Playing characteristics of men’s Olympic Volleyball teams in complex II

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to present the playing characteristics of the teams in complex II and to attempt to determine which of these characteristics led to victory and to the final ranking of the teams. The subjects were 38 Olympic Volleyball men’s games. In every game, teams were characterized according to the result of the game (win or lose). The games were video-recorded and analyzed with the “Data Volleyball” program. It recorded every skill of the complex II of the game, for each player of each team. There was a 5 level scale protocol according to the effectiveness of the skill (Eom & Schutz, 1992; Eom, 1989). Discriminant analysis was conducted to select which subset of the measured variables significantly contributed to the prediction of winning or losing in Olympic Volleyball teams. Among the five variables of service: “reception to other court” and “ace” were entered into the final model yielding high loadings, .80 and .79 respectively. Predicting game outcome from the five “counter attacked” variables, resulted in one significant function and “ace” was selected to enter into the final model. None of the three “dig” or the four “block” categories were significantly discriminating game outcome. These results conclude that “ace” in service and in counterattack remain powerful aggressive tools for high level teams and were predictors to win.