The title of this post comes from a search query which brought someone to the website. When I saw it I was immediately struck by how often that question must get asked by coaches in any given season. They certainly ask it inside their own heads! I know it flashed through my head a number of times in years when I watched teams miss several serves in a row – often costing us momentum in the process (e.g. my 2012-13 Exeter Men’s team in the Finals 8s tournament).
So let’s think about why players miss their serves.
Poor mechanics
The first area we have to look at in addressing serving is the mechanics of the servers. The specifics there are best left for another time. Suffice it to say, players lacking good mechanics are very likely to be inconsistent (at best) with their serves. Much of the time it’s the toss which is the biggest culprit. Sometimes, however, mental issues can creep in which lead to faulty mechanics in an otherwise competent server (see below).
Tentative
Nervous players make mistakes. I had a player a while back who demonstrated clearly in training more than sufficient power to get the ball over the net. Once she was put into a situation where there was some kind of pressure (drill or game), though, everything changed. Suddenly she could barely get the ball to the net. That’s an extreme case, but I see many players make mistakes serving because they are trying to avoid mistakes. This tends to manifest in poor ball contact coming from a weak arm swing and/or a soft hand rather than a firm one on impact (this happens a lot in hitting too) or putting too much loft on the ball. If you’re seeing a lot of balls come up short or sailing out long, you could have a problem in this area.
Overly Aggressive
The reverse of tentative serving is being too aggressive. Balls hit hard into the net or flying on a line well long are symptomatic of this issue. You as a coach have to define what is appropriate aggressiveness, as you will naturally see more missed serves when you ask your team to serve tough than would likely otherwise be the case. Of course there are also the cases of players just simply trying to hit the ball too hard (often boys).
Poor Situational Awareness
Players need to know when it’s acceptable to take risk and when they really need to focus on getting the serve in (see When the Serve Needs to Be In). If players are missing serves at bad times, it is up to the coach to get that corrected in training by making sure there are consequences (not punishment) for that sort of thing in drills and games. Something that makes them realize the impact of their error.
Insufficient skill
Sometimes coaches simply ask players to do something for which they lack the skill required. This is most likely to manifest when a coach calls a serving target either by zone or player (“Serve #2”). Players who just can’t consistently target their serves often miss more serves trying to do what the coach wants.
I think this list covers miss serve causality pretty well. If you can think of something else that should be here, though, definitely leave a comment.
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