A carry, sometimes called a lift, is called when a player's contact with the ball is prolonged or 'thrown' rather than struck cleanly — the ball visibly comes to rest, however briefly, against the player's hand or arm before leaving it. This most often comes up on sets, where a player illegally scoops or pushes the ball with open palms instead of striking it with the fingertips in one continuous motion, and on hard-driven balls played with an open hand that momentarily 'catch' the ball rather than deflecting it instantly.
A double contact occurs when a single player touches the ball twice in succession, or when the ball contacts multiple parts of that player's body in sequence during what should be one touch. Under FIVB rules there is a specific, deliberate exception: a team's very first contact of the ball after a serve or an opponent's attack may involve more than one part of the same player's body simultaneously — most visibly, a scrambling player who plays the ball with both hands or forearms in slightly different instants while digging a hard-driven attack — without it being called a fault. That leniency applies only to the first team contact, not to setting or attacking touches later in the same possession.
Judgment calls at every level
Both faults involve real judgment from the referee, since the difference between a clean touch and an illegal carry can come down to fractions of a second. Enforcement has generally loosened over the decades, particularly for defensive first-ball contacts, in recognition that the speed of the modern game makes a perfectly clean touch on every hard-driven ball nearly impossible.
How the setter position drives most of these calls
In practice, the large majority of carry and double-contact calls at any level of the sport involve the setter, simply because the setter touches the ball on such a high proportion of rallies and does so with an overhead, fingertip technique that sits right at the technical boundary the rule is designed to police. This is why setters spend disproportionate practice time on hand shape and release timing specifically, and why a setter's technique is scrutinized far more closely by referees, coaches and opponents than almost any other skill in the sport.
