Volleyball Stats: An Early Apology

For those who are following Pacific volleyball as they make their trip to Southern California, I offer a apology in advance. The stats from the four matches will be slow in coming.

This is a part of the the collegiate volleyball world that I do not understand, nor do I neccesarily agree with. At the small college levels (Division II, Division III and NAIA), teams are often left keep their own stats at tournaments. This means two or three reserve players, armed with clipboards, are tracking those all important kills, blocks, sets and errors.

Such will be the case for Pacific as they compete at the Cal-Lu-Fornia Invitational this weekend. With the exception of their match against tournament host Cal Lutheran, team members will have to track their teammate's stats. After each day of action, Head Coach Lena Chan will fax Pacific's stats to me back to the Pacific Sports Information Office in Forest Grove, where I will input those stats into our statistical software.

As far as the other team goes, I will have to wait for our opponents to send their stats to me or to post them to their respective school's site. And I could be waiting a long time. Two of those other three schools that Pacific plays have yet to post any of their stats to their school's web site. One of schools even hosted their own tournament over Labor Day weekend. As another Northwest Conference SID told me, I shouldn't hold my breath when I ask for them either.

Over the past few years, I have taken the opportunity to travel with the volleyball team to their off-site tournaments in order to ensure that complete stats are kept. They have been fun trips that allowed me to get the know the team better and experience other parts of the country, such as Colorado Springs and St. Louis.

This year, however, I couldn't make the trip. There is much going on for me back at home, including a pair of Portland Timbers matches (I am the team's official scorer), a home women's soccer match on Saturday night and the start of rebuilding a fence at home. It's a bummer. I enjoy the chance to get to know the teams and my in-laws live two hours away from the tournament site in Thousand Oaks, Calif. And I am missing out of being able to cheer against the Dodgers with the SID from George Fox, Blair Cash.

So, as I said, accept my early apologies. Know its not my fault. I will be working hard to get them up as soon as I can.

With that said, why hold a tournament and not keep any stats? There are a couple of reasons why this is the status quo.

• The Cal-Lu-Fornia Invitational is a 14-team tournament, with four matches going on during each session. There are not enough sports information directors around that their SID, Scott Chisholm, could draw on to help (and likely without the expectation of payment).

• Not keeping stats is the norm in Division III, not only for tournaments but for regular matches. Except for the Northwest Conference and the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, teams keep their own stats for all regular season matches. The team's SIDs then compile stats after the fact and post to the Web and report to the NCAA.

• I have heard some SIDs from other parts of the country say that keeping in-game stats for volleyball is too hard because you are recording something into the computer for nearly every touch. I don't agree. Yes, it can be hard to grasp at first. But I have managed to train student Work Study employees nearly every year to do it. It can be done.

Stats is one of the selling points that Pacific uses to bring teams out to our annual Boxer Kickoff Volleyball Invitational. We do in-game stats for every match of the tournament, which means that teams can participate purely in playing the game on the court. For the teams that come from east of the Rockies, it is likely the only time this season where they can do that. The Boxer Kickoff is one of the few tournaments in the nation outside of the Division I level to provide stats for all teams.

It's a little thing in the grand scheme of things, but the little things are often the biggest selling points. And as parents and fans of Pacific volleyball, seeing those stats aren't a small thing, are they?