Reference

Seasons

Seasons are the containers teams belong to. The list is newest first, and the season with the latest start date carries the Current badge. A manager or above can add one with New season (name, starts on, ends on) or change one with Edit.

Every report filter, the Teams page and the organization's home page group by season, so it is worth giving them names you will recognize a year from now.

Teams

Teams are listed grouped by season. A team has a name, a season, a level (varsity, jv, freshman, club or other) and a gender (girls, boys or coed). Manager and above can add and edit them.

Opening a team shows its Roster: jersey number, name, position and graduating year, with Remove on each row. Beside it are Add existing player (pick a player already in the program and give her the number she wears on this team) and Create a new player (first name, last name, grad year, jersey number).

A player can be on as many teams as you like with a different number on each, because a player belongs to the program and a jersey number belongs to the team she is on.

Players

Every athlete in the program, whatever team they are on. The table shows name, position, class of, grade, height, preferred number and the teams they are on with the number for each. New player and Edit are manager and above; the fields are described in Getting started.

The player stats page

Clicking a player's name opens her stats page. It carries the same filter bar the Reports pages have, and under it:

• Totals for the filtered matches: matches and sets, kills and errors, hitting pct, receive avg, digs, aces and errors, blocks as solo/assist/error, and points.
• Per set: kills, assists, digs, blocks, aces and points per set played.
• Passing distribution: her receptions split into 3s, 2s, 1s and 0s, as one bar.
• Serving impact: her aces and service errors, and what happened to the team while she was at the line.
• Hitting by pass quality: her own hitting split by the pass in front of each swing.
• Trend, then a Match log with a line per match and its own Download CSV, so you can watch a number move over the season rather than read one average.

Because stats follow the player and not the jersey, a number change between matches, or between JV and Varsity, never splits one athlete into two rows.

Set up from a roster photo

Reachable from the Players page, the Teams page, the match page's opponent card and the match roster page. Photograph a printed roster sheet and Freeball turns it into players, team memberships or a match's opponent roster. Manager and above. One sheet at a time.

1. Upload. Pick or snap the photo, then Read the roster. Hold the camera square to the page and fill the frame; every team section on the sheet is read, including JV and C squad.
2. Review. Every row it found, as an editable line with a checkbox: jersey, first name, last name, height, year. Fix anything misread. Nothing is saved at this point.
3. Apply. Either into your own program (each section maps to an existing team or a new one, with page-level selects for season and gender) or as the opponent roster for one match (pick the match and the section of the sheet that is the opponent).

Applying reports what it did: players created, players matched to ones you already had, memberships added, jersey numbers updated, teams created and rows skipped. A row is skipped when its jersey is already claimed, by another checked row or by somebody on the team the sheet does not name; a number is never silently reassigned. Height and graduating year are filled in only where they were blank, so a misread never overwrites something a coach typed by hand.

The photo is read by AI. Freeball does not keep it, and it is not used to train AI.

Matches

The match list is grouped In progress, Upcoming and Past, with the date, team, opponent, venue, status and set score. New match is manager and above, Import is coach and above.

The match page itself is described in Match day. The buttons in its header are Edit match, Edit roster (while the match is still scheduled), Rebuild stats, and Public page when the match is not private.

A match scored with Track attack detail on carries an Attack breakdown section and a shot chart, for the team and for each hitter. A match scored without that option, or where nobody's swing got a type or a zone, shows neither.

Every match page also carries Point sources -- two bars showing how each side's points were scored -- and a Rally log with a Rot column. Coming in from a cell of the Rotations report's heatmap narrows that log to one rotation, with a link back to the whole thing.

Import from a Hudl tagging file

Import on the Matches page, coach and above. It takes the Hudl tagging file that SoloStats 123 or Rotate123 emails you after a match, which is also what Freeball's own Hudl export produces, up to 5 MB. Pick the team and the rule set, then Import match.

