How To Serve Underhand In Volleyball Video

The underhand serve is a passive and slower volleyball serve designed to only get the ball over the net and, as you will see in this sports video, is very easy to return.

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Learn overhand serve first
Hold ball with off-hand
Give ball a slight lift
Step forward slightly

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Todd is the head coach for the University of Central Florida's women's volleyball team. Prior to that he coached as USC where they competed in the division one final four. He has also been a part of the coaching delegation for the USA women's team in the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece. He was an assistant at Michigan University early in his career and simply loves the sport and coaching it where ever he is.

TODD DAGENAIS: There's so many different ways to serve the ball in the game of volleyball. We talked about serving from the floor. We talked two different forms of jump serving. This one is more for the beginners. Now, we really encourage you when you're just starting out. If you're going to serve, we encourage you to serve overhand, that means you might have to move in to the court a little bit to make sure that you get the ball over the net. We still try to encourage you to do it overhand. But if for some reason you still don't have enough strength to get the ball over the net, the way to do it might be serving underhand. The very first thing that we want to start off with when we're serving underhand is our feet. Again, our left foot is in front of our right foot. We're going to hold the ball in our left hand and we're going to strike the ball with our right hand. Now, you have to be careful because a good referee knows that if that ball is in your left hand when you strike it with your right hand that's an illegal contact that's going to cause you point. So what you have to do is you have to give it a slight toss and so you're hitting the ball while it's in the air. One of the ways that you do this is you're going to toss the ball, step a little bit and then contact the ball with your right hand which Kristine is going to demonstrate. Again, you're going to step with the left, contact the ball with the right, making sure that that ball is completely out of your hand, launching it at a trajectory that will allow it to clear the net. If you're just a beginner, this might be the best way to do it, serving underhand. Don't laugh at it, it might work.

How to Serve Underhand in Volleyball Video

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