Travis Moran on “Setting the Serve”

I got this response from Travis Moran on my post on setting the serve. Travis was a member of both VTAM and TABV. His career culminated in playing as the Australian Mens team’s libero at the Athens Olympics.

Extract from original post:

I’ve respected Sue [Dansie] for a long time as the ultimate authority on all things Volleyball so I asked her if girls struggled finger passing a serve more than boys did because their hands weren’t as big or strong. Her answer was simply that no one should receive a ball on their fingers.

She said that on reception, players should stand far enough to let any ball
above their chest go out.

Travis’s response

- with respect, disagree in a major way.
- with respect, that is a very much a 1990’s approach to vball
- overuse can lead to deficiency in forearm skill
- float serve especially is a very good time to use hands. Definitely on good deep float serves

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Travis made some valid points, and as someone who received plenty of serves at the highest level he’d have a pretty good idea of what makes good passing technique. Indoor volleyball will never go back to the days when people exclusively forearm passed the serve, but there’s something undeniably refined about it in a vintage kind of a way. It may be a 1990s approach (or even more outdated), but nostalgia ain’t always a bad thing.

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I first heard of Travis when some of my Norwood clubmates from Rostrevor talked about this freak of a player in their open honours team who was just 14. While in high school, he played with maturity well beyond his age and dominated every competition he played in including state league and AVL. No doubt he learnt a lot from his coach Glen Urbani, who deserves a notable mention for putting 5 players into the national team from an exceptionally small school programme. So it was only a matter of time before Travis got offered an AIS scholarship.

I was lucky enough to play U21s with him in my last year. He and Andy Earl flew back from an international tournament to join us on the third day. Although jet lagged, they managed to help us get over the line in wining the gold medal in a memorable 5 set final against the Vics. A couple of years later I was surprised to see Travis as Australia’s libero at the Athens Olympics. It was hard to shake the memory of him being such a terrifying hitter. But in reality, Travis only spent 4 months of his international career as a libero.

I haven’t seen him play for a while, which is a pity because he was great to watch. He’s involved more in coaching these days at various levels, where his experience is nothing short of invaluable.