2026-2027 Season · Ranked by Elo rating
Rankings last updated:
The VolleyLens NJCAA Women's Volleyball Power Rankings cover every NJCAA women's volleyball program across Divisions I, II, and III using ELO ratings updated after every match. The current #1 ranked team is Kirkwood Community College with a 1896 Elo rating and 34-0 record. Rankings reflect the 2026-2027 season.
All teams start with a base rating of 1500 points. Ratings rise after wins and fall after losses, and the amount of change depends on the relative strength of the opponents — beating a stronger team gives more points than beating a weaker team. Matches are processed in chronological order so ratings evolve match-by-match.
NJCAA matches are best-of-five sets, and we don’t treat every win the same. A blended result quality score combines set count (sweeps weigh more than four-set wins, and four-set wins weigh more than five-set wins), per-set point margin (averaged across the match so a long five-set thriller isn’t conflated with a one-sided blowout), and the binary match outcome. The set count carries the most weight, since reaching three set wins in a best-of-five already encodes meaningful confidence in the result.
NJCAA women’s volleyball is split into three competition levels — Division I, Division II, and Division III — each with its own pool of programs and its own national tournament. Higher-division matches carry more weight than lower-division matches at the same score, and upsets across divisions (for example a Division III program beating a Division I team) produce a bigger rating swing than the same result inside the lower division. Expected results — a Division I team beating a Division III team — move ratings less, since they confirm what the model already believed. Each division is ranked against its own peers, but the division a match is played in still shapes how much the result changes each team’s rating.
The NJCAA national tournament is where the season is decided. Matches inside the championship window count for more than regular-season matches at the same level of competition — a win during the national bracket lifts a team’s rating more than the same win earlier in the season, and a loss in the bracket gives back more rating than a midseason loss. Each NJCAA division has its own championship window, so the boost only applies within the right bracket.
An NJCAA team typically plays a shorter season than a youth club, so the rating system has to learn each team’s true level quickly. During a team’s first stretch of matches their ratings move faster, so a strong newcomer climbs to their real level fast and a struggling team isn’t unfairly anchored by a single rough weekend early on. Once a team has played enough matches, updates settle into the standard cadence.
NJCAA rankings are calculated against the NJCAA program pool only. Matches against non-NJCAA opponents — visiting club teams, university JV squads, scrimmages outside the NJCAA umbrella — are excluded from the rating update and the ranked record. Outside matches still appear in the team’s match history but don’t move the ranking, which keeps ratings comparable across the league rather than reflecting whichever mix of outside opponents a team happened to schedule.
Tracks each team across all participations and box scores, and aggregates all NJCAA matches for win/loss totals. Filters keep gender and NJCAA division consistent within each leaderboard.