Ognjenovic gets better with age

The 37-year-old remains one of the best setters in the world

Published 05:01, 01 Sept 2021

Serbia captain and setter Maja Ognjenovic has been with the national team for more than 15 years, and her brilliance and leadership throughout the years has set the tone for the European squad in the last two Olympic cycles.

Ognjenovic was born on August 6, 1984, in Zrenjanin, a city of bridges, youth, sports, culture and interesting architecture.

She was 15 when she first played for local club OK Postar and 18 when she joined the national team of Serbia and Montenegro. In 2006, she won bronze at the FIVB Volleyball Women’s World Championship in Japan.

More successes came after that 2006 World Championship medal victory and her talent caught the attention of overseas clubs. She first played with a foreign club in Romania but after that she played in five other countries, including Italy, Turkey, Greece, Poland and Russia.

As a national team player, she won two European Championship titles plus silver and bronze medals. She won two bronze medals at the FIVB World Grand Prix in 2011 and 2013, a silver at the FIVB World Cup in 2015 and the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

She helped Serbia upgrade their 2006 World Championship bronze with a title win and the Best Setter award in the 2018 edition. Three years later, the team returned to Tokyo to win another Olympic medal, a bronze.

Maja Ognjenovic with Tijana Boskovic

“I’m happy with this bronze medal success. It was not easy to mentally prepare for this match against Korea after our loss against USA (in the semifinal),” said Ognjenovic on bouncing back to salvage bronze.

“I am glad that we were able to do our job and that we won in straight sets.”

To summarise those achievements, Ognjenovic was a major proponent in Serbia’s four major successes at world level in the last six years, verifying her profile as a setter who gets better with age.

“I have a lot of motivation and experience now. As long as I am playing, I motivate myself more. I am just enjoying the game now. I get asked a lot when I am going to finish with playing. For setters, when you are young you have to gain experience, but you gain more of it as you go along.

In the last three years, I have been enjoying a lot and when I am on the court, you will see me a lot with a smile, enjoying the game more. Maja Ognjenovic