• It creates a new private match against the opponent named in the file, scored rally by rally: box score, per-set tables, rotation table and rally log.
• Jersey numbers are matched to that team's players. A jersey nobody on the team wears becomes a placeholder player named Player #7 and so on, which you can rename on the Players page or fix by adding the jersey to the team roster and importing again. Placeholders are not added to the team.
• SoloStats files record no names, no liberos and no opponent touches, so none of those come across.
• Importing the same file twice creates two matches. Nothing is merged or replaced.

An imported match carries an Import report at the bottom of its page: what the file said, the set scores in it, the lineups that had to be worked out, the placeholder players and any warnings. Imported matches get no automatic AI set summaries, because an import brings in a whole finished match at once.

Exports, CSV and print

Four links sit at the bottom of a scored match page.

• Download box score CSV: the box score as a spreadsheet.
• MaxPreps export: the .txt stat file MaxPreps takes, one line per player who played, in jersey order. Freeball is not an accredited stat supplier, so upload it as a coach.
• Hudl export: a Hudl tagging file, the same kind SoloStats writes. It names no players: jersey numbers only, plus the team and opponent names. Importing it back into Freeball reproduces the match it came from.
• Print: a print-friendly page with the set scores, the box score, a box score per set and the rotation table.

Rebuild stats

Rebuild stats, coach and above, works every number for the match out again from the play-by-play. Use it when a match's numbers look wrong and you want to be sure you are looking at what the play-by-play actually says. It cannot lose anything.

Stats cannot be typed in or edited by hand, and that is on purpose.

Corrections

A coach can fix an attribution after the match: a kill credited to the wrong hitter, a wrong assist, a dig that was really a pass, a rally that ended for the wrong reason. Expand a rally in the Rally log and everything behind it is listed in plain words, with Edit and Remove.

• Edit opens a small form for whatever you picked. A touch can have its player and its skill or grade changed; a rally end can have its reason, team, player, assist, blockers and hitter changed; a substitution or a libero swap can have its players changed. A touch or a rally end also offers Attack type and Zone, which is how attack detail is added, changed or cleared after the match; leaving one blank takes that piece of detail back off.
• Remove takes it out of the stats entirely, along with anything it produced.
• Set starts and ends, timeouts, notes and the scorer's own in-match fixes can only be removed, not edited: they describe the shape of the match rather than who did what.

Nothing is overwritten or deleted. The original stays in the play-by-play, an edited one tagged amended with who did it and when, a removed one struck through and tagged removed. The stats are recalculated straight away, and the public page and both exports follow. Correcting again is how you undo a correction.

Corrections need the match to be in progress or completed, and the tablet that scored the match does not see them. By then it is done with that match.

The match roster

Edit roster on a scheduled match. Every player in the organization is listed, grouped by team, with a jersey number box and four role buttons: Out, S for starter, L for libero and B for bench. Tapping S, L or B puts the player on tonight's roster as well as picking her role.

All to bench and All out set a whole team group at once. The Other teams column says where else the player is rostered and with what number. The page prefills from the team's last roster and names the match it copied, so a normal night is a handful of edits and Save roster.

Read the opposing roster from a photo in the header goes to the roster photo flow with this match preselected as the target.

Reports

Season-level numbers across many matches, for anybody in the organization. Every reports page obeys the filter bar at the top: Season, Team, Opponent (a partial name is enough), Home/Away and a From and To date range, a Matches choice, then Apply filters. Reset clears them.

Matches is set to Completed matches only to begin with, so the record and the percentages beside it always describe the same matches. Switch it to Include matches in progress to fold in the match being played right now: its rallies join every rate on the page, but it has no result yet, so it stays out of the record until it finishes. Everything moves together, including the CSV download.

The Overview and the six pages

Reports in the top menu opens the Overview: the team summary cards, then six tiles, one per area of the game. Each tile shows the number a coach checks first, how many chances are behind it, a small shape for the direction it has been moving, and a link to the page that explains it. Open the one that looks wrong.

