“Serving Score” Presented by Matéflex

Serving score. An extremely useful statistic that you can calculate on both a team and/or an individual level. Similar to a passing score, we use the serving score to track who our strongest servers are and how we serve as a team.

We wanted to make serving one of a few points of emphasis with our players this season in order for us to find success in our matches. We encouraged aggressive serving but with a purpose. Aggressive serving doesn’t just mean power. It means serving into seams to make players move, depth, velocity, movement of the ball, and the height. You could serve a fantastic, hard-driven ball over the net, but if it’s right to an opposing player and right at the height of their platform, it’s likely going to be a pretty good pass. We wanted to challenge our players to think differently about their serving this year, and as a coaching staff we felt like tracking serving scores would be a great way to measure our progress. As a group, our goal was to achieve a serving score below a 2.0 which would mean that our opponent’s passing score was below a 2.0. In addition, our goal is to pass above a 2.0 in our matches so that if our opponent’s passing score is lower than ours, it would likely give us a higher chance of winning. The scale that we use to rate each serve is nearly identical to the normal passing scale, 0-3, however we have added a 3.5 value for a missed serve. We feel that this will still incentivize destructive/aggressive serving but keep the athletes aware that errors do negatively impact scores.

Below is the exact scale and how we rate each serve:

•  0 = ace
• 1 = bad pass, the setter has to bump set, a non-setter has to take the 2nd contact
• 2 = setter is able to set the ball but not a perfect pass, usually still within the 10ft line or close to it
• 3 = perfect pass, setter has to take less than 3 steps to get to ball
• 3.5 = missed serve

To calculate the serving score, you simply add up the overall score then divide that by the total number of serving attempts. (See example below)

Player A serving: 2, 2, 0, 1, 3.5, 3
Total Serving Score: 11.5
Total Attempts: 6
Player A Serving Score: 1.91

We like to track these scores in any scrimmage games we play in practice and keep a running excel spreadsheet that continues to calculate each person’s overall serving score and our overall team score. We will also track our serving scores for matches so that we are able to make adjustments on who we are serving at, if we should make any serving personnel adjustments etc.

One of the scrimmage games that we like to play to emphasize destructive serving and also incentivize quality of first contact is called Quality of Pass scrimmage. Throughout the game, the receiving team can earn 1, 2, or 3 points based on the quality of the reception pass. If it was a 3-point pass on the reception and they win the point, they bank those 3 points. If it was a 1-point pass on the reception and they win the point, they bank 1 point. Even if the receiving team does not score on their first attempt but wins the overall rally, they will still bank the point value from the reception pass to emphasize the importance of serve receive.

On the other hand, the serving team earns their points also based on the quality of pass, but in inverse order of the reception score (point values can be 1, 2, 3, or 4). So if the receiving team passes a 1-point pass but the serving team wins the overall rally, the serving team would bank 3 points. If it was a 3-point pass on the reception but the serving team wins the overall rally, the serving team would bank 1 point, and so on. Ace serves are worth 4 points for the serving team, and we have made missed serves either 1 or 2 points for the receiving team. We will usually play to 30 points instead of 25 since it could go quicker with the weighted scoring but you can play to any score you like!

Both on an individual and team level our group of athletes really grasped the concept of being purposeful with our serving this year and I do think it was one of many contributing factors to our success. Not only will practicing destructive serving make you a better serving team, it will also challenge your passers to improve their serve receive skills as well.