By the Numbers: The Top Defensive High School Volleyball Players

By the Numbers: The Top Defensive High School Volleyball Players

We started off analyzing the Top Offensive Leon County High School Volleyball Players and now it is time to turn our attention to digs, service returns and the defenders.

As previously noted, TR created a Points per Set (Pts/Set) calculation for four different categories. The categories are Offensive, Defensive, Servers, and All Around.

The calculations are based on data loaded in the Maxpreps website – the official scorekeeper for the Florida High School Athletic Association.

The Best Defensive Players

Listed below are the the top ten Leon County defensive volleyball players based on the points per set played (Pts/Set).

The Pts/Set is related to the number of digs, service returns and service return errors as represented in the formula below:

Pts/Set = ((.25* Digs + .25*Service Returns) – Service Return Errors)/Sets Played

The data was collected by TR for the five Leon County schools that were ranked in the top 200 of the Maxpreps state rankings. These schools included Chiles, Florida High (FSUS), Lincoln, Leon and Maclay.

The data was collected for 64 players. The calculations for the top ten defensive players is provided in the table below.

The rankings show that the number one spot is held by L.T. Lozano with Lincoln High School followed by Rivers Bond from Maclay and Ally Doughty from Chiles High school.

The top ten list includes three players from Lincoln (L.T. Lozano, Allison Twaney, Dyani Steward), two from Maclay (Rivers Bond, Olivia Greenberg) , Chiles (Ally Doughty, Kate Stewart) & Florida High (Madison Wenhold, Kenzie Hultquist), and one from Leon (Mackenzie Kittel).

Rivers Bond, Ally Doughty, L.T. Lozano

The “Best” Player

While statistics can easily identify a group of the best volleyball players, identifying the best player relies on factors that are not easily quantified. These factors include the strength of the teams schedule, team record, and the performance of the players in critical matches.

Those best suited to identify the best player are the high school coaches that see hundreds of players in competition during each season. And even the coaches will have different sets of criteria in determining the “Best” player.

2 Responses to "By the Numbers: The Top Defensive High School Volleyball Players"

  1. Thank you for writing and recognizing our local high school volleyball girls. In the future, I would caution against a ranking list for the simple reason that not all schools take and record statistics equally or consistently, especially when recording (or not recording) digging and serve receive errors.

    1. Hi Jeff,

      You are right – the list is only as accurate as the stats reported by the coaches. We had some of the same concerns you have voiced and have reviewed the data for inconsistent reporting. This is one of the reasons we provide a list of players – not just the “best”. In the end, these are the numbers – along with the coaches input – that are used to give out awards. Thanks, Steve S.

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