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It is impossible to overestimate the value of a topflight setter to a team. He is the equivalent of the quarterback in football and the playmaker in basketball. The spiker gets all the glory and most of the thrill from the game. There are few thrills in any sport that can compare with getting up on top of a good set and blasting it through the floor, but it has been proven many times that if other team skills are equal, four fair spikers and two good setters will beat four good spikers and two fair setters almost every match.
Why is a good setter so important? All he has to do on any particular play is to make a perfect set placed at the particular spot where the opponents' block is weakest—at the exact height, angle, and distance from the net which is required for the spiker he has selected as most psychologically and physically capable of achieving success at this particular moment in this particular situation with this particular play!
Often he must make this play after having received a poor pass from a team mate.
First-class setters are few and far between. Although the woods are full of good spikers, all of the first-class setters in the U.S. today can be named on the fingers of one hand. Unless we do something about this situation the quality of volleyball played across the nation cannot greatly improve.
Related terms include volleyball tournaments and beach vacations.
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