Hitting percentage calculator

Hitting percentage — also called attack efficiency — sums up an attacker in one number: kills minus errors, divided by total attempts. Put your numbers in and it is worked out as you type.

Kills Errors Total attempts

.229

Solid — clearly more points won than given away.

The formula

Hitting % = (Kills − Errors) ÷ Total attempts

• Kill — an attack the other side can't keep in play: it lands, or comes off their block or a defender and can't be played.
• Error — an attack that loses the point on its own: hit out, into the net, blocked straight back for a point, or an attacking fault such as a back-row attack violation.
• Attempt — every attack, whatever happened to it: kills, errors, and all the ones the other side dug.

It is written as a three-digit decimal — .250, said "two-fifty" — rather than a percentage, and it runs from −1.000 (every swing an error) to 1.000 (every swing a kill).

A worked example

12 kills and 4 errors from 35 attempts: (12 − 4) ÷ 35 = 8 ÷ 35 = .229. Swap two of those kills for errors and it drops to .114 — which is why coaches care about errors as much as kills.

What counts, and what doesn't

• Blocked for a point is an error for the attacker. Blocked but kept in play is just an attempt.
• A tip is an attempt. It is an attack, just a soft one, and it can be a kill or an error like any other. So is a setter's dump on the second touch.
• A free ball isn't. A ball passed or set over because the team couldn't attack it was never an attack, so it stays out of the count.

What is a good hitting percentage?

It depends on the level, the position and — most of all — the pass the hitter was given, so treat this as a rough guide and compare players against others at the same position:

Hitting %	What it usually means
below .000	More errors than kills: on average each swing is costing points.
.000 – .150	Developing, or up against a big block: lots of swings kept in play.
.150 – .250	Solid, especially for an outside hitter taking the difficult sets.
.250 – .350	Very good at most levels.
above .350	Excellent — most often a middle hitting quick sets off good passes.

Middles usually hit higher than outsides because they attack fewer, faster balls, almost all of them off good passes. The outside is who gets the high ball when the pass goes wrong, and those are the hardest to put away.

Split it by pass and by phase

One number hides where it came from. An attack straight off a good serve-receive pass (first ball) should kill far more often than a scramble in transition. If a hitter is .350 on first ball and −.050 in transition, the fix is in the transition game, not the hitter's arm.