The value of the team: Anna Danesi and the lesson of volleyball

The Italian women's volleyball team dominates the international scene with its 36 consecutive victories and, after the gold medal at the Paris 2024 Olympics, won the Women's Volleyball World Championships 2025 last autumn. The Italian national women's volleyball team has become much more than a winning team. It is a role model for thousands of girls who approach the sport and who, through volleyball, learn much more than a technique or a game plan.

This is told by Italian captain Anna Danesi, a player of Numia Vero Volley Milano, who leads a group capable of transforming individual talent into collective strength. "Individual talent, in a team game, definitely helps. Talent understood as technique, tactics, experience, leadership, mentality. But an individual alone can do nothing, so it is necessary that the individual talent mixes perfectly with that of the other team members. There are a lot of teams that have very strong individuals who alone could do nothing but then, put in the right context, can bring out the best in themselves,' stresses the player, who has earned three different degrees during her sporting career: in Motor Sciences (2019), Food Science with a focus on Nutraceuticals (2023) and Psychology (2025).

This is precisely the educational dimension of team sport: learning that the result depends not only on personal performance, but on the balance of a group. A fundamental step, especially for girls, who find in sport a space for growth, autonomy and confidence in their own abilities.

The gym, according to Danesi, thus becomes a real school of life. "One learns to share goals, to put oneself at the service of the group and thus to have to put aside oneself a little to make the team mechanism work. One learns to fall together, without distinction. One learns to adapt to others, since, fortunately, we are not all the same. One learns to share one's thoughts in order to solve problems.

Skills that go far beyond the playing field: collaboration, listening skills, conflict management and widespread leadership. In a context such as sport, these skills develop naturally and become valuable tools also in study, work and social life.