The emphasis in practice has been on developing the first contact in serve receive and on defense. While our team defense could surely use some improvement, the team passed a 2.1 on the day which is on par if not slightly better than we would like it to be. Passing is graded on a 3.0 scale with a:
3.0 pass being a pass where the setter can set all 3 of her attackers
2.0 pass being a pass where there are only 2 options to set
1.0 pass being a pass where the setter can only set one option or the back row
0.0 pass being an ace
Typically teams must pass above a 2.0 to give themselves a chance to win on a consistent basis, which we did.
I am also very encouraged by the ability that our serves had on limiting the opposing teams' ability to pass a 2.0 throughout the day. We held all 3 teams we competed against below a 2.0 passing average. The problem however, was that we missed too many serves. As the players learn to balance their serve aggression with location, consistency and nerves, we would like to make our service point to error ratio along the lines of 1.5 to 1. It is currently hovering around a 1:1 ratio leaving very little margin for error.
The last thing that I would like to emphasize is the team's ability to side out and get the serve back. Teams ideally aspire to side out 60% of the serves that they receive with about half of them on first ball kills, or kills that result without the opponent returning the ball over the net. We sided out at around 45% on the day, and 55% in the match that we won. Looking further at our ability to side out, there are two rotations that really stand out and if you were to take out those two rotations, the team is siding out at a 62% rate.
Regards,
Wyman
