The effect of jump topspin serve speed on reception quality in men’s volleyball

Abstract

The essential activities contributing to winning a volleyball game are serve, offense, and block. The study aimed to determine if the increasing speed of the jump topspin serve negatively affects the reception quality. Methods: The serve speed was measured in sixty-five professional volleyball players. A total of 1270 jump topspin serves were analyzed. The quality of the reception after the serve was evaluated on a 6-level scale: (1) Serve error, (2) Perfect, (3) Good, (4) Negative, (5) Half error, (6) Ace. Results: The average speed of the analyzed serves was 88.2 km·h-1 . The Kruskal-Wallis test points to a statistically significant difference between the quality of reception based on the speed of serve (p < 0.001; η 2 = 0.16). The large effect (Hedges’ g) between the quality of reception based on the speed of serve was: Perfect vs. Negative (g = -1.1); Perfect vs. Half error (g = -1.14); Perfect vs. Ace (g = -1.27). The chi-square test showed a statistically significant association between reception quality and serve speed categories (p < 0.001). Conclusions: The increasing speed of the jump topspin serve significantly affects the reception quality. If the speed of the topspin serve exceeds 92 km·h-1 , it can be a great benefit for the serving team, although the risk of serve error increases.