Abstract:

This paper aims to determine and sort the rally and break-time duration (including the rest time) in elite men’s and women’s Sitting Volleyball matches. The sample of study comprises 9195 rallies were retrieved from 68 (34 men and 34 women) Sitting Volleyball matches (corresponding to 224 sets) of the 2019 European Sitting Volleyball championship which monitored and recorded. Inter-rater and intra-rater reliability coefficients were estimated using Cohen’s kappa coefficient. The results of the study showed that the total average attempts in the block of serve, setting, attack, block and defence are higher in men compared to women (p≤.001). Also, the duration of the rally was longer in men, 5.98s, compared to 4.98s of women (p≤.001). The non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test demonstrated that in both genders the highest average rally length was recorded in the 5th set (7.42s for men and 5.4s for women, respectively) and in the 3rd period of that set for men (6.22s) and the 1st period for women (5.06s). For both genders, the highest average break-times were recorded in the 5th set (28.23s for men and 27.73s for women) and, in particular, the 3rd period of that set (23.75s for men and 25.14s for women). According to the study result, one of the reasons contributing to the higher rally length in men’s matches is the higher number of attempts for all Sitting Volleyball skills that men performed comparing to women. The results of this study can be used by players, coaching staff, teams and federations for the organization, design, planning and managing of workouts and matches.