Here's the thing about serving - if you eliminate all the errors, you eliminate all the aces. The receiving team gets first shot at winning the point. If you serve underhand and get rid of all service errors (and aces), the opponent's side-out percentage is going to go way up because you're just giving them nothing but free balls. Do tennis players do this at the elite level? NO. They serve aggressively to try to get ahead in the point as soon as possible. This is the state of the game these days when you have a bunch of DSs and Liberos receiving every serve. You have to make them work for it.
Don't get me wrong. It's frustrating as shit watching Micaya/Logan pound serves into the net. The reason Elloitt is okay with those is 3-fold: 1) she's going to get an ace for every couple of errors; 2) a non-ace non-error serve is highly likely to put the opponent out of system immediately; 3) one good pass after a service error and we side-out and are serving again.
Would you believe me if I said Micaya and Logan are much better than they were last season and Peterson (who commits fewer errors) is the one who is serving poorly? Here are the numbers:
2018: Micaya - 71 errors vs. 21 aces for a 3.4 ratio Logan - 49 errors vs. 22 aces for a 2.2 ratio Sydney - 31 errors vs. 23 aces for a 1.2 ratio
2019: Micaya - 28 errors vs. 13 aces for a 2.1 ratio Logan - 38 errors vs. 21 aces for a 1.8 ratio Sydney - 20 errors vs. 3 aces for a 6.7 ratio
As a team, were at 139 errors vs. 58 aces on the season for a 2.4 ratio. By comparison, Stanford is at 103/54 = 1.9 ratio. Baylor is at 92/46 = 2.0 ratio. Nebraska is at 108/50 = 2.16 ratio. The aggies might one of the best serving teams in the country. They're at 137/84 = 1.6 ratio
These numbers show that we're one of the more aggressive serving teams, but we are not by any means as bad as we fans seem to think.
TL/DR: we don't suck that bad; don't shoot the messenger