Nothing is a truly individual action. Everything is determined by your teammates. Every kill, set and dig is based upon what your fellow players did before you.
Except one thing.
The serve.
“You have complete control over the game,” IU Coach Sherry Dunbar-Kruzan said. “It’s the only time where you can do anything you want.”
On the IU volleyball team, each player has a serve that is unique to them. There are several different kinds of serves. Everything from the standing float to the jump serve is used to thwart an opponent. Two examples of serves the IU volleyball team uses are the jump float and the jump serve.
When a player comes into the IU program, Dunbar-Kruzan said she doesn’t change the player’s serve unless it’s not working.
The serve is specific to the individual. Some things work for some players that don’t work for everybody.
Sophomore setter Megan Tallman uses the jump float, while her teammate, sophomore outside hitter Taylor Lebo, uses a jump serve.
“Hers is really flashy,” Tallman said about Lebo’s serve. “Mine gets the job done.”
The jump float is when the player jumps only slightly and attempts to hit a knuckleball of a serve.
It doesn’t travel at a high velocity but rather wobbles and swerves through the air. The desired outcome of the jump float is to throw the defender off.
A sudden swerve at the end can deter an opponent from hitting the ball just as she wants to.
That last-second swerve alters the pass from the defender to the setter and in the process messes up the opposing team’s offense.
When Tallman throws the ball up and goes to hit it with her hand, she doesn’t follow through.
She stops moving her hand when it hits the ball, making it float.
“It’s just like a pop,” she said, describing the moment when her hand hits the ball.
The jump serve, on the other hand, has one purpose: get over the net as fast as possible.
Lebo flips the ball up as high as the ceilings of University Gym allow her, jumps and brings her right hand up over her head like a hammer, impacting the ball at the height of her jump in a full swinging arm motion.
When the serve goes right, the ball goes over the net and then the backspin makes the ball dive downward at about 50 miles per hour.
While the jump float simply tries to disrupt the opponent’s offense, the jump serve is trying to create offense on its own.
“When I serve, I’m trying to get an ace,” Lebo said.
One factor that goes into how a player will approach a serve for the match is what arena they’re playing in.
Depending on the stadium, the ball can either travel farther or shorter.
That’s why, before each game, teams practice serving so they can see how a ball will travel in the stadium.
Tallman said that, especially in bigger arenas, when she hits the ball it goes ?farther.
“I’m not entirely sure why,” Tallman said. “I can’t really explain to you what happens.”
Dunbar-Kruzan has a theory on why balls float more or less in certain gyms. It has to do with the humidity in the gym, she said.
When it’s humid in the gym, it makes the ball heavy, meaning for Tallman and her jump float, the ball wobbles more.
In other gyms, it just feels like the ball flies farther.
“It definitely takes off on you sometimes,” Dunbar-Kruzan said. “You’re like, ‘Oh, I barely touched that ball and it took off.’”
Gyms aren’t the only thing that determine how a serve will differ from arena to arena.
The actual balls teams use react differently to different serves.
Nike balls float more, while Adidas balls, which is what IU uses, are more bottom heavy.
When Tallman or Lebo attempt their serves, it’s like nothing else for anyone on the team.
Each quirk in the delivery, or the foot approach, or the hitting motion is special to each player.
“It’s like the baseball player having his own music when he comes up to bat,” she said. “It’s an individual thing.”
Follow reporter Evan Hoopfer on Twitter, @EvanHoopfer
