Plovdiv, Bulgaria, January 21, 2021. Maritza Plovdiv, the Bulgarian regulars in the CEV Champions League Volley - Women, extended their winning streak in the National Volleyball League (NVL) to 100 matches.

The amazing series started more than five years ago, on November 21, 2015, when Maritza were defending their first NVL gold from the spring of that year. Ever since, the Yellow-and-Blues from Europe’s oldest living city have been in total domination in Bulgaria’s domestic league, which has led them to five more consecutive national titles.

The club from Plovdiv were hoping to reach the 100 victories mark during last season’s playoffs, but with the pandemic prematurely interrupting their campaign when they were just three wins short, they had to postpone it.

The total set ratio achieved by Maritza in these 100 games is even more impressive. While winning 300 sets, the Bulgarian champions have lost only 19. In fact, 84 of the matches were clean shutouts and only three were resolved in tie-breaker fifth sets.

Maritza Plovdiv celebrate their 100th NVL win in a row

The 100th victory was one of the rare occurrences (total of 13) when the opponents managed to win a set. On Wednesday evening, Maritza reached the important milestone with a 3-1 (25-8, 25-10, 21-25, 25-18) away victory at Kazanlak Volley. With many of the NVL games in November and December postponed, it was only now that Maritza played their third match of the season, putting an end to Kazanlak’s five-match winning streak and spoiling their perfect record.

The champs have three domestic home matches to play before departing for Poland to participate in the second round-robin tournament of Pool C in the Champions League. Turkey’s VakifBank Istanbul, France’s ASPTT Mulhouse VB and tournament hosts LKS Commercecon Lodz are the other three teams in the pool. The games will take place on February 2, 3 and 4.