The Analogy to Golf Continues

"A golfer must train his swing and then trust it." - Dr. Bob Rotella in Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect

Dr. Bob Rotella is a foremost authority on sport psychology, especially golf. He might say that he helps athletes "get out of their own way."

Serving is totally under the server's control. The same applies for pitching, striking a golf ball, or shooting a free throw.

Dr. Rotella doesn't say that 'mechanics' don't matter. Of course they do. Proficient athletes who "think about their mechanics" during competition get distracted from delivering the ball to their targets. The time for working on mechanics is during practice.

Serving demands a repeatable toss, footwork, and armswing. The high percentage servers in MVB history all had 'repeatable' deliveries. I've shown numerous examples of Alyssa DiRaffaela and Cassidy Barbaro. Brooke Bell and Paula Sen also had "high percentage" serving but not as impactful. This season, with a minimum of 200 serves, Dani DiGiorgio, Anna Burns, and Sadie Smith all had serving percentages of at least 94 percent. 

"Life is about the management of risk." Serving carries reward and risk. Aces accompany "S's" - seams, spin and spinless, sidelines, and short - and deep serves. Sidelines, short, and deep serves all have smaller margins of error. Attacking weaker defenders helps but the best teams don't have weak defenders. 

Let's examine the serving a few teams. Rely on their reporting. Newton North, one of the D1 Final Four had an "ace percentage" meaning direct scoring is over 20 percent. This came at a cost of 15 percent service errors.

Winchester, the strongest ML12 club, had an Ace % of 18.6 percent and a serving error percentage of just over 15 percent. 

A wild guess is that Melrose had about 10 percent aces to go along with 8.5 percent serving error percentage. Do teams with higher "Ace percentage" also have higher percentage of service points scored. The answer is, "it depends." 

Here's input from AI about aggressive serving (including my prompt):

Prompt: In volleyball teams score "positive points" with service aces, attacks, and block kills. There is a "risk reward" to higher ace percentage. But do more aces also correspond to a higher percentage of service points relative to serves attempted. In other words, does more aggressive serving also lead to fewer opponent attacks and more 'free balls' and "out of system" attacks?

ChatGPT said

Short answer: yes, up to a point. Teams that serve more aggressively and produce more aces tend to win a higher percentage of points on their serve (more “service points per serve”). But the mechanism is less “more aces” and more “more bad passes / out-of-system swings.” And if the aggressiveness pushes error rate too high, the benefit disappears.

Let’s unpack it in volleyball language.

1. What actually wins “service points”?

When you serve, three broad outcomes matter:

1. Direct win:

   • Ace

   • Overpass → immediate attack/kill

   • Shank/pass off the court

2. Indirect win:

   • Poor pass → opponent is out-of-system (no quicks, predictable outside swing)

   • You block or dig that predictable swing and transition for a point

3. Direct loss:

   • Service error

When we talk about “aggressive serving,” coaches really care about overall point scoring efficiency on serve, often modeled as:

Service-Point % = (Points Won While Serving) / (Total Serves Attempted)

Aces are just the most visible piece of that.

2. How aces and aggressive serving link to service-point %

From high-level stats (NCAA, FIVB, pro leagues) and analytics work:

• Teams with higher ace rates almost always also force more poor passes.
  Servers who can hit seams, deep corners, and float tough zones produce more aces and more “2” or “1” passes on a 0–3 scale (where 3 is perfect).

• That means more out-of-system attacks for the opponent →

  • Fewer quicks/middles

  • More high, slow balls to the pins

  • More transition chances for your team

So in practice, a higher ace rate is usually a tracer for overall serve quality, not just “hero balls.” Strong serving leads to more broken plays and  higher service-point %.

Coaches who track detailed stats will often see:

• Good serving rotations: high ace % + high “opponent 2-pass/1-pass %” + decent error control = strong service-point %.

• Reckless serving rotations: high error % + only slightly better ace % lead to neutral or negative impact on service-point %.

3. Risk–reward: where it breaks

The key is the trade-off between aces and errors.

For example, suppose per 100 serves:

• Conservative server

  • Aces: 3

  • Errors: 5

  • Opponent perfect/“3” pass: 50

  • Service-point %: around, say, 38–40%

• Aggressive server

  • Aces: 7

  • Errors: 12

  • Opponent perfect/“3” pass: 35

  • Service-point %: maybe 42–45% (because of aces + more bad passes)…

  • But if errors climb to, say, 18–20 per 100, that advantage vanishes.

In other words:

A more aggressive server usually wins more points per serve until the error rate crosses some threshold where you’re giving away too many free points.

That “threshold” depends on level (HS vs college vs pro), sideout skill of the opponent, and your own block/defense quality.

4. Does aggressive serving lead to more free balls?

Yes, often:

• Tough float/zone seams create poor platform and high free ball back.

• Deep seam to a weak passer may cause panic swing or roll shot and easy dig and free-ball-like transition.

These don’t show up as aces in the box score, but from a coach’s eye, they feel like “hidden aces”:

• No full approach for the hitter

• No middle committed

• Easy read for your blockers/defenders

• High-quality transition chance for you

So functionally, aggressive serving produces:

• More aces

• More bad first contacts

• More free-ball or roll-shot situations All of which raise your service-point %.

5. A simple framework 

1. Serve outcome spectrum

   • Error - Perfect pass - Good pass - Bad pass - Overpass - Ace

2. **Goal isn’t “aces” - it’s pushing the opponent as far right on that spectrum as possible without falling off the left edge into error-land.

3. Aggressive serving is good if:

   • Aces + overpasses + bad passes outweigh the extra errors.

   • Your service-point % rises (more points per rotation).

4. Aggressive serving is bad if:

   • Ace rate looks cool on paper, but you’re missing 2–3 per set in key rotations.

   • Your service-point % stagnates or drops because you’re giving away too many points.

6. How you might phrase it to players

Something like:

“We’re not chasing aces, we’re chasing pressure. Aces are just the tip of the iceberg. The real win is forcing bad passes, predictable swings, and free balls. Aggressive serving is great - as long as our errors don’t erase the pressure we’re creating.”

You can even give them a target:

• “If you can keep your miss rate under ~10–12% while making their passers uncomfortable, that’s winning volleyball for us.”

(Adjust the exact number for your level, but that’s a nice, simple benchmark.)

Bottom line

Yes, more aggressive serving and more aces generally correlate with more service points per serve because of the chain: tough serve to bad pass to fewer clean attacks to more free balls and transition chances for your team.

• The key is to ensure that error rate doesn’t climb so high that it cancels all that out.

Lagniappe. From the Edelman-Gronk podcast with Matt Light and Will Campbell - "What does football mean to you?"

Light: "Discipline"

Campbell: "Teaching real-world skills"...prepares you for life.