Serve Receive Drills

Question
Hi, I have been coaching for the past six years at various levels from young beginners to high level national teams, and I also played at a small DI university, but I have a hard time teaching serve receive.  Being that I was mostly a Middle during my career, serve receive is not a strong point for me.  I have coached some very successful teams, but SR has been a constant struggle(just very inconsistent)for all of my teams in the past.  Now, I am directing a developmental program and I need some basic drills for developing SR, which is what I think is one of the most important aspects of volleyball.  Got any suggestions?

Answer
Keesha,

I agree with you about the importance of serve receive.  A good drill for a beginning team for serve and serve receive is the Butterfly Drill (don't ask me about the name).  You do the same thing on both sides of the net at the same time.  Have a server, a passer and a target.  The server serves to the SR'er and follows the serve to take the SR'ers place.  The SR'er passes to the Target and follows their pass and becomes the Target and the target catches the ball and becomes a server.  I have them serve to Zones 1 & 5 and then short.  This helps serve receive and serving to zones.

The only other thing we do is once we give them their SR responsibilities we do a lot of reps.  We also keep stats.  A pass that the setter can set all three hitters is a 3.  Two hitters (setter comes to the 10' line and can't set middle) a 2, Setter can only set to the OH a 1.  A reception error, overpass or someone other than the setter having to set the ball a 0.  Add them all up and divide by the number of attempts.....that is their %.  This will give them competition and a goal.

If you want to talk you can e-mail me at [email protected].

Good luck
Steve