Just Wanted To Play

So today we had our only practice of the week, (yeah, I’m not thrilled about that) and we were working on transitions. Pretty basic stuff if you understand what you’re doing. It’s kind of hard to explain with words and not some type of visual aid, but I’ll give it a try. The position I’ve played the longest is setter, so I’m the one who always (well, mostly, always doesn’t always happen) gets the second touch so that I can set up the shot for my hitters, hence the name setter. Now the particular part of the transitions we were working on is when we are in serve-receive, with a back row setter on the right side, (generally known as rotation one for serve-receive using 6-2). This pretty much means that the other team will be serving at us and I am standing in the back on the right. 

Transitions for 6-2 in serve-receive
Image courtesy of Nitro 12 Regional website

What happens now is that I (S) will push up and hide on my right front hitter (RF), while the left front (LF) will pull back to help pass with the center back (CB) and left back (LB). This prevents most servers from being able to serve at me, which would put the play out of sync and basically increase the chance of us losing the point. So by standing on my hitter I can escape a vast majority of screwy plays. From there everyone can transition into their quick spots easily.

We worked on this for at least twenty minutes just tossing and catching the balls before we actually got to play it out.The only players getting any legitimate play time were those who got the first touches, so they could work on passing it to me. So when our coach finally said, “Okay, this one’s live. Make a play.” there was a sigh of relief across the court. I don’t know if you play volleyball, but I’m sure that it can be translated to all sports that if you’re walking through drills, it SUCKS! Seriously, there is nothing worse because all you want to do is play. It’s like having a scratch that you can’t itch, it’ll drive you insane! I think I speak for my entire team when I say, I just wanted to play!