12-11 Ball Striking Tennis Ball Volleys

Sometimes the fight is all you get.  Victory doesn't mean anything if failure isn't a possibility.
-Mark Zupan

I wanted to work on volleys again today but the point that I really wanted to hit home with the girls is that it is not how hard you swing your leg that determines how hard you shoot, but rather the contact that your foot makes with the ball that counts. 

Everyone has seen that perfect ball come bouncing to them on top of the box.  Your eyes get big.  Maybe you drool a little bit thinking about how hard your going to shoot this ball.  You step in, swing as hard as you can and then your scream out "Darn it*!#$*!" as you watch the ball go sailing a mile high and wide or you try and regain your balance from missing the ball completely.

The most important thing when it comes to volleying, and all ball striking, is making good contact.  If your ankle is locked and you hit the ball on the sweet spot, the ball will go where you want it and there will be velocity on the shot.

Today, to reinforce the "Making Good Contact" idea we did all types of volleys with a tennis ball.

I. Partner Volleys

With a partner against the wall.  One partner through the ball from the side and the other partner volleyed.  We did this with both rainbow throws, where the ball is arching up and coming down slowly, and we did this with line drive throws that are similar to crosses.

II. Competition to goal.
I divided the group into two teams and positioned them 10 yards out from goal.  One line for each team of 5.  Each team provided a goalie and I threw the balls.  A shot on goal counted as 1 point and a goal counted as 3.

When we started the competition the old habit of swinging as hard as you can came back and to the delight of everyone not going there were whiffs and misses by the people who were going.  After most of the girls had gone through and made me look like the world's greatest pitcher we stopped and talked about making good contact again.

The next girls up did not swing hard and they each laced the ball hard at goal.  Everyone else saw that, the light bulb went on, and I started to fear for our goalies lives.

We ended the competition by going back to using real balls, which now looked like giant beach balls to the girls, and we had a lot of fun.