What does sideout in volleyball mean? The term ‘sideout’ refers to an old volleyball scoring system which hasn’t been used since 1999. In today’s game, it simply means ‘any point that a team wins when their opponent is serving’… but of course, there’s a little more to it than that.
What Does Sideout Mean in Volleyball? [Rally Scoring vs. Sideout]
The old scoring system gives us a better way to make sense of things.
In the old scoring system, you couldn’t actually score a point while the other team was serving.
Points were only ever scored by the serving team. Maybe that means serving an ace. Maybe it’s a monster block. Maybe it’s an incredible defensive play, followed by a high ball that your pin hitter crushes down the line to end the rally.
Whatever the case, you could never score a point by the good old: ‘receive serve, set the middle, bounce ball’ sequence.
Then again… that kind of thing still happened.
What Does Sideout Mean in Volleyball?
Sideout scoring is no longer used, but it does present a valuable lesson:
Be disciplined and learn how to score points in any situation.
What’s more, the old sideout system is less about winning the rally than it is about winning the point.
If your opponent serves and you win the point, that’s considered a sideout. It doesn’t matter if you only won one point or 10. And of course, that means that if you lose the rally, you still earn a point for sideout scoring.
How to score points with the sideout system
Let’s say your team is playing a sideout game. How do you score points?
– You can score a point by serving an ace, block, or kill.
– If the other team is serving, you can make a rally with them and then score a point before they serve again.
– There are also some points scored during rallies in this system which don’t involve serving or receiving. They include making an ace, killing it on the other team’s serve out wide, blocking their serve out wide from behind the net, hitting it over the top of their net to win the point, or hitting it over the top of the net to win it on their serve.
What does ‘sideout scoring system’ mean?
The term ‘sideout scoring system’ means that this type of scoring is used only when teams are playing as sides (i.e., red vs blue).
The history of sideout scoring
The sideout system made sense in the old days. We didn’t have a lot of methods for scoring points, so ‘sideout’ was actually a very creative way to get a point.
It might have been a little bit confusing, but it worked! Up until 1999, that is. In 1999, the rules were changed to allow rallies to last more than 3 consecutive passes without either team scoring. This change let teams break serve and score points when their opponent was serving.
FAQs about sideout scoring.
Does it still happen now?
No, sideout scoring is no longer used in today’s game. It was replaced by rally scoring in 1999.
Rally scoring vs sideout
In rally scoring, the team with the ball always scores.
Sideout scoring doesn’t have any such restrictions.
You are allowed to score a point while your opponent is serving, and that includes a point scored by your own team!
This means that you can get points on a serve-receive sequence, or even when your opponent serves an ace and you spike it back.
It also means that you can win a point without first getting a point on serve. While rally scoring only gives one point for each serve, sideout scoring allows two points for each serve-receive sequence. That’s how it was in 1999 and why most people talk about ‘sideout’ as if it’s synonymous with ‘Rally Scoring’.
Types of scoring in volleyball
The old scoring system was a bit different from the way we know it today.
In the old system, the serving team could only score ‘points’ by actually winning a rally.
And then there were two types of points: rally and set point.
A rally score would happen when your serve was good enough to win the game outright. A set point would be scored at any time in between rallies, when you had more than three points on your opponent’s side of the net after their serve. The most common way to score a set point was to kill their serve or block their spike—though you could also try for an ace if you’re feeling lucky.
The old scoring system, with all its quirks, is still worth knowing about!
rally versus sideout scoring
What is rally scoring? In rally scoring, like in the regular old game, both teams have a chance to score when their opponents are serving. When the rally ends with your team winning, you get that point.
What is sideout scoring? This is a point awarded by your opponent because they’ve reached the limit of how many points they can earn from rallies. The team that wins the point is awarded it because they won an end-of-the-match against their opponent.
The team that’s giving up the point can either be: (1) A team who’s been throwing everything at their opponent and just can’t seem to break through; or (2) A team who had a lead going into the last few points of the match but just couldn’t hold on.
Why did we switch from sideout to rally scoring?
One of the main reasons we switched from sideout to rally scoring was because sideout actually makes the game a lot more complicated, and doesn’t give teams much incentive to win rallies.
When you count points in rally scoring, there are four possible ways for your team to come out on top:
1. You win the point by taking it before an opponent has served.
2. You win the point after an opponent has served.
3. Your opponent wins the point by serving an ace or block (or any other serve) that results in a victory for them. 4. Your opponent wins the point by serving a ball into your territory which one of your players hits over the net before it bounces back on their court.
Serving in rally scoring
So, in rally scoring, you have to think of the serve as a key moment of the rally. If you’re serving, your team has no points and the other team does.
If your team is serving and gets a point on the opponent’s serve, that means it was a great play from your team.
If your team is receiving and gets a point on the serve – either by winning the reception or hitting down for an ace – that means it was a poor play from their side. Every time you get a point on an opposing service… it’s like getting two points!
When both teams are serving at once and neither one scores, it’s called ‘the rally.’ The Rally Scoring System dictates that if both teams are rallying or neither one has scored when they’re done serving, then there must be a tie-breaker at hand. What could come next? A ball in play!
Serving in sideout
In the sideout scoring system, you could only score by serving an ace or a block. If you serve an ace, it counts as your team’s first point in the rally. If you serve a block, it counts as your team’s second point in the rally.
If you serve anything else, it does not count as a point for your team in that specific rally. It would be like if your teammate made an incredible defensive play and then lost the next ball to their opponent’s first hit… that doesn’t count as a point for them either!
The other team wins the sideout and gets two points instead of one when their opponent is serving. They need three points in total to win the rally!