19/03/2020 15:00
Snow Volleyball is fun for everyone
News from the CEV / National Federations
Luxembourg, March 19, 2020. The coronavirus outbreak may have ended the Snow Volleyball season quite abruptly, but while we are looking forward to next winter and to having more fun on the snow, we can look back at a couple of Winter Festivals successfully hosted by the French Volleyball Federation (FFvolley). Snow Volleyball has been growing at a very fast pace in many countries and France obviously wish to join this group as well.
A few weeks ago, a first stop of the inaugural French Snow Volleyball national tour hosted by the French Federation took place in Manigod, a very popular ski resort in the Haute-Savoie department, on February 22-23. The event featured a Snow Volleyball Winter Festival as well, joined by some 100 participants testing their skills across as many as six courts.
“The general consensus among the participants is that Snow Volleyball is a lot of fun,” says Daniel Lacombe, in the charge of the event delivery at the FFvolley. “Many people had questions about the rules, the equipment, as they wanted to know more about this still young sport.”
A second such event followed on March 6-8 in Gresse-en-Vercors, another popular winter destination in the Isère department. This tournament and the Winter Festival that ran next to it featured a number of prominent guests, including FFvolley President Eric Tanguy and the very first French team to take part in the CEV European Tour – Iskander El-Ghouti, Julien Saint-Vanne and Daniel Petrov. This trio finished fifth and fourth in Armenia and Georgia, respectively, to crown their international debut with very promising results.
Gresse-en-Vercors hosted members of the French Sitting Volleyball national teams and their coaching staff as well, thus bringing together a large representation of Volleyball and its many facets. Despite some constraints, the second such Winter Festival involved some 54 participants, with most playing Snow Volleyball for the very first time, doing so across five courts.
“I believe that everyone had a great time, enjoying the side events and activations we had prepared,” Lacombe recounts. “The programme included a concert, some contests, a party and people could obviously learn more about Snow Volleyball and Sitting Volleyball as well with the help of our volunteers. The feedback we have received is good even though we know that we can do more in terms of marketing and communication. The French TV and press reported on those events and the people involved are already looking forward to coming back next year. We cannot wait for that to come!”
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