Volleyball is played by two teams of six players on an indoor court split by a net, or two teams of two players on sand for the beach version. The two sides never touch each other or share the same half of the court; everything happens across the net. A team scores a point whenever the ball touches the floor on the opponent's side, the opponent hits it out of bounds, or the opponent commits a fault such as touching the net or taking more than three touches to send the ball back over.
Each team may contact the ball up to three times before it must cross the net, and no player may hit the ball twice in a row (a block does not count as one of the three touches). In practice this produces the sport's signature sequence: a forearm pass to control the serve or attack, an overhead set to place the ball for a teammate, and an attack — a jump and a hard-driven spike, or a softer tip — to try to end the rally. Matches are decided by winning sets, and sets are won by whichever team is first to 25 points (15 in a deciding final set), provided they lead by at least two.
A game of touches, not turns
Unlike sports where possession changes on a whistle, a volleyball rally is continuous: the ball is in play from the moment it is served until it hits the floor, goes out, or a fault is called. Since 1999, every rally has ended in a point for one team or the other regardless of which side served — a system called rally point scoring. That single rule change, more than any other, shaped the pace of the modern game.
Volleyball is played at nearly every level, from backyard and beach recreation to school, club, college and professional leagues, up to the Olympic Games. The core rules are the same at every level; what changes is the net height, the court size for beach play, and how strictly faults like carrying or foot faults are enforced.
Two disciplines, one sport
The Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB), founded in Paris in 1947, governs both the six-a-side indoor game and the two-a-side beach game under a single international federation, and both disciplines share the same net heights, 2.43 meters for men and 2.24 meters for women, and the same rally-point scoring philosophy. Indoor volleyball reached the Olympics first, debuting at Tokyo in 1964, with beach volleyball following as a full medal sport at Atlanta in 1996 after a successful 1992 demonstration. A newcomer who understands the three-touch rally, rotation, and the basic fault list described across this encyclopedia already has the working vocabulary to follow either version of the game.
