Abstract: This study aims to explore the application effect of the match teaching method in the teaching of air volleyball option class in ordinary colleges and universities, with a view to providing reference for the reform of physical education teaching in colleges and universities. The control group adopts the traditional teaching method, and the experimental group adopts the match teaching method. At the end of the experiment, the two groups of students were tested and compared in the four major indexes of air volleyball technical mastery, match performance, sports learning ability and physical fitness. The results show that the match teaching method has significant advantages in the teaching of air volleyball, which can effectively improve students’ learning motivation, air volleyball technical level, game performance and physical quality.