The study was designed to examine the influence of psychological and somatic stress on sport performance using salivary cortisol assessment procedures. Nine women volleyball players completed a short version of the Profile of Mood States (POMS; Wald & Mellenbergh, 1990) before entering and after playing national, international and play-off games. Saliva cortisol was measured both before and after the games. Besides the players, both the head coach and his replacement participated in the study to see how psychological and somatic stress affected them. Also, the utility of Hanin's ZOF model (1980) was tested. The results indicated that more psychological stress occurred at the international games, but somatic stress did not significantly differ at international or national games. Cortisol level, however, was significantly higher after the games were played. This could be explained by increased tension, but it could also be the result of physical activity. More somatic stress did occur at play-off games instead of both international and national games. The ZOF notion that players perform better when precompetition anxiety values are in ZOF was not confirmed. Best performance was found when precompetition anxiety values were below ZOF. A striking result was that the head coach reported feeling more stress after the national competition game than after the European game. A few limitations of the study were the small sample size and the quantification of measuring performance.