The drill is called “servers versus passers.” The object is for one group of players to get five aces before the passers connect on 20 perfect ones. The first team to its goal wins. The loser, Nicolette Serratore said, is punished with pushups or something similar.

The drill works on two aspects of the game — the two that Syracuse struggled most with during another pair of weekend losses.

“Passing and serve receive,” outside hitter Silvi Uattara said. “We can pass much better, making us score better.”

After a tough weekend for Syracuse handling the serve receive, the Orange (5-9, 0-2 Atlantic Coast) is taking the week at practice to improve on the area of weakness.

The serve receive is the first step in volleyball, head coach Leonid Yelin said, and not being able to correctly handle the first hit over the net leads to many issues. The serve receive is just part of the bigger issue: passing.

The serve receive is a difficult thing to perfect, Yelin said. All it takes for the ball to fly off in an awkward direction is tightening up a muscle too much or loosening a forearm.

This is one technical aspect that SU works on in practice. Much of the game is based off of muscle memory, Yelin said, rather than conscious thought.

“Our body has no muscles, we only have muscle memory,” he said. “It goes so fast in the game you cannot think. You do not have time.”

Serve receiving is a product of muscle memory. The ball comes across the net around 50 miles an hour at times, Yelin said, leaving little time to react.

After the serve receive, the burden falls on the setters, whether it is freshman Erica Handley or junior Bailey Humes.

“We are trying to connect with everyone,” Handley said. “We worked on passing and serve receive a lot.”

It is important for the setters to put the ball in the right place at the right time, Yelin said. If a set is not at the right height for a hitter, it can affect the whole play.

This burden falls on Handley, who believes that it isn’t just a physical skill to have, but a mental one as well.

“Everything is mental in the game of volleyball,” Handley said. “Serve receive and passing is one of the biggest things mentally.”

Yelin and Handley stressed that once they start making mistakes, it is not a lack of talent, but rather it is all in their heads. Yelin has focused on getting his team to stay strong mentally, but it is a work in progress, he said.

“We are doing everything that we can,” Yelin said. “We want to all be able to work on this together, I cannot do this by myself.”

Published on October 2, 2013 at 12:52 am

Contact Eric: esriter@syr.edu