Analysis of Critical Determinant Factors for Beach Volleyball Winning in Elite Men and Women Teams

Abstract

Purpose: was to explore critical determinant factors for beach volleyball winning in elite men's and women's teams. Methods: Python web crawler were implemented to collect attack & defense records of the world beach volleyball world championships for elite men & women beach volleyball games during 2015~2022, including 839 sets from 366 men's matches as well as 840 sets from 367 women's matches. By using classification and regression tree referring to decision tree, binary logistic regression, characteristics of the scoring effectiveness and model of critical determinant winning skills were built accordingly. Findings: (1) attack points, opponent errors and breakpoints were ranked the top 3 determinant skills for winning; (2) breakpoints, attack errors and opponent errors were identified as top 3 crucial factors affecting winning of the games; and (3) results of the decision tree showed that the most critical game winning skills was breakpoints which cover connecting actions of service and block as well as back defense, set and counter attack followed which were collectively called “counter attack”. It is implied that the higher successful rate of counter attacks was secured, the more likely the winning rate to be improved.