Technique Thursday: Rotation 1 Setter Entry

Getting a little more efficient in First Ball

I’ve been sharing some First Ball analyses from this past NCAA Women’s season, so I wanted to share a technical aspect of improving your First Ball game; setter entries. I did a multi-part series on pass-to-attack footwork for hitters earlier this year. Check that out as well as other parts in the Technique series that I’ve posted:

No-Pass Footwork
5-Play Friday No-Pass
Pass-and-Go Footwork
5-Play Friday Pass-and-Go

Rotation 1 Entry Footwork

Statistically, Rotation 1 and Rotation 4 are the least-efficient sideout rotations for high school and club volleyball teams. The common thread to me is that they are the most challenging setter entries. NCAA and pro teams don’t tend to see the same problems with setter entries, because the setters are bigger, more athletic, and more skilled at timing their entries. Rotation 1 continues to be a challenge for many NCAA teams, but that tends to be more of a function of opposites hitting on the left and outsides hitting on the right.

Let’s look at some of the top NCAA setters and see their releases.

Nikolov

Nikolov has a right-left-right-hopstop release, almost exactly the way I teach it. He’s a little more relaxed in his starting position, but a 6’8 freak athlete can cover ground just fine. With a 5’7” high school girl, I’d like them in more of a sprinter’s start.

Graves

You could call this a 4-step (left-right-left-right) + a hopstop but I tend to call this a Right-Left-Right-Hopstop with a rolling start, because he sort of does a little rolling left step before the ball is served so that he’s got some body momentum into his release. I generally don’t teach this in the beginning to high school kids, because I find they struggle to time it, but I find that good athletes will start to do these rolling starts naturally and I encourage that.

Let’s take a look at some of the women’s setters from the NCAA Final 4 and then I’ll share what I teach high school/club setters.