Sprint–Agility Imbalance in Female Youth Volleyball Athletes Sports School: A Cross-Sectional Fitness Profile of Strength, Endurance, Speed, and Change-of-Direction Performance

Silvi Rosmalevia (Physical education, Universitas Islam Riau, Indonesia.)
Raffly Henjilito (Physical education, Universitas Islam Riau, Indonesia.)

IGI in Education Insight
Vol. 1 No. 03 (2026): July Issue |IGI in Education Insight (IGI Educ. Ins.)

Purpose of the study: This study profiled the physical fitness of female volleyball athletes enrolled at the Riau Specialized Sports School, Indonesia, with emphasis on upper-body muscular strength, aerobic endurance, linear sprint speed, and change-of-direction agility. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional descriptive design was used. All eight female volleyball athletes available in the school program were recruited through total-population sampling. The test battery comprised an upper-body strength test, a 15-min track-running test, a 50-m sprint, and a 6 × 10-m shuttle run. Scores were classified using the normative categories adopted by the original school-based assessment protocol. Because individual raw scores were not retained in the source dataset, the analysis was restricted to frequencies, percentages, and the reported composite score. Results: Upper-body strength was classified as fair in six athletes (75.0%) and poor in two (25.0%). Aerobic endurance was fair in seven athletes (87.5%) and poor in one (12.5%). All athletes were placed in the highest category for the 50-m sprint, whereas shuttle-run agility was poor in six athletes (75.0%) and fair in two (25.0%). The reported composite fitness score was 4.93, corresponding to the fair/moderate category. Two-sided exact binomial tests against a 50% good-or-higher benchmark were significant for all four components (Holm-adjusted p = .0313); sprint speed was above the benchmark, whereas strength, endurance, and agility were below it. Conclusions: The athletes demonstrated a markedly uneven physical profile: linear sprint performance was strong, but agility, upper-body strength, and endurance were insufficiently developed for balanced volleyball preparation. Training should prioritize progressive change-of-direction, aerobic-conditioning, and resistance-training interventions while preserving speed qualities. The findings are exploratory because of the small single-site sample, absent participant anthropometrics, and reliance on categorical rather than raw performance data.