Authentic assessment of performance in team sports offers a special challenge to physical educators and coaches. In an effort to obtain more objective data while avoiding standardized tests which did not provide for a force ratio (a central notion in team sports), French sport pedagogy researchers tried out various procedures to assess game play in context. A first step of the procedure consists in observing the players during a match and registering various occurrences in order to obtain quantitative data on the game play. These quantitative data obtained must be refined and hierarchized to construct standardized references for a physical education assessment on objective bases.