Volleyball Chants

Often chants are done by the team players themselves, but some schools have cheerleading squads set up for the teams as well. The fast pace of the game usually precludes the use of fancy stunts and flying, but since all matches are done inside of a gymnasium, the floor can be used as an additional percussive surface when performing the cheers.

Volleyball Chants for Specific Events

For example, when a player has "aced" the other team (served the ball and immediately scored a point), an easy cheer to celebrate it would be One, two, three, four, slam that ball right to the floor!, followed by stomping the floor one, two, or three times. Between clapping and stomping, there's not necessarily many words needed to drive home the point: stomp, clap-clap, stomp, clap-clap, stomp, stomp. Point a finger at the other team and shout Ace! Since an ace is, by its nature, a fast event, the cheers should reflect that same inevitable triumphant feeling of the ball slamming through the opposite team's defense.

Another common event in volleyball, if your team is lucky, is the spike. Volleyball chants for spikes can be a little more complex simply because they are usually the result of teamwork – a "bump," "set" and a "hit" happening before the "spike" itself. Saying those four words followed by something like That is what we really like… is a good encouragement and acknowledgement of the team working together. If you'd like to take a more antagonistic track with the other team, using some variation of "You got SERVED!" with whoops and laughter can also be quite effective and fun for your team.

The other side of spiking, of course, is blocking, and in some ways that requires even more skill since it is usually up to one person to go up to the net and keep the ball from slamming through the defense. Volleyball chants for blocks can be more creative, and again often use the floor for emphasis. "Ac-cessssss…" can be hissed, followed by slamming your hands down to the floor and pronouncing "De-NIED!!" Another method is to use simple rhyming couplets:

You try to get

All in our space

We slam that ball

Back in your face!

Another common event that deserves its own set of volleyball chants is the sideout. The word itself is a great one to work a cheer around, in part because "out" rhymes with so many words. The word itself can be spelled out in a way that rhymes, with the first two letters spoken, then the first three, and finally the entire word S-I-D-E-O-U-T. The D and the T rhyme, and finishing it off with stomps, claps, or shouting out the name of your school is a great way to quickly acknowledge the event and move on to the next.

Staying Positive, Staying Helpful

The game of volleyball moves quickly; the volleyball chants should, too. In addition, it is often a very emotional game, and cheers that get too antagonistic to the other team can be destructive to the feeling of the game in general. Cheering on your own team is usually a much better way to focus a squad's energies, rather than trying to demoralize the other team.

One of the benefits of the brevity of volleyball cheers and chants is that it is usually quite easy to get the rest of the audience involved in the process by teaching them cheers. In fact, rather than using many different cheers, having only one or two for each event in the game (two for spiking, one for sideouts, etc) will make the spectators look forward to the event just for the joy of shouting out the cheers together.