Volleyball Empowerment enables Chilean volleyball to live the best moment in history

Chilean volleyball is currently experiencing its most triumphant period in history, with a promising outlook for the future thanks to the support of the FIVB’s revolutionary Volleyball Empowerment programme.

Through Volleyball Empowerment, substantial investments have been made in the country’s youth teams, resulting in Chile qualifying for the U19 Women's and Men’s World Championships for the first time in history.

Meanwhile, on the beach, Chile’s new generation of talent will be in action at the Men's U21 World Championship. The FIVB has invested a total of CFH 319,000 through volleyball equipment and coach support since 2017.

In particular, the FIVB has supported Chile with two Gerflor floors, each worth CHF 65,000 and provided in 2019 and 2022, as well as 100 Mikasa balls for volleyball and an additional 100 for beach volleyball in 2021. Last year, Chile also received Senoh volleyball and beach volleyball nets and net systems. Since 2020, the FIVB has provided coach support to Chile, totalling an investment of CHF 162,000.

The 2023 FIVB Volleyball Women’s U19 World Championship will be held in Croatia and Hungary in August, and national team coach Eduardo Guillaume is not only focused on the team’s participation, but also the impact it will have on younger athletes who are just starting their volleyball journey in Chile.

“We are working with a group of 24 players, five days a week. It is our first participation, so our expectation is to qualify for the second phase,” said the coach.

Team captain Petra Schwartzman expressed her excitement, commenting: “To play a World Championship will be very special, we achieved our goal with a lot of effort. We want to enjoy and remember every moment of this great event.”

On the beach, expectations are equally high. Cousins ​​Marco and Esteban Grimalt have solidified their position as the country’s top duo, with the potential to qualify for the Olympic Games Paris 2024 - they won the last two South-American Championships. Noé Aravena (20 years old) and Vicente Droguet (22 years old) form the second duo as Droguet played at the U-19 World Championship and the Youth Olympic Games. Alongside them, new talents are emerging.

“It is almost certain that the Grimalts will qualify for the World Championships 2023 through the World Rankings, which would open a spot for Aravena and Droguet. In the women's category, Cris Vorphal and Fran Rivas are ranked according to the South American Rankings,” said the beach volleyball head coach, Paulo Costa from Brazil, also known as Paulão, who has been in Chile for five years. “We have young people standing out, like Tomas Acevedo and Max Cordoba, who will compete in the U21 World Championship in Türkiye. Martin Igleias played at the U19 and U21 World Championships and Fernando Quintero and Goran Grimalt are the other players we have high hopes for,” he added.

Cris and Fran have become stars of women’s beach volleyball in Chile. They were crowned South American Champions in 2020, won a silver medal at the Odesur Games and are on their way to their second World Championship.

However, the investment in youth development does not stop there. “Chile did not have a youth national competition. We started the work and a year later we launched the U15 and U19 national tournaments. In the first stage more than 50 pairs were enrolled (60% women) and in the second the number jumped to 70 (50% female). Next year we hope to do 12 stages throughout the whole year,” commented the beach volleyball coach, Adriano Bonina.

Several young women have already made their mark, including twins Marcela and Danae Robert, who became the first Chileans to compete in the U19 World Championship in 2020, as well as Antonia Paredes, who left her family in the countryside a year ago to train in Santiago, the country's capital.

In the 2023/24 season, Chile will continue to develop the next generation of talent while pursuing its main objectives of the season: achieving a podium finish in indoor volleyball and at the Pan American Games in beach, seeded in Santiago, as well as defending the Grimalt's gold medal, having good results at the Beach Volleyball World Championships in Mexico and qualifying for Paris 2024.