Average height by position in all of the D1 women’s volleyball programs.
This is part 2 of height in volleyball (check out the first article). In this article, we collected the height of every player in the D1 division and analyzed it by position. Among the D1 beach volleyball athletes, the average height is 177cm (or a little over 5'9). Do you think indoor players are taller than them on average? Let’s dive in.
First of all, data was collected in February 2022, which may not be reflected accurately in the 2022 season, and there were some programs that did not list the heights of the players on their roster.
From nearly 5,000 players, we calculated the average height of all the players, and it was 179cm (or a little over 5'10)! Ob average, indoor players are taller than bench players (although they are many players who play both.) The difference between beach and indoor was a little less than 1 inch. Did it surprise you?
Beach volleyball has 2 positions, blocker and defender, but there are many more in indoor and my guess is that libero are the shortest and middle are the tallest. Let’s check if that’s true. Below is a plot of height by position. It is a little hard to tell but on average, middle blockers are indeed the tallest and their average height is almost 186cm (or a little over 6'2) and the shortest is liberos, and their average height is 168 cm (about 5'6). Opposite hitters are right behind middle blockers at 184cm (or 6'0). Setters and outside hitters average at 177cm (a little under 5'10) and 182cm (over 5'11), respectively. Interestingly median and mean are almost identical for every position. When multiple positions are listed for one player, the first position is used to calculate. The average height of opposite might actually be higher when you only include true opposite hitters and exclude right-side hitters.
Although average height is quite different, note that there is a middle blocker who is 5'7 (Madison Reagins, Alabama A&M) and a libero who are 6'0 (Casey Brown, University of Albany). It is proof that height does not limit what you can and cannot do in volleyball.
Are you tall/short for your position?
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