Passing Study: A Study in Passing Locations

For this study, I sampled matches from 2019 NCAA Division I Women’s Volleyball tournament. I looked at serve-receive passes executed by all 64 teams from the 2019 NCAA tournament. My sample size was 8,718 serve-receive passes from 64 teams. The criteria I chose to evaluate were the % of good passes and the passer rating based upon where on the body the reception took place. I broke this down by zone as well as specifically if the reception was overhead, low to the floor, on the left side, on the right side, or in the midline of their body. I then provided an aggregate of the data for all zones. From this study I am not interpreting or hypothesizing anything. This is just to provide some data and provoke critical thinking on passing in general, and how athletes pass in various locations relative to their body. I think as coaches, we should be training our athletes to get practice reps from all possible locations around their body and from all different zones on the court.