Winning Points And Losing Points

Scoring points in volleyball is a good thing. We try to do it a lot. We get mad when the other team scores points and happy when our team scores points. The whole point of this Substack is to provide different ways of asking and answering the question, “how can we win more points and lose fewer points?” So it would be nice to have a clear understanding of how points are won and lost at various levels before we get too far into the weeds.

How We Win Points

There’s four ways we can win a point:

1. Kill

2. Ace

3. Block

4. Opponent Error

I like to expand, “Kill,” into three categories (1) First Ball Kill, (2) Transition Kill, (3) Net Play, so that four ways becomes six:

1. First Ball Kill

2. Transition Kill

3. Net Play

4. Ace

5. Block

6. Opponent Error

In theory, we could expand Opponent Error into a few categories, but that doesn’t necessarily provide more information to us.

How We Lose Points

Just as there’s six ways we can win a point, there’s six ways we can lose a point:

1. Serving Error

2. Passing Error

3. Setting/General Error

4. Attacking Error

5. Blocking Error

6. Digging Error

Won Points Equal Lost Points

It’s valuable to have a symmetry between these two categories. For example, here’s a typical high school level match Won Points and Lost Points summary:

The Won Points for Us equals the Lost Points for Them and vice versa. The other categories match up as well: our Transition Kills plus First Ball Kills plus Net Play equals their Digging Errors plus Blocking errors and vice versa. Their Opponent Errors plus Blocks equals our Serving Errors plus Hitting Errors plus Setting/General Errors and vice versa. Their aces equal our passing errors and vice versa.

I like the concept of, “Forced vs Unforced Errors.” It’s important for our players, especially our young players to know that, “good hitters get blocked.” But I still credit us with a Lost Point under Hitting Error when we get blocked.

I assign a Lost Point every time the other team makes a kill. Not all coaches like doing this. For some coaches, sometimes the other team just takes a good swing and it’s hard to give our defense a Digging Error. Or the other hitter takes a good high/hard swing off the pinky of our blocker and coaches don’t want to give that player a Blocking Error. I think that is because we, as coaches, almost assign a moral burden to the concept of an error. An error is something that could have been prevented. But in this framework, we’re not interested in assigning blame. We’re interested in figuring out how to help our players become a more effective team.

It’s also worth knowing that, “good,” is a relative term to our level. A good swing at U-14s is going to get dug almost every time at the NCAA level. We’ll talk more about how to analyze block and defense, but for now, let’s stick with the symmetry of, “every time the opponent has a Won Point it corresponds to a Lost Point by us and vice versa.”

Who Scores Our Points?

It’s worth noting that, in this high school match, Opponent Error was the top source of points for both teams! There’s a slight deception here, because Kills are separated into First Ball and Transition. But even if First Ball and Transition are added together, both teams had barely more Kills than Opponent Errors and those errors were over 1/3 of the points scored by each team. This is pretty typical for high school volleyball!

Another way to say it is, “at certain levels of volleyball, the other team is going to score more points for us than we will for ourselves.”

Crypto people love the idea of Flippenings, where a critical metric rolls over from, “slightly less than,” to, “slightly more than.” 51% may not be quantitatively much different than 49%, but psychologically it can be a world apart.

Volleyball Flippenings

Coaching high school volleyball, or juniors volleyball in the 14-16 age range, is fun and challenging for a whole lot of reasons. Two of them are that, if your team develops properly, you see two major Flippenings happen on the volleyball court.

The first Flippening happens when we start earning more points than the other team gives us. Middle school or U-12 to U-14 volleyball is generally played below this Flippening. It’s common for U-13 teams to make 13 unforced errors in a game. High school, or U-16 and above volleyball is generally played above this Flippening. High school teams make plenty of errors, but generally under 10.

The second Flippening happens when both teams sideout above 50%. Middle school volleyball tends to be played below this Flippening, and high school volleyball, in general, is played right at it.

Successful high school teams will almost always sideout above 50%.

It’s important to note that both of these Flippenings are relevant when the two teams are fairly evenly-matched. It’s not just that we sideout above 50%. U-12 teams that win a lot will sideout above 50% and earn more points than they are given in lots of matches, usually because they ace the other team off the court.

Why Does This Matter?

These Flippenings are about the overall level of play. If we get to a level of play where both teams in the match regularly earn more points than they are given, we’ve elevated above that level. This first Flippening occurs for good middle school teams. If you watch the top brackets of U-13 Nationals, you may not see the sideout proficiency that you see for the older teams, but you’ll see the other teams taking pretty good care of the ball and making the other team earn their points.

If we get to a level of play where both teams in the match sideout above 50%, we’ve crossed the second Flippening. This will tend to occur for very strong 14s club teams, and is one signal that good volleyball is being played at the high school level. Good high school varsity (and corresponding club ages) teams should expect to sideout over 50%, and expect that an evenly-matched opponent will do so as well.

This Substack is going to explore volleyball at lots of levels. The purpose is not to provide every answer (as if I had them all!) but to provide different lenses through which to view the game. Looking at Won Points and Lost Points is the first lens the coach of a young team should look through. The level of sideout is an important lens as teams get into the high school ages. The Triangle provides a framework for coaches of all ages, and we’ll start exploring that in-depth in future weeks.