How to Pass

From Eric Sullivan, Team USA

The finer points of this difficult skill

Since I started playing volleyball at the collegiate level I’ve always been considered a "passing" outside hitter. What does that mean exactly? I’m not really sure, but I think it means that I’m an outside hitter with especially good reception skills. Now that I’m with the USA National Team, I’ve made the switch to libero, again primarily because of my passing skills. So when I was asked to write up a "how to" article, I decided to go with passing because it’s probably my best skill.

I could go into everything you’ve heard before about footwork, having a good platform, staying low, etc, but I think it would be more interesting to go over a couple of abstract ideas that you don’t normally find in a volleyball instructional manual.

The first idea is that of "reading" the server. In every sport that I can think of, every player and team tries to foresee what the other team is going to do. Hence, you watch endless hours of video and read thousands of pages of scouting reports- especially at UCLA, thanks Al. Typically, coaches tend to forget or overlook serving tendencies. These can be charted just like you would chart a team’s offense. Quite often a player only has one or two serves that he uses, so this can be very advantageous for the passers. The passers can adjust their starting positions according to the servers’ tendencies, thus giving the passers an easier time passing the ball.

If you don’t have the information on a team before you play them, it still possible to predict where the server is going to serve before he serves. The typical server gives many clues to where he/she is going to serve the ball. The most obvious is where the server is facing. This doesn’t always help because sometimes the server might be trying to fool you, but often he/she was taught to face where they are going to serve.

Another clue is to look at the server’s foot positioning. A lot of times this will be in the direction that the player serves the ball.

You can also watch the toss. Sometimes the toss dictates where the ball can be served. For example, if the player tosses the ball inside his/her body line and has to reach to the angle to contact it, there is a good chance that this ball is going to go the cross court. This works for jump servers as well. Many times the server is only able to serve in one direction because of the toss. As the level of play increases, some of these signs will be harder to read, because the server is aware of them as well and will try to hide them, but even at the highest level these signs are very helpful for the passer.

The next idea is that of starting positions. Many times a team will have a dominant passer, or someone who tends to take more court because he/she is a better passer. What tends to happen is that the opposing team will not serve the other team’s best passer for obvious reasons. In this situation, the coach or the dominant passer should push the other passer over, in effect taking more court space. He/she should continue to push that player over until they start to receive some balls. This does two things; it makes it easier for the other player to pass because they have less space to cover, and it forces the other team to serve the better passer. If the dominant passer is starting to pass poorly, then he/she has taken too much court and should move back until they feel comfortable. Establishing this equilibrium could take a little time, but when the players feel comfortable with their positioning, the overall passing of the team will be greatly improved.

Hopefully these ideas will help improve your passing. Of course you still need to master the basic skills involved with passing, but once those skills are mastered in addition with these ideas, you will be able to pass well at any level.