Monday, August 16, 2004

Olympic Volleyball

I was a bit disappointed yesterday when I turned on the Olympics and found volleyball being shown. That sentence might strike many of you as a bit odd as volleyball is my favorite sport to play in the world and I play every chance I get (which has been never since I've been here :( ). But here's the explanation. It was some South American country (I want to say Argentina, but that doesn't sound right) against France (France got trounced). What struck me at first was that they were playing to 25, not 21, like "normal" regulation play. Then it hit me - they weren't using regular scoring either - the were using the dreaded "rally scoring."

In regular volleyball, you can only get a point if you served that particular volley. In rally scoring, a point is awarded after each volley, regardless of the team that served. It makes the game go faster, but takes away so much of the tension with side outs, etc.

So, boo to the IOC for using rally scoring in Olympic (indoor) Volleyball. I haven't seen an outdoor match yet, so maybe they're playing "right" there....but I doubt it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

http://volleyball.about.com/library/weekly/aa000820.htm

-G