Drills for Volleyball Practice – Focus on Serving

Serve’s Up

When looking for new drills for volleyball practice, I sometimes like to group a number of drills together that focus on the same skills and use half the practice time for the usual drills and half for the spotlight skill. The following drills highlight serving and are a great way to improve your team’s serving skill and accuracy. A good serve is crucial to winning a volleyball game, and by running these drills at your next few practices you will begin to notice progress in your team’s serving abilities.

Serving Golf makes me wanna yell ‘Fore!’

The first of the serving drills for volleyball practice is called Serving Golf. Before you get any wild ideas about nine irons and sand wedges, the game is similar to golf only in the way that it’s scored. Start by dividing the court into 6 areas, either mentally or with masking tape. The court division is as follows: area 1 is the right back, area 2 is right front, area 3 is the center front, area 4 is the left front, area 5 is the left back and area 6 is the center back.

The goal of the drill is to serve to each of the locations one at a time. You can either allow one player as many tries as they need to hit all 6 or else have players serve one ball at a time and keep track of where they are aiming. Make sure to keep count of how many serves it takes for each player to hit each area, and in the end add up the number of serves for their final score.

Not only does this drill build serving confidence, it also forces players to serve with accuracy, which can be a great way to exploit an opposing team’s weak link, by constantly serving to the weaker player on their team.

Up next—Servers vs. Passers

This fun game is a great addition to your line up of drills for volleyball practice. Though it’s a 1-on-1 game, by spreading out the pairs it can involve up to 6 players at once. To begin the drill, have one player stand at the end line while their partner stands directly opposite them on the other side of the net. Player 1 is the server and player 2 is the passer. A third player stands at center front by the net to act as a target for the passer.

At the sound of your whistle, the server serves the ball in the direction of the passer. If the serve is within one step of the passer, then the passer must pass the ball within one step of the target. The point distribution is as follows: one point is awarded to the server for a good serve, and one point is given to the passer for a perfect pass. After one player reaches 3 points, they switch places with the target and both parties begin the game at zero points apiece.