How To Serve A Volleyball Underhand

One of the most challenging parts of beginning volleyball is to master the serve. For most beginners, especially young children, the underhand serve is the only way they will generate enough power to send the ball to the other side.

It’s also easier to master and become consistent so that you can build confidence and put your team in a position to win the point. For this reason, it’s a great way to start for a beginner, regardless of age.

How do you serve a volleyball underhand? Follow these steps and you’ll be on your way to mastering the underhand serve:

1. Use Your Non-Dominant Hand to Hold The Ball

For the basic underhand serve, you are going to use your dominant hand to strike the ball. You will hold the ball in your opposite hand, cupping the ball like on a golf tee.

You will hold the ball low at around waist level and out in front of you. You should have the same foot forward as the side of the hand holding the ball. For example, a right-handed player will hold the ball in their left hand and their left foot will be forward. This is important for having balance and generating power.

2. Make A Serving Fist

Now you will make a fist with your hitting hand. This isn’t a normal fist like if you’re punching someone, you want to create as flat a surface as you can with your fist so that the ball flies straight. You’re going to contact the ball with the palm side of your fist turned upward.

3. Aim Your Serve

If you don’t aim, you have no idea where the ball will end up! Even though it may not seem like you have control in the beginning, get in the habit of aiming. Make sure your shoulders are square to your target and you are swinging your fist in the direction you want the ball to go.

4. Swing At The Ball

Now is the part we usually think the most about, swinging!

You want to really bring your arm back far and then hit it very quickly. The swing needs to be through the ball – swing as if the ball is further away, don’t let the hand stop immediately on contact.

A lot of beginners are afraid to mess up and hit it wrong, so they don’t swing very hard. Well if you haven’t gotten it after a few tries, swing harder! Give yourself permission to look a little silly if it goes wrong. Once you start getting it over, you can work on your aim.

Serving Techniques to Avoid

If our player is having a hard time generating enough power to send the ball over the net, it will be tempting to try a few of these cheats. While it may help you get the ball over once in a while, it’s bad form and will only open you up to bad habits.

1. Stepping during the swing. While this creates some momentum, for beginner level players, it can be too much movement to learn all at once. Once you’ve practiced good form and have a good solid swing, if you just a little
2. Throwing, tossing, or dropping the ball. While this may feel like you could generate a more powerful swing, your contact with the ball will become very inconsistent. You will not be able to predict where the ball will end up and often will not even make solid contact.
3. Moving the ball during the swing. Moving the ball toward the net will take power out of your hit. Moving the ball toward your striking hand can be used once you have mastered the serve, but early on it creates more problems than it is worth.
4. Using the thumb to knuckle side of the fist. For some newer players, this feels more natural. The problem is that the surface of your hand on this side is smaller, making it just that much harder to make contact in the center of the ball. With this form, there’s also a tendency to swing a little more sideways, which is not what you want to start doing.
5. Standing or stepping forward with the dominant-side foot. While this may feel more comfortable for some new players, it robs you of your power are control. To be in balance, the opposite foot should always lead. Create this habit immediately and before long, it will pay off.

Helpful Tips to Master Your Underhand Serve

So maybe you’re trying and trying and just can’t seem to get the hang of it, or more likely you’re not generating the power needed to consistently put your serves in play. Here are a few things to try:

1. Make sure you are aiming high enough. Don’t look at the net! Pick a point over the net, maybe a spot on the wall or even the ceiling, and use that as your target. Sometimes getting that higher angle will help you drive the ball higher and give you a better chance to make it over the net.
2. Have someone else watch you and give feedback. Have this person read through the above list of techniques to avoid so they understand what to watch out for, and then have them watch your serves. Ask them to watch several, to make sure you are consistently using good form. Very often it’s difficult as players to see the mistakes we are making.
3. Practice and don’t give up! So many new players have a difficult time and feel embarrassed or frustrated and give up FAR too early. Everyone who plays volleyball has had to go through the same learning process for serving. Don’t give up! If you keep at it, one day it will just click. On that day keep it going! Keep serving and serving to capitalize on your improvement.
4. Serve from closer to the net. Whether you are practicing on your own or if you’re in a casual learning setting (practice or family volleyball night at your church or something similar) move closer. Start somewhere near half-court. When you can consistently make a serve from that distance, take a giant step back. By practicing that motion from a closer distance you will build confidence and begin to build the coordination needed.
5. Swing like you mean it! If all else fails and you’re getting frustrated, every once in a while let that anger out in a good way, get angry at the ball and just unload! You certainly don’t want to do this all the time, but doing it once in a while can sometimes loosen you up and help you realize just how hard you could be swinging. After unleashing your anger, follow up with some more controlled power serves and see if it helped.

