Take Advantage of Your Serves!

-Serving deep is effective against shorter players. If you serve a floater low and deep, shorter players will have more trouble passing the ball. If you get the ball to the deep corners they will have even more trouble passing because they will have to move sideways or reach higher to pass.

-Serving the ball to a spot that forces a front row player to make a pass from deep can be an effective strategy. This is a reason why it’s a good idea to know who your opponent’s front row players are.

If you see them lined up to pass in serve receive, it might be a good idea to try and get them to move deep to pass the ball. By pushing them deep, you may keep them from attacking (at least make it more difficult).

-It’s often easier to get a good floating action on the ball when you serve deep because in order to serve deep you must hit the ball harder.

-Serving deep is a good strategy even if you don’t know where the best place to serve is. Most passers don’t have as much experience passing deep balls because most servers don’t ever serve deep all the time. Servers don’t serve deep all the time because they haven’t developed the philosophy to do so. This is mainly due to the attitude (serving philosophy) of both coaches and players. A coach’s attitude towards serving and how capable they think their players are of serving, highly influences their team’s attitude towards serving. If coaches would take the time to have their teams practice serving, players would develop the volleyball strategies necessary to serve to any spot on the court.

Possible advantages to serving short

-You may force a front row player to become a passer. By forcing front row players to pass it can make your opponents change their offensive strategy, especially if they are run a quick offense.

-A particular passer may want to take the serve with their hands. This will be much more difficult to do if the serve is short.

-Passing short serves can be more difficult because passers often need to pass the ball in a certain way to allow their setters time to get in good position to set.

Make players move
Making passers move to pass is always a good strategy because...

-The more difficult it will be getting in good position to pass

-The more players will have to communicate which will make it more difficult to pass

-You may mess up your opponents system of offense

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