News
Richmond unites with a top professional volleyball club in La LEGA (Italia)
26th Nov 2009
Richmond Volleyball has today announced a community led partnership with an Italian Serie A Premier Professional Volleyball Club,
Verona Volley Femminile.
The agreement will see exchange visits between the two clubs for its players (junior and seniors), and coaches. They will also share best practice on a range of matters from community involvement & development through to club administration & player performance.
Both clubs are dedicated to building a long term relationship which puts community, youth development and performance at its very heart. Next Summer (July 2010) will see the first exchange visits with the ‘Rising Stars’ Volleyball Tournament coming to London (host City for 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games) involving six top junior u18 men and women teams from Italy, Russia and Holland. The partnership will also form a collaboration of businesses, education and public sector bodies in Richmond and Kingston.
Verona Volley is one of the top
professional Serie A2 volleyball clubs
in Italy playing in one of the best leagues in the world and tickets for La LEGA Volley matches are extremely popular. It is currently a 16 team league that plays a 30 game schedule from September to April. The top two teams of Serie A1 quality to CEV European Champions League (top competition for men's and women’s volleyball clubs in Europe with prize money up to one million Euro’s for the CEV winners). Volleyball in Italy is one of the women's and men’s sports for excellence. For both men and women volleyball is the second most practiced team sport in Italy, second only to football. The Italian Men’s Volleyball Championships is followed by about 20,000,000 (trwenty million) viewers per season and the Italian Women's Volleyball Championships is followed by about 12,000,000 (twelve million) viewers per season. It’s the 3rd most watched sport after football and basketball.
Samuele Zambon (President of Verona Volley), said, “Our partnership with Richmond Volleyball is based on establishing solid principles for a long term relationship between our two clubs. Sharing of knowledge will support and strengthen Verona Volley Femminile. David Rijvers (Chairman of Richmond Volleyball), commented: We are very proud to form this partnership with Verona Volley and excited to welcome the first exchange next summer (July 2010) with the ‘Rising Stars’ Volleyball Tournament. Richmond Volleyball has strong links with the local Italian community in London and is one of the biggest supporters of the La Lega. It’s estimated that 40,000 Italians are of the Local London Community (2001 cereus).
Did you know about Italian Volleyball!
In Italy due to the sheer dominance of the sport (men and women) have more registered volleyball players than football. This is thanks to the success of the national teams’ in European and World Championship tournaments. The Italian Men dominated international volleyball competitions in the 1990s and early 2000s, by winning three World Championships in a row (1990, 1994 and 1998), six European Championships, one World Cup (1995) and eight World League titles (1990, 1991, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1999 and 2000). The Italian Women are 2007 European Women’s Volleyball Championships and the 2007 FIVB Women's World Cup gold medal winners.
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