• Rotations: your weakest rotation by side-out, and how side-out has moved over the last few matches.
• Attacking: hitting pct, with the change over the last five matches.
• Serving: how often the team wins the rally while you are serving, and how many serve errors.
• Passing: receive average, with a bar of how the receptions were graded, 3 down to 0.
• Errors: what share of the other side's points came from your errors, with a bar of the most common kinds.
• Players: who leads hitting pct, and who leads assists and digs per set.

A tile with nothing behind it says so in words - "no matches in this window", or the line that says what was not recorded - rather than showing a dash. Below the tiles sit recent form, the three rotations leaking the most side-out, and what was recorded, the full list of anything the tablet was not tracking.

Under the filter bar on every page is a row of links: Overview, Rotations, Attacking, Serving and passing, Errors and Players. The one you are on is highlighted. The filters you have set travel with you, so switching pages never quietly changes which matches you are looking at, and each page has its own address you can bookmark or send to somebody.

• Rotations: the rotation table and chart, rotations over time, and lineups.
• Attacking: hitting by pass quality, attack breakdown and shot chart, set distribution, setter and hitter, free ball and transition conversion.
• Serving and passing: serving impact and passing distribution.
• Errors: errors by type, points given away, and point sources.
• Players: leaders, the players table with its CSV download, and trends.

Every percentage and average carries the number of chances it came from, and where a section depends on something the tablet only records when it is switched on, a small grey line above it says how much of the data has it. See sample sizes and coverage.

Print summary under the filter bar opens a one-page brief for your staff, built from exactly the filters showing at the time: the record and the team numbers, recent form, the three rotations leaking the most side-out, where the points came from on both sides, the most common errors, how the top passers were graded, and what happened while your top servers were at the line. It says in words which matches it covers, because a printed page has no filter bar on it, and every number carries the chances behind it. It opens on its own page with a Print button; your browser's print dialog will also save it as a PDF.

Team summary

On the Overview, ten cards: record, sets won and lost, points for and against, hitting pct, receive avg, serve rating, serve efficiency, side-out pct, point-scoring pct and first-ball side-out. Every rate prints the number of chances it came from on a small line underneath, and a line above the cards says whether matches in progress are being counted.

Rotations

On the Rotations page, a row per rotation 1 to 6 with side-out made over attempted and its percentage, point-scoring the same way, and first-ball side-out, next to a chart of the three percentages. This is the table that tells you which rotation is leaking.

Hitting by pass quality

On the Attacking page: attempts, kills, errors and hitting pct for attacks grouped by what came before them -- a pass graded 3, 2 or 1, a free ball, a dig (transition), or nothing recorded. The same table appears for one hitter on her player stats page.

Attack breakdown

For matches scored with Track attack detail on: a table of attempts, kills, errors and hitting pct by attack type, and the same by zone, plus a per-player attempts table and a shot chart: half a court with the kills, attempts and hitting pct from each zone drawn on it, net at the top. The same court is on every match page and on a player's page for her own swings. See Attack breakdown in Stat definitions.

Errors

On the Errors page, every point given away in the filtered matches, split by kind of error (spike, tip, dump, down ball, set error, 2nd and 3rd ball, whose ball, double contact, dig, free ball receive, receive, serve, block, and the faults), with a per-set average and a table charging each one to a player. Points given away sets those errors beside the points the opponent earned with kills, aces and blocks. The same tables appear on a match page next to its box score, and for one player on her stats page. See Errors by type in Stat definitions.

Trends

On the Players page, one number per match in date order, with a Metric select above the chart: hitting pct, kills, assists, digs or aces per set, serve error rate, receive average, serve rating, or side-out pct. Whatever you pick stays in the address bar, so a reload keeps it and the link you send somebody opens on the same chart. Hover a point and it names the opponent, the result and how many chances the number came from; click a point and you land on that match. Underneath, the older pair of charts is still there - hitting pct against side-out pct, receive avg beside it - with a strip of win and loss badges so you can line a dip up against a result. The same select is on a player's page, where it opens on whatever her position is usually judged on. See Trend metrics.

