Fair Volleyball Grades by Position: How the Bank Account Works

Every coach has had this conversation. A parent looks at the stat sheet, sees their child near the bottom of the kills column, and asks what is wrong. Nothing is wrong. Their child is the libero, and the libero's job is not to hit.

Raw totals reward the players who swing the most. That is fine for a box score and unfair as a grade. SpikeLedger's answer is the Bank Account.

Deposits and withdrawals

Every action a scorer records is either a deposit or a withdrawal.

• Deposits for everyone: kills, aces, blocks, assists and digs.
• Withdrawals for everyone: serve errors, setting errors, dig errors and other errors.

A player's balance is deposits minus withdrawals. Their rating comes from the share of their actions that were deposits, and it uses plain words: Strong contribution: Solid: Building or Focus area. A player with nothing recorded yet is shown as "Not enough data yet" and is not graded.

What changes by position

The same tap courtside is scored by different rules depending on who made the play.

• Libero and defensive specialist. Passing is the job, so a good pass (a 2) and a perfect pass (a 3) are both deposits, and a pass graded 0 is a withdrawal. Attack errors and net errors never count against a libero.
• Outside, right side and opposite. Passing is part of the job, and a good pass is simply expected. Only a perfect pass (a 3) is a deposit, and a pass graded 0 is a withdrawal. Attack errors and net errors are withdrawals.
• Middle and setter. They are not graded on serve receive at all. Attack errors and net errors are withdrawals.

So a libero who passes a 2.3 average all tournament shows up with a strong balance, and a hitter cannot hide a pile of attack errors behind a kill total.

Why a rating in words

The rating is a description of where a player is, not a verdict on what they are worth. A twelve year old will read their own report card eventually. "Focus area" tells them where to put their work. It is the same maths with a kinder label.

Teams that do not play positions yet

At 12U, and often at 13U and 14U, everyone rotates through every spot. Grading those players as specialists would be wrong, so a team can be set to play without positions. Every player is then graded on the same all-around rules: kills, aces, blocks, assists, digs and good passes are deposits, and every error is a withdrawal. You can switch a team to positions later, and the app tells you how many matches and players the change affects before you confirm.

A player who plays two positions

A player who is an outside in one match and a libero in the next is graded by the outside rules for the first and the libero rules for the second. The season balance adds the two together. Nobody is graded as a hitter for a match they spent passing.

What it is not

The Bank Account is not a ranking of who is the best athlete, and it does not see everything. It sees what was recorded. It will not notice the middle whose approach pulled the block and freed the outside. It is a fair starting point for a conversation, built from the same numbers for every player.

You can read the exact rules, position by position, on the features page, and see how a rating turns into something a family can read in end-of-season report cards.