14/02/2019 20:07
EuroVolley 2019 – An opportunity for redemption for Romania’s Alice Kapelovies
CEV EuroVolley 2019 Women
Luxembourg, February 14, 2019. The qualification for CEV EuroVolley 2019 Women has been something truly special for Romania’s Alice Kapelovies. Although she started playing Volleyball when she was nine and reached the national level by the age of 15 already, she will be making her maiden EuroVolley debut later this year at the age of 29.
Alice comes from a family of high-performance athletes. Her mother, Mariana Kapelovies, was a multiple national basketball champion, with many caps for the national team to her name. Her sister played high-level basketball as well. Andreea Carutasu won several national championship titles with Rapid BUCURESTI, being one of the most important players of the national team for many years. Andreea’s husband, Virgil Carutasu, was an important player for Romanian basketball too, playing for many seasons at Asesoft PLOIESTI and Dinamo BUCURESTI, as well as for the Romanian national team.
Even Alice started with basketball and studied at Spiru Haret high school in a basketball class. Kapelovies practically grew up near her mother in the basketball hall and obviously, everyone saw her as a promising basketball player. However, things evolved differently for Alice. Her family decided to let her try Volleyball as well, a sport for which little Alice showed great qualities. She was not delighted at all, as she preferred basketball, but she played both basketball and volleyball for a few years.
At one point, she had to choose, being qualified with the basketball team for an important tournament and at the same time called up by the coaching staff of the Romanian national junior Volleyball team. That is when she made her choice and she stuck with it.
Alice Kapelovies portrayed together with members of her illustrious family.
Since then, Alice Kapelovies has started an exciting career filled with many joys, but also a few disappointments. She played for seven teams (CSU Sibiu, IOR, Rapid, Volei Alba BLAJ, Dinamo, CSM BUCURESTI and Stiinta BACAU, her current team) in the top division of the Romanian national league. She played abroad as well, two years in Belgium at Yvoire, and three seasons in France at Terville, Paris and St. Raphaël, plus one season in Cyprus in Limassol, where she won both the national league and national cup titles.
She has enjoyed much success, but endured disappointments as well, being close to retiring from competitive sport. By far the most painful thing happened two years ago during the European Championship qualifications. Romania had clearly won by 3-0 the playoff match with Hungary at home and needed to win two sets from the return game to qualify for the Final Round. At 1-1 in sets and 24-23 in the third, Romania recovered the ball, Alice passed on the back but the middle blocker sent the ball just out of bounds. From that moment, the team fell psychologically, Hungary eventually won the game 3-1 and the Golden Set as well, with Kapelovies finishing the match in tears.
Two years later, history was about to repeat itself. Romania needed a victory in Bosnia and Herzegovina to qualify for EuroVolley 2019. However, Bosnia had a 2-1 lead and almost everything seemed compromised.
“Then,” Alice says, “I moved to the centre of the court and talked quickly with my teammates. “Do we want to stay home again, to work without any result, to move away from the European elite? We managed in just a few seconds to create the right spirit needed to tackle the game. Although our captain Adina Salaoru was not in Bosnia as she had suffered an injury during the match with Spain, we managed to mobilise ourselves and qualify. It was the most beautiful victory in my career.”
Alice Kapelovies and the most famous of her family members - TV host Nety Sandu.
Alice is now preparing for EuroVolley with great determination; she is happy with the draw held in Istanbul in January and believes her team has great chances to qualify for the Playoffs. “The group is not a simple one, but we can fight with many of the teams there. The Netherlands are the big favourite, but I think we can get at least two wins in order to make it among the top 4.”
In the Kapelovies family, there are many performance athletes. Let us not forget about Alice’s father, Sandu Kapelovies, who is also a volleyball coach and has a private club, Spike. There he raised Alexia Carutasu, Andreea’s daughter, who many regard as a great hope for Romanian Volleyball. This season she prepares with the youth team for the U18 World Championship in Egypt, but at the same time, she moved to Turkey to play at VakifBank ISTANBUL, at only 18 years of age, to improve even further.
Paradoxically, however, the most known person in a family with so many famous athletes is the only one who has never practiced sports. Alice’s aunt, Nety Sandu, is a well-known TV presenter at PRO TV, the biggest TV station in Romania in terms of audience. Nety hosts a show about signs and horoscope, highly watched in Romania by hundreds of thousands of people every day. The girls of the Romanian national Volleyball team can now prepare in peace, since Nety has studied the stars and seen that somewhere in late August and early September the stars will favourably align for the Romanian team!
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