Leaders

On the Players page, top five in kills per set, hitting pct, assists per set, digs per set, aces per set, blocks per set and serve rating. Hitting pct carries a minimum of 20 attempts and serve rating a minimum of 15 graded serves (plus aces and errors, the same rows the rating's own denominator counts) so one perfect night does not top the list; a player with no rate in a category is left out rather than counted as a zero.

Players table

On the Players page, a row per player over the filtered matches, with the full box-score line, the per-set rates, and every column sortable by clicking its heading. SV is serve attempts and S Rtg is serve rating, both defined in Stat definitions. Download CSV above the table exports exactly what the filters selected.

Set distribution

For every setter with at least five recorded sets, where the ball went: sets to each hitter, that hitter's share, kills and kill pct off those sets, and the same counts split across rotations 1 to 6.

Setter and hitter

The same sets read the other way round: every setter down the side, every hitter she fed across the top, and in each square how that pairing hits. Three small buttons switch the squares between hitting pct, kill pct and plain volume, and the shading stays hitting pct throughout so the picture does not move under you. The row of buttons below picks which sets to count - all of them, or only the ones off a 3 pass, a 2 pass, a 1 pass or free ball, or out of transition - which is how you find a pairing that only works when the first ball is perfect. On a player's own page this appears as one slice: a setter sees her row, a hitter sees who has been setting her. See Setter and hitter.

Free ball and transition conversion

Every free ball your team handled and every dig it made, counted as a chance and followed through to three things: whether you got a swing out of it, whether that first swing was a kill, and whether you won the rally in the end. Shown for the team, by rotation, and by the player who passed or dug it, and on her own page for just her. See Free ball and transition conversion.

Passing distribution

On the Serving and passing page, a bar per passer showing how her receptions were graded, 3 down to 0, with the counts, the percentages, her total receptions and her average. Busiest passer first. See Passing distribution.

Serving impact

Headed "team outcomes while this player serves", because that is what half of it is. Her aces and service errors are hers; the rally-win rate and the serve runs are the whole team's, and they are what catches a server whose ball keeps the other side out of system without ever landing an ace. See Serving impact.

Point sources

On the Errors page, two bars: how we scored and how they scored, each split into kills, aces, blocks, the other side's errors and the other side's faults, with counts, shares and a per-match average. The same pair of bars is on every match page. See Point sources.

Recent form

On the Overview, the last five completed matches against the five before them on six numbers, with the change signed and coloured. This is the table to look at before deciding whether a bad night was a bad night or a trend. See Recent form.

Rotations over time

On the Rotations page, a row per match and a column per rotation, with three small buttons to switch between side-out, point-scoring and first-ball side-out. Click a cell to jump straight to that match's rally log filtered to that rotation. See Rotations over time.

Lineups

On the Rotations page, sets grouped by the starting six that played them, with sets played, sets won, side-out pct and point-scoring pct, which is the comparison to make before changing a rotation.

Rule sets

Three system presets, NFHS Varsity, NFHS JV and USAV Club, listed first and marked Preset. They cannot be edited. Your organization's own rule sets are listed below, and a coach can add or edit them. Every field is explained in Getting started.

A rule set is copied onto each match that uses it, and the match is scored against that copy, so editing a rule set never changes a match that has already been played. The match page shows the copy under Rule set snapshot.

Devices

Manager and above. One row per tablet or phone that scores, with its name, the person who created it, when it was last seen and whether it is active or revoked.

• New device creates one and shows its QR code and pairing code once. Pair the tablet from that page; neither is shown again.
• Revoke cuts a device off immediately. It keeps everything it already has and asks to be re-paired.
• Open scorer opens the scorer and, for a signed-in manager or coach, pairs that browser without a QR code.

