Sport Skill Level and Gender with Relation to Age, Physical Development and Special Fitness of the Participants of Olympic Volleyball Tournament Beijing 2008

The aim of this study was to provide an answer to the question whether and how age, body height, body mass, body mass index and results from fitness tests are related to sport skill level and gender of the participants of the Olympic volleyball tournament. Two-Way ANOVA was used to find the dependency of the variables on the factor of sport skill level (A – teams which took places 1 to 4, B – places from 5 to 8; C – places from 9 to 12) and gender (F – female; M - male). Statistical significance was set at p<0.05. The Bonferroni’s adjustment was carried out for three p=0.017 and fifteen p=0.003 pairs of comparisons). The M and F athletes included in A-C groups (N=48 in each group) were than compared to the classification in the neural network of Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN). A combined effect of the factors of sports level and gender on the height of attack jump (F=4.13; p=0.02) and block jump (F=9.22; p