Florida Volleyball Notebook: Aug. 18
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 | Volleyball
AUDIO: Podcast with Associate Head Coach Nick Cheronis discussing serving and service runs (.MP3)
Throughout the Florida volleyball team's 2009 training camp, head coach Mary Wise has placed an emphasis on successful serving. In two practices on Tuesday at the L. Gale Lemerand Center, the Gators worked on capitalizing on the serve to create lengthy scoring runs.
Momentum is key in the sport of volleyball and a key service run can make the difference between a win and a loss, as the Gators found out in several matches in 2008, including a win at Auburn where clutch service runs proved especially crucial.
“We worked on point scoring and trying to create runs of points off the serve,” Florida associate head coach Nick Cheronis said. “We talked to the team about winning matches and the importance of the serving and passing battle. One part of that is winning the serve.”
Cheronis says the team has continued to show improved aggressiveness in its serving game from a year ago, but that the team has reduced its number of errant serves as well – a combination that is not always the case across volleyball.
“We're a much more aggressive serving team than we were a year ago, but we're not nearly as high error as we were a year ago,” Cheronis said. “That's going to create a lot of pressure for the opponent passing.”
The Gators are a little more than a week away from their first match vs. UNLV and Cheronis – who heads up the team's scouting efforts – says Florida is still very much focused on its own game during training camp.
“We'll probably start looking at those teams the first of next week,” Cheronis said. “We're going to finish up this week working on the Gators and installing all the systems we need to install.”
The Gators return to practice on Wednesday.
The University of Florida is home to the 2009 NCAA Volleyball Regional. To order 2009 regular season and NCAA Regional tickets, log on to www.GatorZone.com/tickets. Follow Florida Volleyball on Twitter at www.twitter.com/GatorZoneVB and Coach Mary Wise on Twitter at www.twitter.com/GatorMary.
REMINDER: FAN DAY – AUGUST 23
Florida volleyball will host its annual Fan Day and Orange & Blue Scrimmage on Sunday, Aug. 23 in the Stephen C. O'Connell Center. Gates open at 12:30 p.m. and autographs with players and student-athletes begin at 1 p.m. The intra-squad scrimmage will take place at approximately 2 p.m.
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