Separating winning and losing teams in sitting volleyball: the role of skills and differences across gender

ABSTRACT Sitting volleyball (SV) is a dynamic with short actions sport in the paralympic programme. The purpose of the study was to identify the volleyball skills that best discriminate between winning and losing an SV set, for both the genders. The data were collected from all sets played (N = 224) on the 2019 European men and women SV Championship. Cluster analysis established three types of sets according to the final score difference: 2–4 points (balanced), 5–11 points (semi-balanced) and over 11 points (unbalanced). Three-way MANOVAs were conducted to analyse gender, type of set and type of result differences for selected performance indicators. The analyses revealed significant multivariate differences across gender (p < .001), types of set (p = .014) and result (p < .001) and significant interaction effect of result with gender (p = .025) and type of set (p < .001). A follow-up discriminant analysis showed that setting and attacking were the most important skills for all sets. The results showed that in SV the attack is the most important factor, which determines winners and losers, even in balanced sets. In SV, the importance of skills across gender was similar to volleyball, while there were differences in the structure of the game compared to the sequential order of skills in volleyball.