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Player's serve proves successful for Shockers


Last Update: 9/24 4:01 pm
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WICHITA, Kansas – Right before Emily Stockman serves she dribbles the ball once behind her back. It's a homage to her other favorite game -- basketball, which she says she misses. And while that subtlety might get by you, her serve won't -- unless you're on the other side of the net.

“How the fans recognize me is, "you're the one who jump serves,’ it's kind of cool, it's kind of my trademark,” said Stockman, WSU senior outside hitter.

Finesse meets force when Emily serves. Ballet-like moves disguise what amounts to a long-distance spike.

“It's just like attacking from the back row,” Emily said. “You're just tossing your own ball.”

“Teams don't see it very often, so you're hoping that if they can keep the thing in, you've caused them a lot of problems,” said Coach Chris Lamb, WSU volleyball.

The first problem is just seeing her from some 17 feet behind the out line.

“Put the ball in my right hand and take a step with my right foot, is the first thing -- then I toss,” she said.

That toss goes upwards of 20 feet.

“I don't feel like my toss is that high and everyone else is like, "you toss it way up there,” she said.

While the ball is on its way down, she’s on her way up – maybe a foot in the air. Then she whacks the ball over the net at about 55 miles per house with top spin.

“So it either drops in front of the passers or if I hit it far enough, it will still have top spin and drop in the court behind them,” she said.

And that is a jump serve.

Stockman leads the team in aces as she did last season when she was Missouri Valley Player of the Year. So the jump serve works.

“She throws it up there pretty good and she waits and she's very explosive,” Lamb said. “So she wants to bring all that energy to the ball very, very late in the movement and she's an expert at it.”

After his season, she hopes to take her expertise to the beach where she spent last summer training with the USA Beach National Team.

“It's definitely my dream to pursue that and hopefully go to the Olympics,” she said.

And she wants to do that with a more compact jump serve.

“I probably don't toss the ball as high and I only take a two-step approach in the sand,” she said.

Emily is from Colorado Springs and spent her freshman year at Winthrop before transferring to Wichita State. As the Shockers head to Missouri State Friday, she has been named Missouri Valley Player of the Week each of the last two weeks.

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