to beat the block.

I’m also a big fan of numbers that are near 50% because they build well for drills. An inexperienced high school pair that can MTRP 6 times out of 10 or 3 times in a row in a drill is doing a nice job.

KPI #3: Knockout %

I like ace:error for younger players better, but I like KO% better for more advanced teams. I often find pairs actually gravitate more toward one metric or the other.

Since there’s a fair amount of game theory and setting up certain serves in beach, some teams do well with a serving strategy of: “Serve almost every ball in and look for a certain ace serve 2-3 times per set.” These teams might have a low KO% but can likely have a good ace:error ratio and therefore often win Terminal Serves. This also can be a good strategy for teams with a clear strong blocker.

On the flip side, KO teams tend to aim to consistently knock the other team out of system. They may miss a few more serves relative to the aces they produce, and they may not always win Terminal Serving¹ but they can set themselves up to win the First Ball game via consistent tough serving. This can be a good strategy for balanced teams with switch blockers or at least a mobile pulling digger. Speaking of which…