MPH Speed of a Well Hit Ball?

[Mac]

Do any of you know how fast a well hit ball flys, in MPHs? If you can cite sources that would be cool too. Thx.

[volleyjunkie]

Well, I have seen the "jugs" speed gun reading on Clay Stanley's jumpserve at 80 MPH when they were playing the Argentinian National Team in Texas years ago. Ryan Millar's jump float was clocked at 45 MPH. In college, when we clocked our players, a 60 MPH serve is an automatic ace. Unfortunately, clocking hitting was somewhat tough because you had to be at a certain angle to do it. I hope this helps somewhat. But if you think of the jumpserve compared to the spike, it is not as dynamic. So, my guess would be at least a 100 MPH or more.

[volleyjunkie]

oh yeah, when Stanley serves the ball at that speed, it is so fast that the ball spins and floats at the same time. it was quite gnarly.

[Mac]

Need for regular set hits at the net, not for serves. 100 seems high, but not sure.

[roy]

volleyjunkie said:

Well, I have seen the "jugs" speed gun reading on Clay Stanley's jumpserve at 80 MPH when they were playing the Argentinian National Team in Texas years ago. Ryan Millar's jump float was clocked at 45 MPH. In college, when we clocked our players, a 60 MPH serve is an automatic ace. Unfortunately, clocking hitting was somewhat tough because you had to be at a certain angle to do it. I hope this helps somewhat. But if you think of the jumpserve compared to the spike, it is not as dynamic. So, my guess would be at least a 100 MPH or more.

This is generally a good gauge, however it is really hard to tell. As you clock the speed of a hit or serve, you do need to be at the right angle and sometimes you are clocking the speek of the armswing as opposed to the ball. However, these speeds seem about right and fairly consistent with what others have been clocked at.

[cyberVBmidwest]

I sent an email to Kessel. I will see if he has anything.

[Heinrich Schliemann III]

Let's see 100 mph...

How many major league pitchers - who have better arms - are throwing a little, easier-to-get-moving-fast ball 100 mph? Not many.

Low 80's tops.

[ncaadropout]

I know for a fact that mid to high 60's is a hard hit on the beach. Assuming an indoor ball flies much faster than a beach ball I would say low to mid 80's tops.

[nowheretotheend]

The fastest serve at the 2004 athens olympics was 117 km/hour witch is about 73 miles/hour. An 80 mile jump serve is very hard to believe.

I recently learned that the serve actually travels faster then a spike. You are able to hit the ball harder because of the controlled nature of the skill. You do not have to worry about the block and you also have more time to think of where you are going to hit the ball. You are able to use your toss effectivly too broad jump through the ball.

The spike seems faster because its travelling a shorter distance after leaving the hand therefore hitting the ground/defender faster. I found this out whne I was observing a practise where they were using a speed gun on the serve and then tried it on some spikes to see the difference. It surprised me because i was also under the impression that a spike would be faster.

After thinking about it, it does make sense. When the best jump servers hit there hardest serve they put 100% into it. Because this 100% serve has a high percentage of error it is not used alot. An 90% power jump serve is more common. This might be another reason why everyone automatically thinks that a spike is hit at a higher speed, because you see people hit the ball at the maximum speed on a spike a higher percentage of the time.

[ncaadropout]

I can definitely imagine an 80MPH jumpserve. But I also think that in some instances the hit is most definitely harder than any serve. If you imagine jumpserving you usually contact the ball very high and almost above your head. But in hitting lines when there is no blocker most hitters will contact the ball very far in front of them(which usually means much lower) trying to hit straight down. I would think this way gets a lot more chest and back muscles involved and even more cores.

But that's just speculation. I know for a fact that I can hit an AVP beach ball in the low to mid 60's range with my feet on the ground tossing my own ball with just a pike and swing(I won a contest at an AVP tourny in NJ). Now, if you consider the difference in AVP ball and the USAV indoor ball. You can obviously hit that much harder and if you add an approach and jump I don't think there would be a problem getting an 80MPH hit. Am I saying that I could do it? No. But I think that most players at the International level probably could.

[CityTechLegend]

I'll say 85mph tops from the net with a block straight down the line from 4 without a dig.

Tops.

[KO7]

nowheretotheend said:

The fastest serve at the 2004 athens olympics was 117 km/hour which is about 73 miles/hour.

Just curious where you got that figure from, because I could've sworn I saw Brazil's backup RS hitter Anderson, serve it over 120 km/hr multiple times at the Athens games.

[nodisrespect]

Those line judges must have good eye visions with serves that fast.

[nowheretotheend]

I just recall commentators say that Clay Stanley's serve at 117km against australia was the fastest in the games so far.

Guess i should not have trusted the commentators

[nodisrespect]

Why did Clay Stanley leave early at UH? I remember him having 50 kills against UCLA in 4 games years ago, and I was looking forward to seeing him the following season but he was gone.