As you may know, at the beginning of each rally an offensive player serves the ball into the opponent's court. In this chapter, we'll learn a bit more about service.
Serving is putting the ball into play by throwing it into the air and hitting it into the opponent's court.
After each point is scored, there is a serve. If the point is scored by the serving team, the same player on the same team serves the ball. If the point is scored by the receiving team, the next player in the rotation on the other team serves the ball, as we learned in Chapter 5.4: Volleyball Rotation.
Absolutely! If the receiving team fails to hit the ball back over the net on a serve, the serving team scores a point. This is called an ace.
There is a service area about 10 ft wide and behind the end line. Players are not allowed to cross the end line.
The rules of serving the ball are as follows:
A Player CAN:
A Player CAN NOT:
hit the ball with two (2) hands
A Player MUST:
The goals of serving the ball are as follows
When players serve, they are almost always hitting it in a strategic spot.
A server can target the serving zones of the court to get an advantage when serving. For example, a short serve is one hit in the front court, to zones two (2), three (3), or four (4).
A server can make the ball harder to hit by serving a floater, which usually has no spin to it.
A line serve is one hit to the sideline so that the defense has to run to the sideline retrieve it.