Posted on: 7/21/24

Last updated: 7/21/24

Author: Thalia Urena

Learning volleyball terms is a vital part of improving your success rate in the game. Terms like serve receive, serving possession, rotation position, and base/ideal spot are just a few terms that help us better understand volleyball rotations, and positioning.

In this blog post we will go over those three terms so you can better understand more about volleyball in relation to rotations, and when to move to your base/ideal spot.

Rotation position

Knowing your rotation position during a volleyball match is a vital part that helps ensure you will not lose points for your team by being out of rotation or running to the incorrect base/ideal spot due to not knowing your rotation position.

Your rotation position is the spot on the court that you are in, concerning your turn in serve. Remember you/your teammates rotate clockwise every time your team earns a point back.

This means that one person could go on a long run for serving but once their team loses a point then the serve possession is back in their opponent’s hands, and the next time the team earns a point back they will need to rotate to get a new server.

There are 6 spots on the court shown below in the picture added:

Knowing your rotation position is important not only to ensure you do not cross bodies with the players to the left/right of you, but also helps you understand where to go for your base/ideal spot (which we will go over later in this post).

Ensure you know your rotation position for those reasons but also to ensure your team doesn’t get called out of rotation and thus loosing a point.

Serve Receive

Without overthinking this, the volleyball term serve receive means exactly what it implies… serve receive is when your team is receiving a serve from your opponent. This also means your opponent has possession of the serve/service.

When your team is on serve receive you are on defense because your opponent has serving possession of the ball (One of their 6 players is serving the ball at your team for each new point earned until your team wins a point back…then your team now has serving possession)

A few important notes that involve serve receive:

• When your team is on serve receive you cannot run to your base/ideal spot until your team sends the ball back over the net

• You must stay in your rotation position (out of the 1-6 spots on the court where you are “in line” to serve) until your opponent makes contact with the ball during their serve & not during the ref’s whistle.

Serving possession

Following the definition of serve receive we now move into the opposite term which is called serving possession. When your team has serving possession your team either won the coin toss and chose to serve first (indicating your player starting in position 1 will have the games first serve) has won a point and earned serving possession back, or your team had serving possession and still earned a point keeping your team on serve.

When your team has serving possession you can run to your base/ideal spot once your teammate who’s serving makes contact with the ball for their serve (not the ref’s whistle).

When your team has serving possession you are serving the ball to your opponents. Having serving possession (and also keeping your team with serving possession) is a vital part of winning sets in a game of volleyball.

Base/ideal spot

When learning about the base/ideal spot its important to first learn about serving possession, rotation position, and serve receive. Since we have already learned those terms, we can now better understand what base/ideal spot means in the game of volleyball.

Your base/ideal spot is the spot on the court that your position ideally wants to set up in for offense and defense. This includes what side of the court (left, middle, right) and if you’re front or back-row.

Your rotation position helps us figure out where your base/ideal spot is as well as what position you are playing as for that set.

For example:

If you’re an outside hitter starting in position number 4 for your starting line up your base/idea spot is the left side of the court, in the front-row.

Here’s why:

Outside’s base/ideal spot will be the left side of the court. Since position 4 is the front row, that explains why their base/ideal is left side front row. Once the outside rotates to position 1 their base/ideal spot would be left side back-row.

Here are all the positions base/ideal spot:

Setter + Opposite’s: Right side of the court

Middle + Libero: Middle of the court

Outside’s: Left side of the court

In conclusion…

Learning these volleyball terms is a helpful way to improve your knowledge of the sport, and can make the process much easier when the time comes to learn from your coach + during high intensity matches.

If you have any additional terms you want to learn more about let me know in the comments below!

See you in another blog post!

-Coach T