Contextual interference has been examined in a variety of tasks, populations (youth, adult, expert, novice), and environmental contexts (laboratory, real world settings) (Brady, 1998; Magill and Hall, 1990). Studies have shown that individuals practicing under low contextual interference conditions initially perform better during acquisition than individuals practicing under high contextual interference conditions. However, during retention and transfer, individuals who practice under high contextual interference conditions (random practice) perform superior to individuals who practice under low contextual interference conditions (blocked practice). Magill and Hall (1990) suggested that the contextual interference effect would be found most often when practicing skills with different motor programs. The purpose of this study was to examine the contextual interference effect in ninth grade students using three different volleyball skills (underhand serve, forearm pass, and set) that represent different motor programs. Fifty-one ninth grade students at a local high school were recruited and randomly assigned to one of three groups: blocked, random, or random-blocked practice groups. All groups practiced the AAHPERD volleyball skill tests for the underhand serve, forearm pass, and set over a 9 day period for a total of 90 acquisition trials of each skill. Scores for participants' performance were recorded each day. After a two-day retention interval, all participants performed the same three skills as a retention test. Scores for acquisition performance were arranged in blocks of ten trials. The sum of the scores for ten trials was used as the dependent variable. Three separate 3 (group) x 9 (blocks) ANOVAs with repeated measures on the last factor were conducted for the acquisition data. Separate 3 (group) x 2 (retention order, blocked or random) x 3 (blocks of trials) ANOVAs with repeated measures on the last factor were conducted for the forearm pass and set. A 3 (group) x 2 (retention order) x 2 (blocks of trials) was conducted for the serve. All groups improved performance during acquisition, however, there were no significant differences between groups at the end of acquisition or during retention. A previous study examined contextual interference effects in ninth grade students using the same volleyball skills, however, the design also incorporated intra-task variation by having students practice different levels of difficulty of the serve, set, and forearm pass. No contextual interference effects were found in the previous study. The findings of the present study suggest that these volleyball tasks may be too difficult for these students to benefit from high contextual interference. Keyword(s): coaching, research