Dispersion within sports teams

Data from the National Beach Volleyball Competition of the Netherlands is used to investigate the effect of dispersion of ability, age and length within beach volleyball teams. Dispersion of players’ abilities leads to better outcomes in beach volleyball tournaments. This indicates that low-ability players gain and learn from high-ability players. Dispersion of players’ age, however, does not improve the outcome of a team in a tournament. This paper found that the outcome raises if two older (and therefore more experienced) players form a team. With regard to dispersion in length, no change in outcome is found. A minimum length is required to play professional beach volleyball, and the variation between all these tall players do not show any effect in the results off a tournament.