How Many Points Does a Missed Serve Cost You?

That’s an important question for a volleyball coach–it’s not rhetorical.

Think about your team, the teams you play and how many of them have serving rules.  There are more serving ‘rules’ than anything else out there:

• Don’t miss the first serve of a game.
• Don’t miss at game/match point.
• Don’t miss if your team’s last server had a service error.
• Don’t miss if the opponent just missed a serve.
• Don’t serve in the net.
• Don’t miss a serve after an opponent’s timeout.

This leads to a lot of situations where we are effectively telling a server to ‘go easy’ in order to avoid giving away the ball.  I used to think this way, too, until I was at the NCAA Women’s Final Four in 2011 and watched Illinois go back and rip serves constantly.  It worked for one match and then went south in the title game.  …so I started thinking.  I also talked with Kevin Hambly who told me, “There’s no sense in going easy.  Too many good passers, so the ball will just get crammed down your throat.”

I thought back to some Jim Stone teams at Ohio State.  He had a couple years where the offense was “Get Stacey Gordon the ball.” (While that sounds flippant, if you remember Gordon, you’d realize that was a REALLY good strategy in all cases).  The thing was, to get her the ball, OSU had to control the ball.  OSU’s block and defense were ‘average’ (relatively speaking), so he had his players go back and hit aggressive serves–opponents can’t run an effective offense (and challenge the block) if the setter’s constantly 15 feet off the net.

So the question I ask coaches–and my players–how many points do you lose with a missed serve?  The answer I always get is either “one” or “at least one because now the other team’s going to score” (presuming the opponent will hit the serve!).  But there’s a key factor missing in this.  It presumes a serve that goes in will score a point–that that value is an absolute–and it isn’t.  An opponent is going to sideout on a serve at least some of the time.

Thus, the cost of a missed serve equals:

1 – (opponent’s sideout percentage).

For a men’s team, that sideout percentage is probably 60-65%.  For a top-end D1 women’s team, probably 60% or so.  For a high school team, that may be 50% and a grade school team, 40%.  Thus, the cost of a missed serve is variable.  It means for my team that a missed serve is costing us somewhere between 0.4-0.6 points per miss–so why not be aggressive as all get-out?  Because there’s an advantage–more aggressive serves are more likely to result in aces OR taking the opponent completely out-of-system, thus leading to more points for your team.

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From 2012 through 2018, my team’s taken this as far as possible (my team this year isn’t good at aggressive serving…it’ll be a point-of-emphasis for spring practice).  We’ve even had a year where we average 4 misses/set (which got us into a spot of trouble in the Region title game).  It’s also the most successful run we’ve had as a program.  It’s led to better blocking during that period and a spike in hitting efficiency–and that’s not just because the hitters are suddenly ‘better’.

So?  So…

Aggressive serving neutralizes an opponent’s offense.  It forces them to become one-dimensional (usually setting the OH).  It makes blocking easier and your defense will have an easier time reading the hitter’s approach/intent and whether it is a tip/roll/swing.  I think this is ideal for situations where your team is the underdog.

If you serve conservatively and lose 25-18, you lose.  Does it matter if you whiff on 4 extra serves and lose 25-14 instead?  Isn’t the increased chance of a win–even if it only increases your chance by 5-10%–worth it?  That’s why you serve aggressively.

A second advantage: The errors are errors of aggression–you are signaling to your team that it is fine to go full-bore at the opponent.  It shows confidence in your serve-receive…fine, we missed a serve, but we’ll just turn around and sideout now…and come right back with another bomb serve.

Third advantage: I think there is skill transference between serving and hitting.  I think serving helps players learn to hit harder at an earlier age–which is important because if you don’t start your career hitting hard, you can’t really pick it up later.  Power first, then control.  I think having kids be aggressive with serving helps their overall progression into being better hitters.

Fourth advantage: It doesn’t really have anything to do with volleyball.  It’s life.  Teaching kids to ‘go for it’, to accept that they’ll make mistakes has carryover into real life.  Risk/reward are related things.  This could be everything from a young woman deciding to ask a man out (reverse of societal expectations) to an employee with an idea striking out on her own by beginning a new company to market it to simply standing up for ethics in a situation when most remain silent.   —ultimately, this is probably the best of everything.  Sports improves us at life.  *THAT* is ‘winning’. (shades of Charlie Sheen)