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The Daily Tar Heel

Variety of service carries Tar Heels

volleyball
Stephanie Jansma?s 71 assists helped secure her as the tournament?s MVP" but Jansma (6) also provides UNC a quality topspin serve.

Standing several feet off the court North Carolina's Aleksandra Georgieva launched a high-arcing serve with a wicked topspin finding a hole in the Missouri State defense for a UNC point.


Georgieva a first-year hitter from Bulgaria" opened up play for the Tar Heels with the first serve in the Carolina Volleyball Classic because of her foreign style.


""Since she's from Bulgaria" she serves Eastern European" coach Joe Sagula said. Having her serve first throws people off.""


The results were clear"" as Georgieva led the Tar Heels in service points with 14 in their first match against Missouri State.


""It is different because I serve far away from the court" and it is just difficult for passers to pass it because it goes high and it moves with topspin Georgieva said.


Georgieva's is one of many different service styles the Tar Heels can throw at opponents this season.


Sagula said he is placing a lot of emphasis on his team's ability to mix it up from behind the service line this season.


I think we want to be really aggressive about how we go about serving not just trying to put the ball in play and I think we used serving kind of as a mechanism to change things up against our opponent he said.


The team also has a lot of serving-style variation among returning players coming into 2008.


If you've got one player Sue Haydel who serves a floater Steph Jansma comes in with topspin Sagula said. (The opponents) may be ready for one thing" and all of a sudden topspin is going to have the ball falling in front of them.""


To illustrate the contrast" Haydel recorded three service aces in the tournament with her floating service. Kaylie Gibson matched that number also acing three times with a low hard-driving serve.


The Tar Heels as a team recorded 17 aces and 19 service errors in the tournament" while their three opponents combined for eight aces and 14 service errors.


Sagula said he is satisfied with the team's efforts and isn't too concerned with the amount of errors they committed.


""We might make a couple more errors now and then" but we're getting results because we're getting some aces" and we're not letting our opponents getting flow on offense.""

Contact the Sports Editor
at sports@unc.edu.


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