In the Plane of the Net

[Paul Vancouver]

Originally posted by Brian Watson
A block is defined as the action to deflect an opponents attack. Think of this as a hit where you do not attempt to direct the ball, just merely getting in the way of an opponents hit.

It has been recently been pointed out to me that my interpretation of a block is incorrect.

USAV defines blocking as "the action that deflects the ball coming from the opponent by (a) player(s) close to the net reaching higher than the net."

Since any contact I make with the ball would deflect it, I considered all contacts meeting the other conditions (ball coming from the opponent, player reaching higher than the net), to be blocks.

But now it appears that if I do anything other than let the ball bounce off my hands/arms while I am reaching over and past the plane of the net, thus "directing" the ball in any way, I am guilty of attacking.

Simply moving my hands forward as I attempt to block could be interpreted as "directing" the ball. Should I now consider this to be an illegal attack?

My preference would be to consider any form of contact with the ball: spike, dink, flip, or whatever, should be labeled as a block if the ball comes from an opponent and the player reaches above the net when playing it.

If this is not the case, then some serious restrictions need to be put on the word "deflection".