Perception of Affordances in Female Volleyball Players: Serving Short versus Serving to the Sideline

Purpose: We investigated youth volleyball players’ perception of affordances for different types of serves. Methods: Participants were separated into Less Experienced (n = 13, maximum of 3 years of competitive volleyball experience) and More Experienced (n = 11, minimum of 4 years of competitive volleyball experience) groups. In the Sideline Condition, participants were asked to report the narrowest gap, relative to either the left or right sideline, into which they could serve the ball. In the Short Condition, participants were asked to report the narrowest gap, relative to the net, into which they could serve the ball. Participants then attempted to serve into their reported gaps. Results: The proportion of successful serves was greater for the More Experienced group than for the Less Experienced group, but a statistically significant interaction revealed that this was true only when performing sideline serves. As expected, reported servable gaps were larger for the Short Serve condition (M = 3.66 m, SD = 0.67 m) than for the Sideline Serve condition (M = 1.93 m, SD = 0.71 m), F(1, 22) = 80.45, p <.001, partial η² = 0.79. Conclusions: Our study extends previous work to a different sport (volleyball) and to different sport-specific actions (serving the ball). The finding that perceived minimum servable gap sizes were larger for short serves than for sideline serves is consistent with differences in the constraints operating on the two types of serves in the context of game play.