On kids today

I'm the founding (and so far only) member of Astronomers for Side-Out Scoring (it's ASOS, thank you very much, I use the O in Out in my acronym).

When I started playing volleyball, the game was played with side-out scoring, which means that only the team with serve can score points. If the team without serve sides-out, then they don't get a point, they win serve, and then have the opportunity to score. I *think* it started with the '96 olympics, but one of the silly volleyball governing bodies decided that to make volleyball more TV friendly, they needed to switch to rally scoring, which means each team can score on every serve, regardless of who holds serve. This was a major change in the sport, it's akin to baseball deciding that the fielding team can score, not just the team at bat. As you can imagine, a change of this magnitude changed the game substantially. National Champion Coach Russ Rose talks all the time about how his recruiting philosophy completely changed in the "Rally Score Era" (his term). We could argue (and many have) that rally scoring actually makes the game less suspenseful, which actually isn't very TV friendly. But that's a post for another time (and probably another author, because my argument is more visceral than statistics based).

I hate rally scoring. I would like nothing more to abolish it. Thankfully, most of us old timers still play side-out scoring when we play pickup games, and in our local league, we play side-out scoring.

So, why is the title of this "kids today"? Well, just like vinyl LPs and owning landline phones tethered to the wall in your house, side-out scoring apparently dates you.

We were playing the other night during a very crowded time at IM Building's volleyball courts. We were playing winner stays, and as us old-timers got tired and the more talented PSU students showed up, most of the teams of 30 to 50 somethings lost their courts. My team was the last to get knocked off, and our court went to two teams of undergrads, who I overheard saying, "great -- can we play rally now?"

So apparently, side-out scoring = dinosaur-aged.