Serving is one of the biggest weapons in volleyball, so giving your players extra serving reps will likely pay big dividends as the season progresses.
One good way to do this is to include serving in warmups, says Tod Mattox, head coach at The Bishop's School in San Diego.
"Serving is important to us," he says, "so we do it right at the beginning of practice."
His warmup serving drill is simple enough. Players form three short lines on both end-lines and serve at each other. In the drill you'll see here, Mattox emphasizes the short serve – inside the 10-foot line. After a minute of serving reps, he spices up the drill by making it a competition. Each line of two or three players becomes a small team and counts the number of times their serves land inside the 10-foot line. First team to 5 is the winner.
To include a serve-receive component, you can add passers on each side of the net as seen here in a drill taught by former Michigan State coach Cathy George.
Besides giving your players extra serving reps, starting practice with some type of dynamic serving drill reinforces a good message: Serving is important and we need to be good at it!
