A rally begins with a serve: one player, standing behind the end line, puts the ball in play by hitting it over the net into the opponent's court. From there, the receiving team typically uses its three allowed touches in a specific order. The first contact is usually a forearm pass (a 'bump'), used to absorb the serve's speed and send the ball under control toward the setter. The second contact is usually a set — an overhead, fingertip touch that places the ball precisely for a hitter. The third contact is the attack: a jump and a forceful, downward-angled hit, called a spike or kill attempt, aimed at open floor or through the opposing block.
This pass-set-attack sequence, sometimes shortened to 'bump-set-spike,' is the sport's most recognizable pattern, but it is a convention, not a rule — a team may score with just one or two touches, and skilled teams deliberately break the pattern with quick sets, back-row attacks, or a soft tip over the block to keep defenders guessing.
When the pattern breaks
The opposing team gets one more chance to touch the ball first: a block, where front-row players jump at the net to intercept the attack. A block does not use up any of the blocking team's three touches, so a team that blocks the ball back onto its own side still has three full contacts left to build its own attack. This is why long rallies with several attacks per side are possible even though each team is capped at three touches per possession.
How a rally actually ends
A rally can end in several distinct ways beyond a clean kill: the attacking team may be blocked and fail to dig the rebound, a serve or attack may sail out of bounds, a team may commit a ball-handling fault such as a carry or a fourth touch, or a defender may simply be unable to reach a well-placed shot. Broadcasters and scoresheets track these outcomes separately — kills, aces, blocks, opponent errors — because they reflect very different skills, even though every one of them ends the rally and produces exactly one point on the scoreboard.
