How to Read a Pool Sheet

When I am a tournament director, the question I hear the most is ‘how do I read this?’ It amazes me how many coaches, players, and parents haven’t been taught how to read a schedule or the results sheet for a tournament. So now, prepare for a rather long post.

First, this is the basic empty pool sheet for a four team pool, this is what you will see more often than not. It is read from left to right. 

In the first column we see the team names listed from first to fourth in their pool. 

These numbers matter when you see the schedule for the day. An example schedule could be:

 

This is just an example schedule, yours could vary a bit but I just made some numbers up. The first thing that I want to note is that the time for these matches to be played is approximate. It means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. Some tournaments won’t start a match until that time but most places want to play the next match as soon as possible. Volleyball tournaments are notorious for going behind schedule so that match scheduled to start at noon might not actually start until 1:20. The other thing with the time is it should be in military time but that isn’t important right now.

Now, remember those numbers we assigned the teams? This is where those come into play. If we read the schedule properly then at 8 AM, OPVBC will play Valley View and Northshore Jrs Will officiate the match. This means that Cascade has a bye so they don’t have to do anything until the next match.

Now that match is over and the head coach from Northshore Jrs brought the score sheet to the tournament director's desk (Thank you Amy) and the tournament director records the scores while parents hover behind her. Let’s say we are playing best 2/3 in pool play just to complicate things. OPVBC won the match 25-17 25-13.

So when we read the pool sheet we go to the particular teams row and we find there score is written first and the score for the team they played (name at top of column) is second. We then go to the right side of the sheet and we see that OPVBC won the match in two games based on the tally marks.

Let’s play the 9 AM match now. This one is Cascade versus Northshore Jrs with Valley View officiating. Let’s say Northshore wins in three sets, 22-25, 27-25, 15-12. Remember that a deciding set is only to fifteen points. The tournament director writes up the scores, remembering to write the scores row first then column and then she records wins and losses. We notice that Northshore won the match but they have a loss in the sets bracket.

Now, let’s say all but the final match has been played. The tournament director finishes filling out the scores for the match Northshore Jrs versus Valley View match and they fill out the place that Valley View takes in pool play, fourth. They took fourth because they have the worst match ratio out of all teams 0-3, there is no way that someone can have a worse record then Valley View. We’ll get to what this means for tournament play later.

Now we see that Coach Amy of Northshore Jrs is biting her nails because her rank depends on how this last match plays out. So Cascade is playing OPVBC and Northshore Jrs is officiating. This match goes to three sets and Cascade wins. Now for set records, we have three teams with a 2-1 record. Here is where it gets tricky, this three way tie can go several different ways. If it was a two way tie, say between OPVBC and Cascade then it would go head to head and Cascade beat OPVBC so Cascade would take first and OPVBC would take second, but that isn’t how it goes.

 

Now tournament directors have to make a decision. They can either go by set record or by point differential. If we go by set record OPVBC won 5/7 sets (71%), Cascade won 5/8 sets (63%) and Northshore won 4/8 sets (50%). That would mean OPVBC takes first, Cascade takes second and Northshore takes third. Now Amy is going to sigh and shuffle to the auxiliary gym yet again because she can’t have nice things.

HOWEVER, there is another way that they could decide the tie breaker and that is by point differentials. Essential you divide the number of points your team scored by the total points scored in all the games you played. This is when every point counts. I’ll save you the work and do the point differentials myself.

This won has smaller numbers so I blew it up for you. Let’s look at the right hand side and notice that Northshore had a fun last match against Valley View. This means that OPVBC still takes first with a differential of 56% but now Northshore takes second with a differential of 55% and Cascade takes third with 53%.

Normally we don’t get into point differentials unless two of the teams in a three way tie have matching set ratios however I wanted to explain it. So, essentially, Northshore is at the mercy of the tournament director.

I hope that explains a few things for you. Please feel free to ask more questions in regards to reading pool sheets because they are difficult to read unless you’ve been doing it for years. And speak up if you notice an error on the sheet. Tournament directors are normally focused on a few dozen things so they’ll sometimes write one of the scores backwards.