Posted by While digging up my old VHS tapes to convert to digital I came across an old scouting tape I made of Dutch master (witty, eh!) setter Peter Blange. At the time I was looking at how setter’s decisions were influenced by their position on the court. I don’t know if Data Video existed at that time, but if it did I didn’t use it. I had a friend (thanks, Clarky, wherever you are) who had an Apple editing suite and did all the edits by hand. It took forever!! If I had my time again, I would have a longer lead in time to each set to watch his movement better.
The matches are semi final and final of the 1997 European Championships played in Eindhoven.
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nostalgic and cool. I’m trying to work out what what the zones are? There’s 11 of them?
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I didn’t have Data Volley to prescribe what the zones should be. I was working with 1.5m squares, probably because that is the width of a strip of Taraflex and it divides nearly into 3, 6 and 9. There were 18 zones, of which Blange only used 11 in those two matches. I forget how I numbered them, I’m confident you can figure it out ;).
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In hindsight could players remember the 11 zones and what they were supposed to do if he set from any of them?
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You’ll like this story, Huy…
I didn’t have a job at the time. I did the exercise just for my own personal amusement. At the time noone in Australia considered anything other than rotational analysis in scouting. For me this exercise was a huge leap forward in my understanding of the game.
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It’s definitely these personal projects that teach you the most… I had very little to do at Asian Junior Championships, so late in the tournament just got data volley practice coding the best teams… i learned a LOT from just analysing and watching what they did. I write all about it in the blog 😉
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If I recall correctly I ended up designing an input form in Access based on the setting zones. I’m sure I still have it somewhere.
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Yes. We used it during World League in 1999. During which I was asked with what seemed like pity in the eyes whether I really thought that rotational analysis wasn’t the most important scouting information.
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