Volley Source

Catia Pedrini, the president of Modena, wrote a letter to season ticket holders announcing the arrival of Micah Christenson.  This seemed to be common knowledge and was mentioned by the president of Lube Civitanova, but this is the first time his signing was unveiled by Modena.  This essentially a straight swap at the setter position since Bruno has been announced as a new signing for Lube.  This will be Christenson's second club since he signed with Lube Civitanova right out of college.  The USC alum played at Lube for three seasons, winning the Italian SuperLega, the Italian SuperCoppa, the Coppa Italia, bronze and silver medals at the CEV Champions League, and he also won a silver medal at the FIVB Club World Championships.  Micah Christenson set the most efficient offense in the regular season and the playoffs of the Italian SuperLega this year. 

Local writer in Verona, Marzio Perbellini, is reporting that Blu Volley Verona are close to signing Brendan Sander.   Brendan just finished his senior season at BYU where he was twice named AVCA First-Team All-American as well as First-Team All-American named by Volleyballmag.com.  If this deal gets finalized he will be following in his brother's footsteps as Taylor started his professional career with Blu Volley Verona in 2014.  Taylor played there for two seasons, winning the CEV Challenge Cup with the club in 2016.  Brendan has been named to the 21 man roster for the United States in the upcoming FIVB Volleyball Nations League, but he was not included in the roster of 14 playing in China from May 25-27. Sander's addition to Verona will possibly be to fill the void left by Thomas Jaeschke, who has been linked with Modena and is the primary target of Trentino.  The former NCAA Player of the Year from Loyola played this past season with Verona after sp...

The winners of 3 Polish PlusLiga titles have enlisted the services of 3 NCAA Champions.  The captain of the United States National Team will be teaming up with Kawika Shoji at Asseco Resovia.  Dave Smith will be playing for his third club in 3 years in the Polish PlusLiga.  Asseco Resovia also signed Nicolas Szerszen, former NCAA Player of the Year from Ohio State.  While Resovia has won 3 PlusLiga titles, they finished in 6th position after the playoffs this season.  They are looking to again quality for the CEV Champions League after finishing the regular season in 4th place.  Dave Smith graduated from UC Irvine in 2007.  He spent the first few years of his career in the United Kingdom, the second division of Germany, Puerto Rico and Spain before he landed in France.  Smith played for 5 seasons at Tours in France where he won the French Ligue A title 4 times.  He made the move up to Poland to play at Cerrad Czarni Radom.  After h...

Will these two be teaming up in Italy next year? It was a rough season for Azimut Modena.  It had quite a bit of promise after winning the 2016 Italian Superlega.  They were getting Bruno back to handle the setting duties.  Earvin N'Gapteth was still in the lineup.  While Lucas remained in Brazil, Max Holt was coming from Dynamo Moscow to be a more than capable replacement in the middle.   Luca Vettori had departed, but Giulio Sabbi has a track record of being a prolific scorer.  The retirement of Petric brought Tine Urnaut to the club, one of the greats at Trentino.  To top it all off, Radostin Stoychev would be running the show from the sideline.  This is the man who has won the Russian Super League, the Italian Championship (either Serie A1 or the SuperLega) on 3 occasions, the CEV Champions League on 3 occasions, and the FIVB World Club Championships 4 times.  It was looking like they were going to be the main competition to at...

Sander is heading to one of the most successful clubs in the history of worldwide volleyball. The American outside hitter who spent the last season with American teammate Micah Christenson at Lube Civitanova will be making his way across the Atlantic Ocean to suit up for Sada Cruzeiro in the Brazilian Superliga next season.  This was to be expected as Lube seemed to have difficulty juggling all of the foreign players in their roster to meet the quota in the Italian SuperLega.  They seem to be working on this for next year with Sander and Grebenikov departing.  He will be the first American to play in the Brazilian Superliga since Dustin Whatten back in the 2013-2014 season when he played for Moda Maringa.  Sada has won the last 5 consecutive Brazilian titles, and 6 of the last 7.  They have also won 3 of the last 5 FIVB Club World Championships.  Sander has been brought in to replace Cuban superstar Yoandry Leal.   After 6 years with Sada Cruz...

Kawika Shoji sporting the red and white of his new club. After taking Gi Group Monza through a thrilling ride of the 5th Place Playoffs (after finishing the regular season in 10th position) and qualifying his team for European competition in the form of the CEV Challenge Cup, Kawika Shoji will be on his way to the Polish PlusLiga.  Shoji will be setting for the prestigious Asseco Resovia.  Resovia has won 3 PlusLiga titles, their latest coming in 2015 when fellow Americans Russell Holmes and Paul Lotman defeated Lotos Trefl Gdansk with Murphy Troy (the league's leading scorer that year).    This past season Resovia finished the regular season in 4th position and in 6th place after the playoffs when they were knocked out of in the quarterfinals by Indykpol AZS Olsztyn and lost the 5th place classification series to Jastrzebski Wegiel.   This is Shoji's first job in Poland.  He started his professional career after competing at the collegiate...