Volleyball Skills and Drills: Serving

"Volleyball coaches and players have long recognized that serving and passing are the two most important skills in volleyball"

There are many different ways to serve a volleyball, but only three are mentioned in this section.

The Float Serve:
This serve is best used when the opponent is becoming lazy. The ball changes directions, which effective because most of the time the receiver does not pay attention to the ball the entire time. When using this serve you stand facing the direction you are serving the ball, positioning your feet so that your upper body is able to rotate easily. You begin to draw the hitting arm back before you toss the ball because it takes longer to draw your hand back vs. tossing the ball. The center of the ball is hit with the palm of the hand, causing the ball to not have a spin.



The Jump Serve:
The Jump Serve helps decrease the receivers reaction time because the ball is hit hard and uses speed from the server. For a successful Jump Serve there needs to be accuracy and speed. The jump serve has a spin to it unlike the Float Serve. To begin serving you take a small step with your right foot (for those who are right-handed, and left foot for those who left-handed). The medium height toss is best tossed with the hitting hand. The ball is thrown up at a medium height before spiking the ball so that this leaves you three steps for a four-step spike approach. The ball is also hit with the palm of the hand.

The Jump Float Serve:
 The ball is tossed lower than the jump serve and is hit with the palm of the hand in the center of the ball. This causes the ball to not have a spin on it unlike the jump serve. It combines the upper body movement of the float serve with the lower body movement of a jump serve. The jump float serve is hit at a harder point than a standing float.

The book also goes over different drills such as: Partners, Groups of three, Three is a row, Butterfly, Stat-ing Servers, Server versus passer, etc. These drills help the player/ team to work on serving and also passing.
Lenberg, Kinda. Volleyball Skills & Drills. Human Kinetics, 2006.