Match day

1. Open the scorer

Open Freeball Scorer from the tablet's home screen. A paired tablet goes straight to its match list. A tablet that has never been paired asks to be paired first; see Devices and pairing.

Do this once on wifi before you leave, even if the gym has no signal. The tablet needs wifi exactly once, to pull the day's matches, the rosters and the rule sets. After that it is on its own.

2. Pick the match

The match list is grouped Today, Upcoming and In progress, and it shows everything this tablet has been given, online or not. Refresh pulls the list again when there is wifi; it never drops a match you created on the tablet and never loses scoring.

If a match is not there, you can make one on the tablet with the New match form on that screen: team, opponent, date, rule set and the two touch toggles. It is created on the tablet and uploaded when the tablet is next online.

JV and Varsity on the same night are two matches on the same tablet. Ending one and opening the next needs no wifi, and each uploads on its own.

3. Set setup

Before every set the tablet asks for four things.

• Serving team for this set.
• The starting lineup: your six by position, 1 through 6. Position 1 is right back and serves; 2, 3 and 4 are the front row; 5 and 6 are the rest of the back row.
• Liberos, up to the number the rule set allows.
• The setters, which is what makes the rotation number mean something.

For set 1 the screen prefills from the team's last match, and says so: "Prefilled from the last match; change what is different". Every control stays editable. Set 2 onward carries the previous set's lineup forward, rotated back to the starting rotation. If the opponent's touches are being tracked, their lineup by jersey is asked for here too.

Setters and the 5-1, 6-2 and 4-2 presets

There is one Setter select and one Second setter (6-2) select, with a row of preset buttons above them. The preset that matches what you have picked is highlighted.

• 5-1: one setter for all six rotations. It clears the second setter.
• 6-2: two setters, each setting in the rotations where she is in the back row.
• 4-2: two setters, each setting in the rotations where she is in the front row, which is exactly the other half of the 6-2 when the two are opposite each other.

Choosing a second setter opens six rotation buttons, one per rotation, each toggling between the two setters, so an unusual arrangement can be typed in by hand. Both two-setter presets need a second setter chosen first; the screen says so rather than guessing.

Why it matters: the rotation number Freeball reports is anchored on the first setter's position, and the setter for the current rotation is who gets the assist on a kill when nobody tapped Set. The court marks that player with (S). If you got it wrong, Fix then Setters during the set changes the assignment without restarting the set.

4. Scoring the set

The fast path is two taps: tap the player, then tap what she did. The rest, the score, the serve, the rotation, the substitution count, the box score, follows on its own.

The scorer explains its own buttons. Tap the ? on the toolbar, or More then Help: how to score, and you get the whole action grid, the US and THEM toggle, blocks and assists, substitutions, liberos, timeouts, undo and the Fix menu, described button by button on the screen where you need it. That help is the reference; this page does not repeat it.

Three things worth knowing before the first serve:

• Undo is always available and can be repeated to go back further. Nothing is ever deleted: the score and the stats are worked out again without the thing you took back.
• Warnings never block you. Going past the substitution or timeout allowance, or a lineup that does not match, records a warning and carries on. The referee decides what is legal; the app records what happened.
• Match view, on the scoreboard when the tablet is online, opens the coach's match page in another tab, which is useful on a timeout. Scoring is untouched when you come back.

With Grade serves on, when we are about to serve the Pass row becomes Serve 3, Serve 2 and Serve 1 for the known server: tap one to grade how badly the opponent handled it, 3 being out of system and 1 being a perfect pass. Ace and Serve err work the same as always and carry no grade.

Attack err, Ball handling, Dig err, Other fault and Kill open a short strip under the context bar with a few extra buttons, so the detail costs one tap and never a trip through a menu. Attack err offers Spike / Tip / Dump / Down ball; Ball handling offers Double contact / Set error / 2nd ball / 3rd ball / Whose ball?; Dig err offers Dig / Free ball; Other fault offers Under / Over the net / Foot fault; and Kill offers Setter assist / Other assist / Tip / Dump / Down ball. Net and Rotation open nothing, because those buttons already say which fault it was. Tapping one is optional: the point is recorded either way.

With Track attack detail on, a Kill, Attack err or Hit in play adds two more rows to the same strip: Hard / Tip / Roll / Back row on top, L / M / R / Back below. Tap one of each, or neither.

The strip closes on the next player tap, or by itself after about four seconds, and tapping a button that is already lit clears it. One Undo still takes back the whole point, detail and all.

