Volleyball is a quickly developing sport, with a strong community that always tries to adapt it to environments other then typical sport venue. This leads to creation of new game formats, for people to enjoy wherever they may be. While indoor and beach volleyball remain dominant, new ideas like snow or 4v4 start to gain traction.
Here at VolleyStation we wanted to make sure you have a great tool for volleyball analysis, regardless of the game format you prefer. With our latest release we will support not only indoor games, but also beach, snow and 4v4 games. This article will be a summary of all things what will change, and what you have to do in order to work with new types of matches in VolleyStation.
Changes to seasons
In order to better support new match game types, and analysis of their data, we’ve decided to make our seasons one game type only. This means that indoor games will be kept in indoor seasons, while for example snow games, will have to be kept in a separate snow season. This division will allow us to provide you with better support, since we will always know what kind of games we are dealing with. Creating a season with certain game types will also provide you with different sets of default setter calls and attack combinations.
When installing VolleyStation 1.28 all current seasons and matches will be marked as indoor. If you are working with indoor volleyball exclusively, there is no action required on your side.
New match rules
When creating new matches, they will be automatically set to the rules of their corresponding season. Those rule at this point cover:
- Amount of players on court
- Zones in which players stand
- Availability of libero
- Amounts of sets and points required for a win
Player count and their positions are of course the most important, as they will be used extensively in reporting. Be advised that all game formats will use indoor zone system. That’s why in beach you will see two players on starting positions 1 and 5. Snow will have players in zones 1, 5 and 3. This will keep things simple for those of you who will have to jump between different game types often. Spreadsheets will also benefit from this design, as you will be able to reuse much more of indoor functionality for other formats.
New game types
For sake of clarity, let’s go over all the game types supported in VolleyStation 1.28
- Indoor will remain the default game type, and all the rules remain exactly the same compared with previous versions
- Beach is the first new addition, and the most major one. As you would expect, beach matches will have two players, and no libero. While this may not always be reflected on actual court, we do rotate player lineups, so you can use rotations 1 and 5 as filters across the application.
- Snow is the third supported game type, and a novelty in volleyball in general. It’s played between teams of three, with no libero players. Just like in beach volleyball, we decided to keep player rotations between zones 1, 5 and 3.
- 4v4 is the last of the new formats. It can be played on both snow and sand, and provides a bit of familiarity of indoor volleyball, but outside of a typical sports venue. Here in Poland, we’ve seen 4v4 games as a great way to keep indoor players active during summer break.
Give it a try
Changes mentioned in this article will be gradually released to all VolleyStation Pro users. If you can’t wait, you can download VS 1.28 from your user panel. If you want to try VS Pro, then please contact us using the link below.
