Opponent Scouting at Club Tournaments
VolleyStation experts and college analysts share tips on opponent scouting in club volleyball
(This is something I put together for VolleyStation with the input from some college and pro analysts. It’s written for club volleyball coaches but I think the guiding questions are applicable to most team sports.)
When you’re at a national qualifier (or any other club tournament), you may find yourself needing to scout an opponent you have no prior knowledge of. You might only see one match before you play them. What can you do to prepare yourself and your team to play against them? At VolleyStation, we’re surrounded by expert scouts so we asked them what they would do. We organized their ideas into easily actionable steps for you to follow when you’re scouting at your next tournament.
Four Questions to Guide Your Scouting
It’s easy to just watch an opponent play and jot down random notes about what you see but it can be difficult to turn those notes into something coherent. Here are four questions that will help you stay focused on what matters.
What can they do?
What do they want to do?
How can we absorb their pressure?
How can we exert pressure on them?
What can they do?
This question seems like an invitation to write down anything and everything the team you’re scouting tries, but it’s actually asking you to discriminate between what they try and what they can actually do. Here are things analysts recommend focusing on.
What are their common attack patterns? (Some analysts we talked to said they weren’t concerned about specific rotations, but others were. We say try both and see what works best for you.)
Who are their strongest and weakest passers?
Do they have particularly powerful servers or servers who often serve short?
What do they want to do?
This question helps you narrow down everything a team might do into the essence of that team. Every team has certain things they want to maximize to give themselves good opportunities to score. Good scouting helps you focus on what your opponent emphasizes.
Who is their top attacker?
Who are their secondary attackers?
Who are the most common attackers in certain situations (like first ball, transition, or rotation 3)?
Which rotations do you see them start in?
How can you absorb their pressure?
As you’re watching a team’s offense, it’s important to think about how you will defend against them. You don’t have to change your systems dramatically, but you do want to pay attention to how their offense is going to put pressure on your defense.
What are some general attack directions/tendencies? (Analysts we talked to emphasized keeping this very general, don’t get bogged down in details.)
How will your team defend against their most common attacks?
Do they serve particular passers or particular areas of the court?
How will your team handle passing responsibilities against their serving strategies?
How can you exert pressure on them?
By noting some of a team’s strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies, you can map your own team’s strengths on top of those to make some tactical choices.
How do they defend against attacks from each zone?
Who can you set to exploit their defense?
Where can you hit to exploit their defense?
Which rotation can you start in to maximize the pressure you can apply?
How can you apply your serving strengths to exploit their passing?
What do you communicate to your team?
If you answer all the questions above, you’ll have far more than you need to compete against the team you scout. Take a few minutes to consider what you should do with the information you’ve gathered.
What did you see that’s interesting vs. what did you see that makes a difference?
Not everything you see will require changes from your team. If what the other team will do doesn’t change what you want to do, there’s no need to bring it up.
Keep your notes and changes focused on what your team can do.
If an opponent does something you’ve never faced before, let them know it’s coming but don’t spend time trying to devise a new plan that your team has never tried. It’s not all about adjusting to the other team. Stick to your strengths, play your game.
More KIT than KISS
College and pro analysts have much more information than they communicate and they recognize they don’t have to Keep It Simple, they need to Keep It Tight. Your players can understand what’s happening and they don’t need it explained to them. You need to decide which factors will score enough points to matter and which factors won’t score enough to be decisive. It’s not about how much information the players can handle, it’s about prioritizing and editing that information down to what will drive winning.
In the end, remember your scouting is a distillation process from many possibilities down to fewer likelihoods but not all the way down to certainties. Don’t hesitate to change your plan if the match isn’t going the way you scouted. Stay curious and nimble during your match.
Thanks to Andrew Clark and Daniel Jones, among others, who contributed their ideas when I reached out.