Marquette's Ace: Hope Werch
10/28/2021 7:55:00 PM | Women's Volleyball
How MU's Hope Werch reinvented her serve to become MU's ace leader
For the past five years, Marquette women's volleyball has been known as one of the toughest serving teams in the BIG EAST.
A big part of that serving dominance has been graduate student Hope Werch, who now sits atop the program record book for service aces.
On Saturday night against Providence, Werch notched her 178th ace in Blue & Gold passing Christine Norgle (1985-88) for MU's all-time record.
"I'm just glad that I was able to do it," Werch said following the match. "Tonight I was like, 'tonight's got to be the night, I've got to do it at home.'"
In her years at Marquette, Werch has been flat-out dominant from the service line, with her career high coming in 2018 when she totaled an outrageous eight aces in one match at Villanova.Â
When Werch arrived at MU, her serve was average. The outside hitter recorded 14 aces while adjusting to playing six rotations in college volleyball as a freshman.
"We immediately put her in that four-step approach and threw her out there," assistant coach and MU's 'serving guru' RJÂ Lengerich said. "We put a lot on Hope her freshman year with passing and attacking. We were happy that she was getting serves on the court, but we were not looking at her as an all-world server at that point."
But in that next offseason, everything changed. Over the course of a few months after Werch's freshman season, she and Lengerich collaborated to improve her serve. They messed with a shortened approach, higher toss and different finish.Â
"The shift of the three-step serve to four steps has really helped me because it's just like a hitting approach," Werch said. "My momentum is able to speed up as I go along, which has helped my velocity go up, the higher I reach the better because the trajectory of the ball coming down is harder to pass."
The hard work of that spring paid off, as Werch fired off 55 aces and just 33 errors in 2018, almost four times better than her freshman season. She led the conferences in aces per set (0.51 per set), up from 0.13 per frame in 2017.
Ever since, the Wisconsin native's prowess on the serve has never wavered, as she led the conference in service aces per set again in her junior year and currently sits second in the BIG EAST in that metric.
Lengerich has brought a new mindset to serving, instituting a universal four-step approach and drilling it in practice by utilizing a scoring system to determine how good the serves are.Â
"RJ has a speed gun that tells how fast we're serving, and we're trying to serve between 38 and 40 miles an hour," Werch said. "He gives us zones on the court, and if we make it to the zone with a good speed, if it's flat to the tape of the net, and if it's a float, that's a perfect serve".
In graded serving at practice, Werch tends to score high. The team aims for 38-39 miles per hour, but Werch hits 40-41.
"I've been on the other end of Hope's serve in practice, it's no fun," Lengerich said. "That thing is moving and it is fast and it doesn't give you much time to call it in or out. It gets on you so fast that you have to make a split decision."
While the ace numbers are impressive, Lengerich said Werch's dominance on the serve gives her team an interesting element.
"She can just have that ability to bail you out of bad spots," Lengerich said. "She gets an ace, a bad pass, and then all of a sudden you get a block, she gets another ace, and you have 4 points. That's what she's been able to do for us, she gives us separation and scores points at a level that I've never seen in college."
Lengerich gave the example of a few weeks ago in the home match against Seton Hall. The score was 18-17 in favor of the Pirates when Werch went back to serve. She served seven straight points, complete with three service aces, before SHU finally sided out.Â
While Werch knows the team heavily relies on her point production, she never serves with the mindset of needing an ace.
"I try to take a deep breath and I've been telling myself, 'you're a good server,'" Werch said. "I think about having my toss, getting my arm up high, contacting in the middle of the ball. I just want to get a good serve over, so I try to remember the basics."
For Werch, not only does the graded serving help her at the service line, but it improves another part of the team.
"If we don't have good servers, our passing won't get better," Werch said. "It's actually a really good thing that we're a good serving team because it stretches us and when we go and play other good serving teams such as Creighton, we usually do a pretty good job with the pass because we see those kinds of serves every day."
Regarding the record she recently broke, Lengerich said she deserves every bit of it.
"I know the work she's put into it and that it wasn't by accident," Lengerich said. "She didn't wander into the gym one day destined for the serving record. It took a lot of work, and I'm happy for her that she put the time in, that she struggled, learned from some of her failures, and took pride in that skill."
In the end, while Lengerich takes a lot of pride in his team's serving ability, he says Werch did this all herself.
"It's been really impressive to see her work through the serving process over five years," Lengerich said. "It is not that I made her a great server. Hope Werch made Hope Werch a great server."
Hope Werch is now Marquette's career leader in service aces. She broke the 33-year old record in the third set last night against Providence. #WeAreMarquette pic.twitter.com/IziGwBkiEs
— Marquette Volleyball (@MarquetteVB) October 31, 2021
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