General Serving Rules

• Each play begins with a serve from the team that won the last point. If your team served the last point, then the same server will continue serving until the other team earns a point.
• In some beginner-level leagues, there may be a “mercy rule” so that one server cannot dominate an entire game. In this case, it’s common for a server who gets 5 straight points to have to give up possession of the ball (and their serve) to give the other team a chance.
• At higher levels, this does not apply and players can continue serving until the other team wins a point or they win the game. It’s rare, but possible, for a player to actually serve a perfect set, 25 straight points.
• The server must stand completely behind the end line (the backline of the court) and stay behind it until the ball has been struck. They may stand anywhere from the left side of the court to the right. Although the right-hand corner has traditionally been considered the server’s corner, the rules have changed to make serving fair between right-handed and left-handed players.
• You are allowed to serve from anywhere along the endline. Don’t be shy about this! Some of the best volleyball athletes in the world use this technique to control their serves.
  

Aiming Your Underhand Serve

Although the underhand is a beginner’s serve, that doesn’t mean it has to always be an easy serve to handle. After you’ve mastered your underhand serving power, focus on placement. Instead of simply aiming your serve for the middle of the court to get the ball in, begin to choose whether you want the ball to land deep or short and left or right.

Over time you will become accurate enough to choose open spaces between your opponents to cause them problems. Your opponents always have to decide who will return the ball, so make it difficult by placing the ball in the open space between them!

Or do you have an opposing player who seems distracted or frustrated? Maybe you should target them directly! Instead of serving it right to their perfect hitting zone, place it close enough to them that no one else will try to receive it, but far enough that they have to move for it.

Although you will almost never see an underhand serve at a competitive level in high school or above, the underhand is legal and can actually be used as a weapon.

Are you ready to learn about overhand serving? Take the next step by reading our guide to mastering the different serves in volleyball.

Personally, I used to drive my 8th-grade volleyball coach crazy by using it once in a while. Everyone on our team could bomb pretty aggressive overhand serves and the opponents would be used to that and bracing for it.

When you get to a level where no one is thinking about a soft serve anymore, they all stand in position ready to receive a hard-driven ball coming at a straight angle. Usually, 2, 3 or even 4 of the opponents are grouped near the front of the net leaving the serve reception to just a few players which makes the decision of “who will get this ball” easier. But commonly, those players at the net will lose focus and not be paying attention to the serve later in the game.

What would drive my coach crazy? I could overhand serve bombs like the rest of my team, but I was about halfway through the line-up. By the time I got up to serve the game would be well into the set and I would serve 2 for 3 traditional overhand serves as hard as I could.

Then, I would decide it was time to embarrass my opponents. I would decide the time was right and choose my target before the ball was even returned to me. I would approach as if I was going to do the same overhand serve.

AS SOON as the ref blew the whistle I would quickly hit an underhand serve to one of the front corners. This worked like a changeup in baseball. The other team rarely got to the ball, let alone handling it well. The front players wouldn’t be ready to go for it and the back ones couldn’t make it all the way up.

When it worked, my team would go nuts, my coach would slam his clipboard into his lap, and the opponents would be shaken. Their coach would usually call a timeout and blast their team for letting such a pitiful serve win a point. I would recommend only doing this once, they’ll be ready for it next time. But it sure was fun!

A Great Quote About Serving

A good coach once said, “Your serve is the only part of volleyball where you control everything.” Remember that, you can take your time. Relax. Choose your target. You are in control and can give your team a high chance of earning the next point. Make it count!