Stat Geek finds roots in predecessor Sondheimer
Wooden. J.D. Morgan. Ackerman. Pauley. Hedrick. Sproul.
All of these successful Bruins have made their mark on UCLA with buildings named after them.
Michael Sondheimer, UCLA associate athletic director and director of recruiting, had a box score named after him.
“The NCAA already had basketball box scores, and I tried to model the volleyball box scores after basketball,” Sondheimer said.
Sondheimer invented the volleyball box score. Like Isaac Newton devising the foundations for calculus while pondering physics questions, Sondheimer made up volleyball statistics on his own.
It’s hard to make up good and useful statistics. I’ve tried myself, but the choke rating, the realistic magic number, and the two-point field goal percentage never stuck.
“The stats should be for the layman in volleyball,” Sondheimer said. “They not only should say who won, but why they won.”
Volleyball stats sound different than what your average sports fan has been acquainted with.
There are kills, hitting percentage, sets, digs, and blocks.
Kills are basically points scored, like spikes the other team can’t return.
Sets and blocks are what they sound like.
There is some controversy surrounding the dig.
Digs are theoretically defensive hits that prevent the other team from scoring. However, when the NCAA made its own box score in 1981, two years after Sondheimer made his, it said a dig must be recorded every time a hit is made to keep the ball in play after a return. However, not all of these digs are truly point-saving hits.
Because of this, dig inflation occurs.
“Digs should be a saving play,” Sondheimer said. “High numbers of digs don’t mean as much anymore.”
But Sondheimer’s creativity and ingenuity come into play with another stat – hitting percentage.
It’s like batting average: in baseball, the batting average is calculated by dividing the number of hits by the number of at bats; in volleyball, the hitting percentage is kills minus errors divided by total attempts.
Why the subtraction of errors? Strikeouts don’t count against a batter’s hits in baseball, and you can theoretically have a hitting percentage of -1.000. Well, errors are the opposite of kills, your team loses a point when you commit one. Also, a hitting percentage is comparable to a batting average. Hitting .300 is good, hitting .400 is great.
In case you’re still reading, you might wonder, why did Sondheimer do all of this?
“The media needs numbers,” he said.
So true.
“Media would be there that hadn’t had any volleyball experience, and they’d write stuff like a guy had 12 spikes, not kills. A box score helps them cover the game.”
It’s true. For every sport nowadays, reporters are bombarded with box scores and stat sheets of a game, sometimes even while the game is going on. If a beat writer is ever not informed about what’s going on the field, it’s because of a lack of effort, not because a lack of understanding of the sport.
Imagine reading a game recap without any mention that Tyler Ebell ran for 100 yards, or that Jason Kapono shot 4-for-33, or that Troy Glaus went 3-4 with two home runs and a double.
That’s what it was like to read a recap of a volleyball game before Sondheimer came along.
Sondheimer has also been actively involved with the media himself.
Since writing for the Daily Bruin in 1974, Sondheimer has done statistics and research about volleyball for NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox and ESPN.
He has also done statistics and research for both indoor and beach volleyball during the 1996 and 2000 Olympics.
To add to his resume, Sondheimer has been working NCAA men’s and women’s volleyball championships since 1974.
But wait – there’s more.
He’s also the radio voice of the Bruins for many of the Olympic sports, and not only is he announcer, he engineers the broadcast, negotiates contracts, and even sells radio time.
All while keeping stats.
Sondheimer, the original Stat Geek, has also created statistics for rodeo. E-mail the Daily Bruin’s current Stat Geek at gquinonez@media.ucla.edu
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