Serving for Success – A Strategy to Enhance Success Behind the End-Line
by Melissa Stokes, Southwest Missouri State University
Having coached at the high school, club and now the collegiate level, I have the philosophy that a coach needs to develop a serving strategy based on individual player performance. In other words, you want your players to do what they do best in order to serve tough and be competitive.
The success rate in serving is usually measured in terms of an ace to error ratio. In fact, when evaluating post-match serving statistics of a collegiate match, the only feedback that a coach or player gets is the number of aces and errors. I see teams that continue to miss 15 – 20 serves a match in an attempt to score immediately with aces. Several of the missed serves seem to come at times when I see that particular team siding out well and playing pretty good volleyball, but they are not giving themselves an opportunity to score points. In my opinion, there are several other factors that determine successful serving. In this article, I will give you ideas, drills and statistics that will support this philosophy.
“Serve tough” and “be competitive” can be defined as:
1. Serving to a specific area of the court in order to cause some traffic or disrupt play by simply taking a hitter out of their usual attack pattern.
2. Trying to take advantage of a weak passer.
3. Serving a ball with a lot of velocity and/or movement making it difficult to pass
(Examples: Backing up and serving from deep, jump serve or float serve)