A device also stops working on its own if the person it was set up under drops to viewer or leaves the organization. It shows as revoked here with the reason next to it, and the tablet asks to be paired again. Nothing on the tablet is lost; an admin creates a new device and pairs it. Change the owner's role back, or set the tablet up under someone who is still a manager, coach or admin.

Treat a pairing code like a password: it can read your full roster, names included.

Connecting an AI assistant

An admin can connect Claude, or another AI assistant, to read your organization's stats. It is set up with a device token from the Devices page and gives the assistant read-only access; nothing can be changed through it. Ask your organization's admin if you want this turned on.

Members

Admins only. Everybody in the organization, their role, and when they joined. Change a role with the select and Save; Send new link issues a fresh set-password link; Remove takes somebody out of the organization. Add a member at the bottom adds an existing Freeball user directly or creates and invites a new account. See Getting started.

Settings

Admins only: the organization's name, its fixed slug, where you are (city, state or province, postal code) and the time zone every timestamp in the organization is shown in, plus Show player names on public live pages. That last one is off by default and is a privacy decision for minors.

Terms and conditions

The terms are readable signed out and linked from the home page, the sign-in page, the sign-up form and this help center. The person who signs an organization up accepts them on the sign-up form; everybody else accepts the first time they sign in.

Each version of the terms carries the date it was published. When we publish a new version, the next page you open is a page showing the new terms with an I accept button, and, when there is something worth pointing out, a short What changed note above them. Accepting takes you straight back to the page you were headed for. Until you accept, the only things that work are the terms themselves, this help center, the password pages and Sign out, which always works.

This applies to everybody with an account, site admins included. It does not apply to the tablet scorer or to Freeball Live: the tablet is paired rather than signed in, and fans reading a public page have no accounts at all.

The Members page shows each member's status in a Terms column, either Terms: accepted with the version they accepted or Terms: not yet. That is the quickest way to see why somebody in your program says they are stuck on an acceptance page. Older versions stay readable, linked from the bottom of the terms page, so you can see what you agreed to before.

Freeball Live

The public side. No account, no sign-in, nothing to install to read it.

Finding a team

The Freeball Live front page has one box: type your organization's slug, the last part of the link your school shared, or its name, and press Go. Pasting the whole link works too. Organizations you have opened before come back as Recently viewed buttons above the box, on that phone or computer only.

The organization and match pages

An organization's page lists its public matches under Live now, Today, Upcoming and Recent. Opening one gives the scoreboard, the court, the last rally, the play-by-play feed, the set scores and a box score, updating as the bench scores. Unlisted matches have a page but are not listed here.

Following and notifications

On an organization's live page there is a Follow button for the whole organization and one for each team with a public match. Following asks the browser for permission and then sends a notification when a followed match starts. The notification carries the team and opponent names and nothing else, because it lands on a lock screen.

The buttons do not appear at all if the phone or computer cannot send notifications. On an iPhone or iPad they cannot work from Safari itself: add Freeball Live to the home screen first (Share, then "Add to Home Screen") and turn notifications on from inside the installed app. The page says so when that is the case.

Installing Freeball Live

Freeball Live installs to a phone's home screen as its own app, separate from the scorer even on a device that has both. It never shows an old score: with no signal the match page cannot load, and you see the Freeball Live start page instead of yesterday's numbers.

Admin: reviewing sign-ups

Only for site admins, the operators of Freeball itself. An Admin link appears in the nav for them; for everybody else the page does not exist.

The page lists organizations Awaiting review first, with the city, state or province, postal code, time zone, the sign-up time in that organization's own zone, and its admins' names and email addresses. Each carries an optional note and two buttons, Approve and Reject; the note goes into the email the organization's admins get either way. Below that is every organization with its status and member count.

Until an organization is approved, its pages show the review notice, no tablet can be paired to it, and it has no public live pages.