Scheduled to start just a week after the end of the 2022 FIVB Volleyball Women’s World Championship, October 22 will mark the start of the new season in arguably the best women’s league in the world. Playing at 20:30 local time (18:30 GMT), Vero Volley Monza and Wash4Green Pinerolo will take to the court at Arena di Monza for the opening game of the 78th season of Italy’s Lega Pallavolo Serie A1 Femminile.
Legavolley Femminile A1 - 2022
Lega Pallavolo Femminile to offer stellar clashes right from the start
Watch it all LIVE on Volleyball TV!
Published 10:10, 10 Oct 2022
Vero Volley Monza and Italian national team setter Alessia Orro
It will be the second Lega Pallavolo Serie A1 season which is broadcast live on Volleyball TV, offering easy access for volleyball fans around the world.
Prosecco Doc Imoco Conegliano, winners of five of the last six championship trophies, will defend their title against 13 clubs, including Bartoccini-Fortinfissi Perugia, Cuneo Granda S.Bernardo, e-work Busto Arsizio, Igor Gorgonzola Novara, Il Bisonte Firenze, Megabox Ondulati Del Savio Vallefoglia, Reale Mutua Fenera Chieri, Savino Del Bene Scandicci, Trasporti Pesanti Casalmaggiore, Vero Volley Monza, Volley Bergamo 1991 and newcomers CBF Balducci HR Macerata and Wash4Green Pinerolo.
The regular season will include 182 matches, distributed into 26 legs of seven games each, in a double round-robin (home and away) format, set to finish on April 8, 2023. The teams will be ranked by the number of points collected (three for a 3-0 or a 3-1 win, two for a 3-2 win and one for a 3-2 loss). Should a tie persist, the number of matches won, set ratio and point ratio, in that order, will be the next criteria for the standings.
At the end of the regular season, the teams ranked first to eighth will advance to the quarterfinal playoffs. The losers of these quarterfinals will then join the teams placed from ninth to 12th in the race for the last available European Cup berth. The two bottom-ranked teams will be relegated.
Look no further than the very first match of the season to see some huge stars of the sport in action, including Italy’s Myriam Sylla, Alessia Orro and Raphaela Folie, Serbia’s Jovana Stevanovic, USA’s Jordan Thompson and Poland’s Magdalena Stysiak, all wearing the jersey of last season’s silver medallists Vero Volley Monza. Even rookies Pinerolo on the other side of the net will make their A1 debut with some well-known international names on their squad, like Poland’s Martyna Grajber, Romania’s Adelina Ungureanu and Czechia’s Veronika Trnkova.
The remaining 12 teams will get their 2022-2023 campaigns underway on the following day, October 23.
Reigning Italian champions and 2021 FIVB Volleyball Women's Club World Championship runners-up Imoco star a long line-up of world class players. They include setter Joanna Wolosz of Poland, opposite Isabelle Haak of Sweden, outside hitters Kelsey Robinson and Kathryn Plummer of USA, Alessia Gennari of Italy and Alexa Gray of Canada, middle blockers Robin De Kruijf of the Netherlands and Sarah Fahr and Marina Lubian of Italy, and Italian national team libero Monica De Gennaro. They will open their season with a game at Volley Bergamo 1991, who have former Imoco player Giulia Gennari and Croatian international Bozana Butigan.
Igor Gorgonzola Novara, who finished third last regular season and then reached the semifinals, will also start with an away match. American playmaker Jordyn Poulter will lead compatriot McKenzie Adams, Turkish opposite Ebrar Karakurt, Italian stars Caterina Bosetti, Anna Danesi and Cristina Chirichella, and the rest of their teammates against her counterpart, 20-year-old Bulgarian talent Nikol Milanova, and the rest of the A1 rookies Macerata squad.
The other 2022 semifinalists, Savino Del Bene Scandicci will also boast a stellar line-up as they welcome Perugia for their season opener in Florence. Top-calibre players like Chinese star Zhu Ting, USA’s Haleigh Washington, Netherlands’ Yvon Belien, Russia’s Yana Shcherban and Italians Elena Pietrini, Camilla Mingardi and Indre Sorokaite will rely on the playmaking skills of national team setter Ofelia Malinov to create the spiking opportunities, backed up by prominent Dominican libero Brenda Castillo.
There will also be a number of international stars to look out for in Cremona on Sunday, when hosts Casalmaggiore featuring USA’s Lauren Carlini and Alexandra Frantti, the Netherlands’ Juliet Lohuis and Bulgaria’s Emiliya Dimitrova entertain Chieri and Poland’s Olivia Rozanski, Germany’s Camilla Weitzel, France’s Helena Cazaute and Belgium’s Kaja Grobelna.
When Belgian strikers Britt Herbots and Celine Van Gestel, Italian opposite Sylvia Nwakalor and their Firenze teammates arrive at Busto Arsizio for their season opener, they will be up against players like Brazil’s Rosamaria Montibeller, Germany’s Lena Stigrot and USA’s Carli Lloyd.
Meanwhile, the fans at the Palazzo dello Sport in Cuneo will have the opportunity to cheer for experienced Italian setter Noemi Signorile, French opposite Lucille Gicquel and the rest of the home team as they entertain stars like Russia’s Tatiana Kosheleva, USA’s Micha Hancock and Serbia’s Maja Aleksic, defending the colours of Vallefoglia.
