Tip by Amanda Mullen, Pitt United Volleyball.
2 Minutes to Win It - Terminating Free Down Balls
In this 6 vs 6 drill, one team receives as many free and down balls as the time allows. The responsibility of the “receiving team” is to terminate the ball entirely to receive a point. Sequence from coach is ALWAYS - free, free, down. It’s nice to change up the pace from the coach and add some topspin to your receiving team. We incorporate a few rules into this towards point scoring to ensure the team stays focused and goes hard which includes the following.
1.) The team not receiving the ball from the coach and playing defense in the drill must - block the ball or perform a three touch (pass, set, hitter catch) to stop the point.
2.) If the offense team (receiving coaches ball) has three consecutive errors, they lose a point. Train players to not just go hard, but go smart!
3.) Offense team scores by terminating the ball from the coach. Can be a hard attack ball, a tip to donut, a roll shot down the line, setter dump… does not matter just have the ball find the floor to get the next ball from coach as quickly as possible.
After 2 minutes get a drink. They should be working hard and will a quick hydrate. The switch offense and defense teams.
After the 2 minutes is complete following the switch, whatever scored most picks a quick conditioning punishment for losing team. If the punishment teams wants to call “double or nothing” they go back on the court to beat their score from the first round. If they have the higher score after their second round - the original team who won and gave the punishment now does it. If the losing team loses a second time not being able to beat the original winning teams score they do the punishment twice!
It’s a healthy competitive game and will get everyone in the gym fired up and focused!