How to Fill Out a Volleyball Score Sheet Step by Step

Your turn for scorekeeping duty has come round and suddenly you are sitting next to the referee with a sheet you do not understand. It is not as bad as it looks: it is mostly a fixed sequence you have to walk through once. This is that sequence.

Before the match: the header

Fill in the header before anyone starts warming up, not in between the first few points. It takes: date, town and venue, the competition and division, the match number, and both teams with the home side in the spot the sheet indicates.

Then the players. Copy the jersey numbers and names from the list both coaches hand in, in ascending order. Mark the captain with a letter, and put the libero or liberos in the separate box that exists for them. If a list is missing, ask for it — a scorekeeper who starts inventing names causes exactly the argument the sheet is supposed to prevent.

Finally the toss: the referee tells you who serves and who picks which side. Record it, because the rest of your set hangs off it.

The lineup for each set

Before every set both coaches hand in a lineup slip with six jersey numbers on positions 1 through 6. You copy those into the set box. This is the most important moment of your whole shift, because the serving order follows from it: whoever is in position 1 serves first, and after that it goes by the rotation order.

Before the first serve, check that the six players on court match what is on your sheet. If it does not match, tell the referee immediately. Otherwise you only discover a mis-copied lineup when a positional fault is called four points later, and by then it is hard to repair.

During the set

Now it becomes a rhythm. Four things come past, and nothing more.

• Points. Cross off each point in the column of the team that scored, in ascending order. The last number crossed off is the score — which is why skipping a number is the most common error there is.
• Serves. At every new service turn, note which team and which player is serving, in the space the sheet provides. That keeps the serving order checkable.
• Time-outs. Each team gets two per set, thirty seconds each. Note them with the score at which they were requested.
• Substitutions. Note the number going out, the number coming in, and the score. A team gets six per set, and libero replacements do not count towards those and are not recorded as ordinary substitutions.

If your club works with an electronic sheet, the fields are identical and only the input changes; the difference between the sheet, the scoreboard and a scoring app is in which record counts officially.

The end of a set and of the match

As soon as a set is decided — 25 points with a two-point margin, or 15 in a deciding set — close off the set box: the final score of the set, the set score in the match and the duration of the set. Strike through the unused point numbers so nothing can be added afterwards.

At the end of the match you total the sets, the totals and the playing time. Then comes the part people forget: the signatures. Both captains sign to confirm, the referee signs, and you as scorekeeper sign too. Without signatures the sheet is incomplete.

If anything unusual happened — a protest, a card, a player who got injured and could not continue — it belongs in the remarks box. Short and factual: what, when, at what score.

The five errors that make a score sheet useless

1. Forgetting to cross off a point. From that moment your score is one behind reality. Correct it immediately and report it.
2. Copying the lineup wrong. Check the six numbers on court before the first serve.
3. Not recording substitutions. Without the substitution on paper the serving order no longer adds up and a positional fault cannot be checked.
4. Recording the libero as an ordinary substitution. Libero replacements are unlimited and do not belong among the six regular substitutions; see the libero replacement rules.
5. Not getting it signed. Everyone walks off after the last point. Hold on to the captains for a moment; it takes ten seconds.

If you are going to score more often, learn to recognise the referee's hand signals too — then the gesture alone tells you which team gets the point and why, without having to ask. They are lined up in all the referee hand signals.

Frequently asked questions

Further reading

Electronic Volleyball Scoresheet vs Paper: Which Counts? Scoring in volleyball: the rally point system explained Referee hand signals in volleyball: all the signals explained