The rules every number below is built on, as a coach stats a match by hand (the AVP’s, and the NCAA statisticians’ manual where they meet). A rally with no known winner counts toward nothing.
- Rally winner
- Whoever serves the next rally won this one.
- The film’s last rally, and a rally just before a set end the reviewer marked, have no next serve to say: their own last contact does (an error lost it for its side, an attack or a block won it). A rally the film stopped in counts toward nothing.
- Attack attempt
- Any ball a player sends over contacting it above the top of the net.
- Includes: Every hard drive, cut, poke, shot (empty net shot), shot vs block, roll shot, any scramble swing, and every attacking error (indoors: spike, tip, roll, tool, setter dump). Even an easy roll shot is an attack attempt if it was contacted above the net.
- Excludes: Free balls, serves, passes, sets, digs and blocks.
- Free ball
- A ball sent over from below the top of the net.
- Its own action, not an attack attempt: it counts toward no attempt, kill or attack error. Whether a ball was a free ball or an attack is the tagger’s call by this rule: our film does not measure contact height.
- Kill
- An attack that wins the point: the other side does not touch it, or touches it once and cannot keep it in play.
- Includes: A ball off the block (a hand on the block straight after the attack is not the one touch) and an attack the defense shanks.
- Excludes: A block that wins the point (a point, not a kill), and an attack the other side kept in play, even if they then lost the rally.
- Attack error
- An attack attempt that goes out or into the net, or is blocked for a point.
- Serve-receive attack
- The receiving team’s first attack attempt while it still has the serve’s ball: on one, two or three, before the ball has gone back over.
- If the first ball goes back as a free ball, that rally has no serve-receive attack. Every attack attempt is either a serve-receive attack or a transition attack, so the two add up to all of them, and so do their kills and errors.
- Transition attack
- Every attack attempt that is not a serve-receive attack.
- Includes: The serving team’s attacks, and the receiving team’s after it has dug, covered or scrambled.
- Dig
- The first contact on a ball the other side attacked.
- Includes: A dig after your partner’s block touch.
- Excludes: Passing a free ball, an overpass or the serve, and bringing up your own attack after the other side’s block put it back (a cover).
- Block
- A contact at the net on the other side’s attack, whatever came of it. A block jump the ball went past is no block at all.
- Where the ball went after the block decides what it was, however it was tagged: a block kill, a block error, or a touch the rally went on from.
- Block kill
- A block that won the point: the ball landed in on the other side.
- Includes: A block the attacking side touched once and could not keep up.
- Block error
- A block that was the last touch and lost the point: the ball landed anywhere but in on the other side, out of bounds or down on the blocker’s side. A net fault too.
- Excludes: A block touch your partner keeps alive, or the other side plays on: that is a block touch, not an error.
- Ace
- A serve that wins the point with the receiving side touching it at most once.
- Rounding
- Percentages are whole numbers, efficiencies three decimals and per-set numbers one decimal, each rounded to the nearest, a half away from zero: 2 of 3 is 67%, 16 kills and 4 errors on 33 attempts is .364, and an efficiency of −.0625 is −.063.
- Set the stats to Truncated and the digits past the last are dropped instead, as some coaches keep their sheets by hand: 66% and .363.