Classic capture layout

The tablet has two capture layouts and each device picks its own. Switch with More then Capture layout during a match, or with the Layout button on the match list before one. The change is instant, it never leaves the match, and both layouts record exactly the same things, so a match can be scored half in one and half in the other and the box score cannot tell.

Freeball is the default: the court, the bench and the action grid described above. Classic is a four-column capture screen that will be familiar to SoloStats 123 users: the whole roster down the left as numbered buttons, and IN-RALLY, EARNED, ERRORS and FAULTS across the right.

• Three taps to a point: tap the player, tap what happened, then ENTER. The box above the buttons shows PLAYER, ACTION and POINT before you commit, so you can see what you are about to record.
• Or two taps: tapping the same action a second time commits it, so a fast scorer never reaches for ENTER.
• CLEAR empties the pending box. Tapping a different player, or a different action, simply replaces the one waiting.
• THEIR PLAYER puts the next event on the other team: their earned buttons are their point, their errors and faults are ours. Tap it again to come back.
• SERVER #N is a reminder, not a control. Freeball works the server out of the lineup, so there is nothing to enter; tapping it opens Fix, for the score or the rotation.

Everything that is not capture is shared and has not moved: subs, libero, timeouts, Fix, More, Undo and the ? help are the same bottom toolbar in both layouts, and the scoreboard, the serving dot and the rotation number sit above both. The scorer's own help sheet has a Classic layout section as well.

5. Between sets

When a set reaches its target with the required lead, the tablet shows the result and an End set button. Pressing it opens set setup for the next set.

Above the lineup on that screen sits the set summary card for the set just played: a few sentences about what happened and two or three suggestions for the next set, written by AI from that set's stats. It arrives collapsed, as "Set N summary is ready"; tap it to read it.

• If it is still being written the card says so and keeps checking for about two minutes.
• If there is none, or the last attempt failed, there is a Write set N summary button.
• Offline it says summaries need a connection, and nothing else. Setting up the next set never waits on it.

What is sent is jersey numbers and stats. No names, no notes, and the opponent is never named.

6. Ending the match

When one team has won the number of sets the rule set requires, ending that last set ends the match instead of opening another setup screen. The match's status becomes completed, and the result and the set scores appear on the match page and in the match list.

Then go back to the match list for the next match of the night, or just leave the app. Nothing needs to be saved: every tap was written down as it happened.

7. Syncing and offline

The tablet saves every tap on the tablet itself, so a reload, a crash or a flat battery resumes exactly where it left off. Uploading is separate and happens whenever the tablet has a connection.

The line near the scoreboard tells you where you stand: online or offline, how many taps are still queued, and when the last upload was. A gym with no signal at all is a normal night; the queue simply grows and empties on the bus.

Re-pair needed means the device was revoked on the Devices page. Re-pairing from the Matches screen keeps everything already on the tablet, including anything not yet uploaded.

8. What the coach sees afterwards

Open the match from Matches. Going down the page:

• Match details, the rule set snapshot the match was played under, and the opponent players card.
• Match roster: starters, liberos and bench, and a Setters list saying who set which rotations in each set.
• Box score: the set scores, then the full per-player line for the match. Every abbreviation is defined in Stat definitions.
• Rotation (us): side-out and point-scoring, made and attempted, for each of rotations 1 to 6.
• Sets: the same box score per set, each headed with that set's first-ball side-out.
• Score progression: a chart per set of both scores rally by rally, with that set's runs of three or more points listed underneath.
• Rally log: every rally with its score, server, winner, reason and the player it is charged to, plus the longest serve run per set. Each rally expands into the play-by-play behind it.
• Set summaries: the AI summaries, with Generate or Regenerate for a coach on any completed set.
• At the bottom, Download box score CSV, MaxPreps export, Hudl export and Print.

If something was recorded against the wrong player, expand the rally in the rally log and use Edit or Remove. See corrections.

A banner above the box score warns when something unusual was recorded during the match. It does not mean the numbers are wrong; the rally log is where to look.

9. What the fans see

While the tablet is scoring and online, a public or unlisted match has a live page on Freeball Live. It shows the score and set count, a court diagram with who is on court, the last rally, a running play-by-play, the set scores and a box score, and it updates as the bench scores. How current it is depends on the tablet's signal: with no wifi in the gym, nothing reaches the live page until the tablet is back online.

Fans do not sign in and do not install anything to read it. Installing Freeball Live to a phone's home screen adds one thing: a notification when a followed match starts. See Live.