Seven exciting new faces at the Lega Femminile 2023-2024

The Italian Lega Pallavolo Femminile Serie A1 has long been considered the top women’s volleyball national league on the planet and the upcoming 2023-2024 season, which is set to start this weekend, will certainly make justice to it with high-level and exciting battles taking place for the next seven months.

Besides retaining the vast majority of the stars that shone during the 2022-2023 campaign, Italian teams were also extremely active on the transfer market, signing several players that will make the league even stronger.

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Among the dozens of athletes who left other countries to compete among the best in Italy are some of the top players in the world right now. Here are seven of them, who you should keep an eye on as they settle into their new teams:

Paola Egonu (Allianz Vero Volley Milano)

After back-to-back second-place finishes, Milano decided to make further investments to continue challenging Prosecco Doc Imoco Conegliano and made arguably the biggest signing of the off-season by bringing star opposite Paola Egonu back to the league. The Most Valuable Player of the Volleyball Nations League 2022, the 24-year-old Egonu has won two Italian titles with Imoco before moving to Türkiye’s VakifBank Istanbul last season and will try to lead Milano to their first national title.

Carol (Savino Del Bene Scandicci)

One of the best blockers on the planet, Brazilian Ana Carolina ‘Carol’ da Silva ended a successful five-year stint with Dentil Praia Clube to test herself in the Italian League for the first time in her career. The 32-year-old middle blocker has spent most of her club career in her native Brazil, having won five national and five continental titles. A Tokyo Olympic silver medalist and a member of last year’s FIVB Volleyball Women’s World Championship Dream Team, Carol should form a fantastic middle blocker duo with American Olympic champion Haleigh Washington at Savino Del Bene.

Anne Buijs (Igor Gorgonzola Novara)

Carol’s wife, Dutch star Anne Buijs is also headed to Italy, leaving Praia Clube to join Igor Gorgonzola Novara. The former Dutch national team captain is starting her third stint in the Lega Femminile, having played for Uyba Volley Busto Arsizio in 2013-2014 and for Monza (now Allianz Vero Volley Milano) in 2018-2019. The 31-year-old Buijs will provide tremendous firepower to Novara at outside hitter and started her trajectory with the team on the right foot, setting a new club record for points scored after she tallied 42 at the Wevza Cup final.

Mayu Ishikawa (Il Bisonte Firenze)

The 23-year-old Mayu will join her older brother and Japanese national team captain Yuki Ishikawa in Italy as she signed with Il Bisonte Firenze for the upcoming season. It will be the first time the talented outside hitter plays overseas, following a vastly successful five-year period with Toray Arrows in which she earned nine medals in domestic tournaments. Ishikawa, who was the Most Valuable Player in the Japanese victory at the FIVB Volleyball Women’s U20 World Championship in 2019, is establishing herself as one of the rising stars in the Asian squad, having appeared at the Tokyo Olympics, in 2021, the 2022 World Championship and the last three editions of the VNL.

Avery Skinner (Reale Mutua Fenera Chieri)

One of the revelations of the American national team in the 2023 season, Avery Skinner has earned the opportunity to play in Italy for the first time in her career and signed with Reale Mutua Fenera Chieri, where she’s expected to be a key player. The 24-year-old outside hitter graduated from Baylor in 2022 and had a very successful first year at the professional level in France, having led Béziers Volley to their first French Cup title and taking home the Most Valuable Player award. Moving one step up at the Lega Femminile will be a big challenge to Skinner, but she’ll have solid pieces around her in Chieri to thrive.

Maja Ognjenović (Savino Del Bene Scandicci)

Savino Del Bene Scandicci lost two excellent setters last season following the departures of Ofelia Malinov and Chinese Di Yao, but they made one of the few moves that would make them improve at the position and signed the legendary Serbian Maja Ognjenović from Türkiye’s Eczacibasi Dynavit. The 39-year-old playmaker has played in Italy twice before and in 2015-2016 helped Piacenza take silver at both the Lega Femminile and the Italian Cup. A world champion and Olympic medalist, Ognjenović will have an extremely talented group of hitters to work with and will also play a key leadership role at Savino Del Bene.

Hanna Orthmann (Igor Gorgonzola Novara)

Igor Gorgozola Novara made not only one, but two big moves at the outside hitter position and will have plenty of options there with newcomers Hanna Orthmann and Buijs joining local star Caterina Bosetti. The 24-year-old German has been in Italy before, having played for Monza (now Milano) and Savino Del Bene from 2017 to 2022, but returns after a solid season in Türkiye with Türk Hava Yollari SK and strong campaigns as the main offensive weapon of the German national team.

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