Passing requires the ability to read and predict the serves' trajectory and the player's ability to understand and be aware of his/her own space.
In my book the 21st Century Volleyball Expertise, I lay out all of the sequences of practices below. I would like to elicit the concept of “passing with expertise in mind.”
In a coaches' clinic in Colorado, Dr. Doug Beal and Dr. Bill Neville shared that it is hard to find good passers because they need to know how to position themselves and discern the midline of the ball path's midline.
Passers also need to have the patience not to react to the variations and floatations of the ball. For that reason, in the 80's it was hard to find four good passers which forced the coaching staff to specialize and rely on the passing role to Kiraly, Powers, Bob Ctvrlik, and the defense specialist Sato.
