Weekly ratings for every Nebraska high school volleyball team, starting Monday, September 28
Starting Monday, September 28, the NebPreps Power Ratings cover Nebraska high school volleyball.
Every team in Classes A, B, C1, C2, D1 and D2 gets a Power Rating — a 0–100 score — and a rank within its class, updated every Monday morning through the end of the regular season.
No warm-up period
When Power Ratings launched for football, we asked for some patience: the first numbers leaned on last season, and teams needed three games before the math had much to say.
Volleyball skips that part. By September 28, every team has four to five weeks of matches in the books — well past the point where the ratings settle. There is no warm-up period and no carryover from last season doing the heavy lifting. The first volleyball ratings you see are the real ones.
Why volleyball suits this well
Volleyball teams play a lot — 30 or more matches, including weekend tournaments that throw programs from every class together. That is a deep record to draw on, and it is also where records start to mislead. Two teams can both sit at 25-6, and one of them earned it against a schedule the other never faced.
That is the question the Power Ratings answer. A win counts for more when the opponent is stronger, and the system carries everything it already knows about both teams into every result. Your rating is your résumé, weighted by who you actually played.
It is the same system behind the football ratings — a Glicko model, a modern refinement of Elo. Before these went live we ran the same historical test we ran for football, across every season of Nebraska volleyball in our database, and the ratings came out ahead of win-loss records there too.
And because volleyball fits several matches into a single week, these ratings move. A strong weekend at the right tournament can reshape a class.
What it is, and what it isn’t
- We rank teams. We don’t predict matches. No win probabilities, no set spreads. The ratings describe what has happened, not what will.
- Regular season only. Weekly drops run through Monday, October 26 — the morning districts begin. State gets settled on the court.
- Every class is its own world. Class A teams are rated against Class A teams.
What’s next
New ratings every Monday: September 28, then October 5, 12, 19 and 26. Every team gets its own page — schedule, results, rating history, and stats you won’t find anywhere else, from strength of schedule to how a team fares in tight sets. And this winter, Power Ratings return for basketball.
The first volleyball Power Ratings drop Monday, September 28.
