PICKLEBALL INSTRUCTION
STACKING 101
Tired of being stuck in the same positions? Want to exploit your team’ s strengths or cover a weakness? Your solution is stacking!
WHAT IS STACKING?
Stacking is a strategy used in pickleball when players on a team are not in traditional positioning and are instead rearranged in order to keep one player on a particular side of the court. Unlike traditional play, the stacking team will start on the same side and then once the serve or return is hit, they shift into the desired positioning.
WHY STACK? There are a few reasons a team should utilize the stacking strategy:
• Stacking can allow a team to maximize their strengths. For example, if a player has a strong forehand, stacking can be used to keep that player’ s forehand in the middle. This allows for more forehand poaching opportunities.
• If one of the players is left-handed, stacking can be used to keep both forehands in the middle.
• Stacking can be used to hide a player’ s weakness( backhand weakness, for example).
• Stacking can be used to maximize team mobility. For example, with a right-handed player, the more agile person could be on the ad side in order to cover overheads for the less agile player.
HOW TO STACK?
First, it is important to understand traditional positioning. Traditional player positions are when the players on each team start with a player on the ad side and a player on the deuce side. The serving team rotates back and forth when they score. The returning team players stay on their respective ad and deuce sides.
Diagram 1: Traditional positioning. Players A and B are the serving team and C and D are returning. In this example, Player A is the first server and is serving to player D. All players are in traditional positioning. On both teams, there is a player starting on the ad( right-hand) side and a player on the deuce( left-hand) side. As long as Players A and B are the serving team, they will rotate sides after each point they score. On the returning side, Players C and D will not rotate while they continue to be the returning team and their score stays the same.
Stacking on Serve
When stacking on serve, you usually see both players start on the same side( ad or deuce) and then one player will slide over to the open side.
Diagram 2: Stacking on Serve. Players A and B are the stacked serving team and Players C and D are returning in traditional positioning.
In this example, the serving team or Players A and B are stacked and are trying to move Player A to the ad side. Unlike traditional positioning, both Players A and B are starting the point on the deuce side. After serving, Player A will shift to the right side or ad side. Since Player A is the first server, the team will be stacked when their score is odd but will be in traditional positioning when their score is even. This will allow Player A to always be on the ad side after the serve and Player B to always be on the deuce side.
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