I saw someone post the following on a FB group. This is a U14 coach. They have observed that their team’s serving % in matches is about 83% while in practice it’s only above 70%.
I always explained it as players trying different things at practice (which is what I want), players being more focused during a game (understandable), and maybe just being gamers (not sure if I fully believe such a thing exists).
But we are never at the level of passing I am satisfied with. So we served and passed a lot. Almost all our drills started with a serve. Yet our passing has never been great. Then today it occurred to me that even though we “serve and pass” all the time in practice, we miss a lot of serves so its more serving than passing.
So in short I’m going to start demanding more made serves in practice even if it means telling them to be less aggressive.
My immediate reaction was to say this coach needs to pump the brakes and think things through more. The three things that immediately come to mind are:
- Fewer service errors don’t necessarily mean lots more passing reps. If your passers average about 100 reception opportunities per session (just to use an easy number), getting 10% more serves in is only about 10 more balls. And those are spread out across the passers. Yes, there’s a cumulative effect over time, to be sure. I just don’t want to make it seem like going from 70% to 80% means everyone passes a bunch more.
- More volume doesn’t necessarily mean better training. If reception training isn’t deliberate – meaning the players are working on specific things to get better – then simply adding more serves isn’t going to have much impact. In fact, it could simply further entrench things you don’t want.
- Why take the edge off your servers if they’re doing well? I wouldn’t want to dull the aggressiveness of my servers in matches (assuming it’s at an appropriate level) by training them to dial it down in practice. Also, receivers who face tougher serves get better at passing those serves. There are ways to accommodate both – like the Tennis Serve concept.
The other thing I’d definitely want to understand better is what’s underlying the lower serve % in practice. If it’s kids going for it, that’s one thing. If it’s lack of focus or some other less productive issue, that’s the priority to address.
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