How to Contact the Ball

Articles In This Section:

· The Spike

· History of Spiking

· Requisites of the Good Spiker

· How to Contact the Ball

· Where to Contact the Ball

· Position of Ball at Contact

· Position of Ball in Relation to Shoulder

· Position of Ball in Relation to Net

· How to Take Off, Hit, and Land - Part 1

· How to Take Off, Hit, and Land - Part 2

· Strategy in Spiking

· Recovery and Defense

· General Skills

· Team Play and Morale

One time the writer watched a high school physical education teacher introduce a volleyball unit to a class. The teacher made it clear that the game took skill, and to gain skill one must be shown how to contact the ball and the fundamental steps in playing the ball. He had the groups organized with only five or six boys for one ball. At this point he had shown good organization of the class and an awareness of the necessity for instruction. Then he proceeded to say, "Now the way you play the ball is to hit it with your hands, and keep it up ... keep it up ... like this . . ." For the next ten minutes the ball was batted around by the students with the admonition to "keep it up." That was all! You play the ball by hitting it and "keeping it up." There was no instruction in where, how, and when you "keep it up."

Spikers must be taught where, how, and when to contact the ball. It is obvious that the ball should be hit with the hand, but what part of the hand? To say never hit the ball with the wrist would be a fallacy. Spikers have hit with the wrists and scored points. Or to say that the spiker should never use the fist would be misleading. It has and can be done. In fact, if the ball is directly over the net, and legal prey for both teams, the fast fist action is probably the best way to handle the situation.

Others will say never use the side of the hand below the little finger, but we have seen players slice the ball with amazing success in this manner. Then we hear a "never" about the use of the fingers in spiking. Yet spikers who possess a repertoire of varieties of attack use this method successfully. They are still able to hit the ball legally and catch their opponents off stride.

Experts more or less agree that the ball is best spiked with the butt or heel of the hand—that part above the wrist and below a line drawn between the base of the thumb and the little finger. Preliminary to contacting the ball, the hand should be relaxed. Just before contact, a split second before, the hand should become rigid with the fingers slightly flexed as if to form an "open claw." Again, players use other types of "hitting hands" with great success.

At the moment of contact with the ball, if the ball is to be driven downward into the court, the hand can be snapped from the wrist to give the zip to the ball that is tantamount to the wrist snap of the golfer just as the club contacts the ball, or of the baseball batter as he swishes his wrists into the swing.

For a beginner it is well to hold the ball in one hand and slowly hit it out with the hitting hand to the wall or floor until he "feels the contact." By this is meant the awareness which enters into the neuromuscular system. Then learning becomes part of the organism. From the standpoint of the philosophy of learning, it is the "feel theory." All necessary parts of the organism have experienced or "felt" it, not once but many times, and it literally becomes part of the performer. He knows how and what he is doing and is confident of his movement.