News
Verona win 1st International 'Rising Stars' Tournament
1st August 2010
The 1st RICHMOND Rising Stars Junior Girls Volleyball Tournament took place from Thurs 29 July – Sat 31st July at Kingston College in London and was hailed a great success, with enjoyable matches and a fun cultural experience for all.
The tournament was created to provide an opportunity for top European and English Volleyball clubs to showcase its young “rising stars.” This year the Tournament saw a visiting Italian junior side take on a selection of the best junior girl’s teams in England. Verona Volley U16’s (an Italian professional club), competed against Central England Juniors (who will be competing in the UK School Games Championships later this summer), Ashcombe Volleyball (National Junior Champions) and Richmond Volleyball Select team (a mixture of comprising gold and silver London Youth Games final winners).
The ‘Rising Stars’ was won by Verona Volley Femminile winning all their matches (25-11; 26-28; 25-18; 25-17 against Ashcombe; 25-11; 25-7; 25-11 against Richmond and 25-13; 25-22; 25-19 against Central England) proving that England Volleyball has much grass roots and junior development work to do to be able to claim a competitive place in Volleyball in Europe and beyond.
''We're not necessarily where we want to be, but Volleyball in England is making big strides going forward and having an experience of testing themselves against a competitive team such as Verona will only help develop our junior elite players who undoubtedly feature some outstanding talent.
The Rising Stars programme also held a training workshop for local coaches led by Giorgio Nibbio (an ex-professional player and now Verona’s Head Junior Coach and responsible for the whole schools development project) with the aim to debate elite junior players, school development and share best practice among each other. Samuele Zambon (President of Verona Volley), said, “We are very proud to form this partnership with Richmond Volleyball and Rising Stars and we aim to develop this exciting partnership and return next year with another competitive team.
David Rijvers, Richmond Volleyball Club Chairman and tournament coordinator commented; “We were absolutely delighted to attract the highest level national clubs teams that we did. The great success of this year’s event will now encourage the organisers to look at ways of making this ‘Rising Stars’ Tournament even bigger and better next year with more challenging European club teams.” We saw a very high standard of junior girls and it’s very rare for English club teams to play against a top European club team in this country. Thank you to all the teams from England and our visitors Verona and to the enthusiastic volunteers and spectators for all their support.
Back to News 2010
| 
