I recently got a question from a frustrated high school volleyball coach in Canada. His team competes (well) the whole match and loses in the final points of the game, which he attributes to weak serving. He mentions that his young high school players buckle under the pressure and send nice, easy lobbed serves to the other team. Any good team would take advantage of a serve like this and return it with full force.

My advice to him was:

Dear Sir,
I understand what you’re going through. It seems common for younger players to buckle under pressure. I’ve dealt with that most of my coaching career. The only way they’ll truly get past the stress is

by being familiar with those situations. My suggestion to you is to put them in high pressure situations at practice.

In drills, have the starters be down a number of points so they have to fight for a comeback to win (with a consequence, of course). But I’ve also done pressure serving drills. You can run this a number of ways.

1. Have all the girls on the end line with a ball. One by one, they each have to serve an aggressive ball to the zone of your choosing. The girl (captain) who serves first must serve twice. Once to lead off, once to conclude. If you have 9 girls, tell them they must complete 9 tough serves… that means 9/10 must be tough (per your standards).

2. You could pick 1-3 player(s) at the end of each practice and say, “If these players make the (tough) serves I call, practice is over. If they don’t, we run.”

Good luck with your upcoming season.

Danielle

These are just a couple tips for this coach to try to help get his team past the “fear” of serving aggressively at the end of close matches. Do you do it differently? Tell me about it.

Or… maybe you have a specific question for your team? Comment below or email me in the contact form on the right.