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Volleyball Strategies - How to Play VolleyballVolleyball strategies and the game itself have taken giant steps in the past decade. After watching Italy vs. Cuba World’s Championship final from year 1990 and comparing it to ongoing finals of professional league in Europe it became clear how much the game has changed in the recent years. Maybe the biggest difference has occurred on the serving and serve receive aspects of the game. Serve and serve receive have become dominant part of the game. Team’s success is almost solely depending on those. In 1990 World Championship match setters were setting HIGH and show sets to the right and left side hitters so it really wasn’t as important to get a perfect pass to the setter. Nowadays when the sets are fast to every hitter the accurate passes are essential. In Italy-Cuba match the serving looked totally different, often the serves were just high easy floaters over the net. There were no jump serve bombers, or jump float servers – even their float serves looked so easy compared to today’s serves. It requires exceptional skills from the passers to be able to pass today’s tough serves. Volleyball Strategies - What Kind of Drills Coaches Can Run to Meet Today’s Requirements?We believe serve receive and serve are the most important part of the game today. For that reason we pay great deal of attention to volleyball strategies of passing and serving during the practices. It is important to hone the technical skills of various serve receive techniques (there is many of them) and serving styles. I don’t think we exaggerate at all if we say we use 30-50 % of the practice time to practice serve receive or serving drills. As soon as the basic techniques have been learned, serving and serve receive need to be practiced in the game-like situation. Game like drills may be norm for the serve receive, but they need to be applied to the serve also. For example it is not the best practice to make players do their serving drills in the beginning or end of practices - just doing few minutes of them – and having no targets or real passers to receive those serves. It is more challenging and better learning experience for the server to see a passer receiving the serve – at least to have targets where to serve. Volleyball Strategies - why top volleyball teams and even the most famous volleyball players miss serves all the time?Many of old and new volleyball fans may wonder about huge amounts of missed serves that are seen in high level volleyball. I am sure you’ll see the same trend in upcoming Beijing Olympic Games Volleyball and many competitions after that. Missed serves are never a good thing – but it is just a fact that nowadays servers need to take risks to beat up the opponent’s strong offense - and when taking risks and serving hard, the amount of errors will be higher. I personally can live with missed serves – if the team gets bunch of points in return with those serves that will go in. I can even live with huge amounts of missed serves – if I also get huge amounts of points in return. The Story from the Previous CoachMy old coach used to educate us young players when preparing to upcoming two matches – we had matches against “an easier opponent” following with a match against the national championship team:“There is no need to take high risks with serves when playing a weaker team. Let them do the points for you – they will mess up enough points with their offense for you to win.” “However, if you would be playing the national team of X - what would be the only way for you to score some points?” He wanted us to answer: “Serve, if we would serve all match as hard as we ever could – and hope one of those star players would shank the ball.” Well, that’s exaggerating a little bit – but I am sure you got the idea behind serving tough - which often leads to missing serves, unfortunately. Be sure to check out few tips how to play volleyball and organize serve receive and serve volleyball drills. P.S. Final between Cuba and Italy in 1990 World Championships is still my favourite volleyball match. Mr. Despaigne was an amazing player, wasn't he? Back from Volleyball Strategies to How to Play Volleyball master page Back from Volleyball Strategies to HOME of VolleyballAdvisors.com
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