Crash course in hitting ze ball! (Volleyball101)

The scenario: You walk past an open field when you suddenly felt such a rush when a thing strikes you out of nowhere.

 Does this ball look familiar to you? Is this the one that hit you straight flat on your face?

There are actually many ways in avoiding that kind of situation to happen. You can dodge it, but in that way, you still won’t be able to conquer your fears  with the ball.

Now what’s left to do? Would you choose to cry on one corner like what a loser does? Worry not, my friends, because I’m here! I will teach you the basic skills you need to learn in playing this sport.

Volleyball is a team sport played by two teams on a playing court divided by a net.  It basically aims to try to keep the ball in the air, or attack the opposing team.

So by the end of this, I wish to not only teach you the basic skills, but also to help you conquer your fear of this ball.

Let’s start! So first things first, before we get to play volleyball, we need to prepare a number of things.

GEAR: Get comfortable shoes. 

Put up your hair in a ponytail or any style that will keep it to place. Make sure that it is tight enough to not fall down and get in the way. There are hundreds of cute ways to put your hair up for volleyball you just have to find the right style for you!

If you need to wear a uniform, don't add accessories. There's a reason you have a uniform and you can't wear jewelry anyway when you're playing a match.

Make sure your shirt fits well, not too tight, not too lose.

Pick knee pads that are well fitting for you and cover your entire knee.

BALL: The best volleyballs are made of leather or synthetic leather. It has a circumference of a circle 65 to 67 cm, weighing 260 to 280 grams.

For indoor volleyballs, you can choose the one that’s uniformly light in color like white, while in outdoor volleyballs; you may prefer a brightly colored one (like this) for it to be easily seen in the sunlight. But either way, as long as you have a volleyball (it’s simply called that way, not how others call it as volleyball ball), you can now play.

NET: An official net measures 32 feet (9.75 m) long and 39" (1 m) high.

Mind you, it’s not enough for us to just know the objective of this game. We must also know how the scoring goes:

SCORING: Rally Scoring

With rally scoring, teams score a point when the other team fails to return the ball over the net, hits the ball out of bounds, commits an infraction or makes a service error. In a set of a game, it runs until a team scores 25 points, provided there is at least a two-point margin of victory.

PLAYERS: Ideally, there are six players in a team. So you should have 1 to 3 rows of players, with the first row closest to the net and the back row closest to the rear boundary of the court.

The player in the back right corner will serve the ball. You can rotate players around the court so that you will have a new server for each service game.

SERVING: The game starts with a serve. A basic serve gets the ball over the net and into the other court to start the point. The first kind of serve is the underhand serve. In doing so, you don’t need to toss the ball into the air but rather, just drop it until your hand gets to hit it. Swing your dominant hand next to your head (like this) as you hit the ball. Now let’s do it.

The other kind of serve is the overhand serve. To do this, toss the ball up into the air in front of you and strike it with the bottom of your palm touching the ball, not your fingers.

Now let’s go tackle the combination of bump-toss-spike attack to be able to earn a point.

RECEIVING: Anticipate the flight of the ball so that you can receive it in a stationary, athletic position with your knees bent, your weight forward on the balls of your feet, and your arms extended forward and down. Bring your arms together until your thumbs are side by side, pointing away from your body and slightly down. The knuckles of your fingers should be facing out.
Allow the ball to bounce off your forearms (rather than swinging your arms at it).

TOSSING: So the next task we’re going to learn is tossing. To do this, we need to maintain our ready position with knees slightly bent, now put your arms up, in that way you can cradle the ball like this. So when the ball comes in, just snap the ball upward with two hands to set up a spike. Looks easy to do right?
 Of course we won’t end without me teaching you how to finish it with a deadly spike.

SPIKING: Next is hitting, which has pretty important footwork to learn. So Anticipate where the ball is going so you can jump and intercept it with the palm of your hitting hand at the extent of your reach, above and slightly forward of your head. After demo: (Sorry if it’s not that deadly, but you get the point of doing it right?) Let’s try again. This time, imagine the face of your enemy. Bwahahah kidding. Just express your immense emotions  as you hit the ball. Remember the moment you guys broke up. That way, you will aurely be able to “kill” the ball.

BLOCKING: I won’t demonstrate how to block the ball anymore since it’s already for the pros and not a basic skill in defense.

So guys, are you now ready for a sport that requires a positive team relationship, builds good communication skills, increases upper body strength and delivers an unlawful amount of fun?

The next time you might get hit again, you are now given three choices in what to do with the ball: Are you gonna bump it, toss it, or spike it?

Your call. But be sure to hit it with your best shot.