A quick guide to all the numbers associated with the beach volleyball world tour

Do beach volleyball rankings and seedlings seem a bit strange or confusing to you?

Consider this. Americans Alix Klineman and April Ross are currently first in the world rankings, third in the Olympic rankings and seeded second at the upcoming World Tour Finals in Rome. Brazilians Rebecca Cavalcanti and Ana Patricia Silva are on top of the Olympic rankings, third in the world rankings and enter Rome as the seventh seed.

Never fear. The Beach Volley Blog is here to help explain everything and help you understand how the latest tournament results will impact your favorite teams.

Alix Klineman and Ana Patricia Silva both shut down their opponents on route to medals in Gstaad. The imposing blockers top different FIVB rankings this week for different reasons. Photo by FIVB.

How Many Points are in a Star?

We’ll start with the baseline for everything: points. All of the rankings and seedings on the FIVB beach world tour use the same points. Teams earn points based on results in tournaments. The bigger the tournament, the more points available.

Points by FIVB World Tour Star Rating Rank 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1st 1200 800 600 400 200 2nd 1080 720 540 360 180 3rd 960 640 480 320 160 4th 840 560 420 280 140 5th 720 480 360 240 120 9th 600 400 300 200 100 17th 480 320 240 160 80 25th 360 240 180 120 N/A 33rd 240 160 120 N/A N/A 41st 60 40 30 N/A N/A

The confusion doesn’t come from the points, though. The confusion comes from how the same points can be added up in so many different ways.

Olympic Rankings

Olympic rankings include only the 12 best finishes during the Olympic Qualifying period (September 1, 2018 until June 14, 2020). That is the best 12 results by points. So, a 5th place in a five star (720 points) is better than winning a three star (600 points) for ranking purposes. We’ve looked at this in a couple of different posts on the Beach Volley Blog, so follow these links for a much more complete explanation.

World Rankings

The world rankings differ from Olympic rankings in a couple of important ways. The most obvious is that world rankings only count eight results while the Olympic rankings count 12. To illustrate the difference lets look at the best team in the world. Anders Mol and Christain Sorum won just about every tournament they played in over the last two summers. So, it isn’t surprising that they are first place in both rankings. They have 9,960 Olympic rankings points (12 tournaments) but 7,680 World Ranking points (best 8 tournaments).

The bigger difference between the two rankings is that they consider tournaments in different time frames. The Olympic rankings cover any event after September 1, 2019, but world rankings are based on a 365 day window.

That means that Latvians Janis Smedins and Aleksandrs Samoilovs, who won the Moscow Open two years in a row, didn’t see any change in their world ranking points when they won for the second time. The 2018 tournament ended on August 12th and they won it again this year on August 18th. When they claimed 800 points for gold earlier this month, they had just seen their 800 point haul from 371 days before removed. The good news for them is that they replaced the points and stayed the same. Teams will drop in the world rankings when a big win from a year ago is no longer counted in the world rankings. If you forget to look back 12 months, this can be a bit confusing.

Aleksandrs Samoilovs has got his swagger back after winning two tournaments in a row on the Beach World Tour. Photo by FIVB.

Changing Windows

When I started this blog, many teams had good results from the summer of 2018 that counted in the world rankings but not the Olympic rankings. The Olympic ranking period was much shorter than the world ranking at that point. But as this summer passed, results from 2018 have fallen out of the 365 day window. Today the Olympic rankings time period is almost identical to that of the world rankings. As a result the actual rankings are much more closely aligned. In the coming months, these rankings will become different again, but in the opposite way. After September 1, 2019, the Olympic rankings will include more than the 365 days included in the world rankings. By June 14, 2020, the Olympic rankings will consider the results of tournaments from the past 647 days, while the world rankings will still look at only 365 days.

Tournament Seeding

Tournament seedings can have a huge impact on beach volleyball teams. Large events place 24 teams into the main draw with two spots reserved for wild cards. Being outside of the top 22 means a terrifying couple of matches in the qualifiers. A loss in either of the two qualifier matches sends a team home before the main draw starts.

It’s even harsher if you are from a country with a very strong beach volleyball program. You may be well within the top 22 seeded teams, but only three teams per country are allowed into the main draw. Many great Brazilian and American women’s teams start in the qualifiers for this reason. And if there are more than four teams from your country that want to play in a tournament, that means country qualifiers. Every team after the top 3 from a given country have to battle it out in a mini-tournament just to get into the qualifiers. Brooke Sweat and Keri Walsh-Jennings had to fight through country qualifiers and then regular qualifiers most of the summer. They have the same battle again next week in Rome. Their remarkable position in the Olympic rankings is even more impressive when considering the additional matches they’ve had to play with no margin for error.

Kerri Walsh Jennings and Brooke Sweat picked up a gold medal in Jinjiang against Australia after playing out of the qualifiers. They’ve been forced to take the long route to the podium all year long and continue to find success. Photo by FIVB.

So seeds are very important and they are based on something called tournament entry points.

Tournament Entry Points

First of all, half of the points earned in a tournament are allocated to each partner. That means that if a team splits up or one partner is injured, a new team can be formed. The new pair won’t have to start at the bottom of the tournament seeding. The new partners add their points together when they enter a tournament and get seeded based on the new total.

Secondly, the points used for seeding are based on the points teams have when the tournament entry deadline passes. This is almost always 21 days before the event. In a busy summer with tournaments every weekend, a team that makes the podium two weeks in a row may still have to play in a qualifier the next week because their new points were earned after the 21 day deadline passed. They get those points for their world and Olympic rankings right away, but they don’t help them to improve their seedings for three weeks.

Finally, the seeding points are based on the best four out of the most recent six results for each player. Ana Patricia and Rebecca from Brazil’s last six results include a 3rd place at a 5-star, ninth at the World Championships, third at a 4-star, ninth at a 5-star, fifth at a 4-star and ninth at a 4-star. Those are impressive results, but not nearly as good as earlier in the year. That explains why they will be the seventh seed in Rome but top the Olympic rankings.

The six results for tournament entry seeding must have come within the last 365 days, but that is rarely an issue since these pros livelihoods depend on playing to earn prize money. The FIVB makes exceptions for major injuries and maternity leave.

So that’s you beach volleyball math lesson for today, but don’t worry there won’t be a quiz. The points are all the same, but the number of tournaments and the time frames that determine which tournaments can be counted change for each ranking and tournament seeding.