competition system

Germany’s Women’s junior national coach Rudi Sonnenbichler, at the German Volleyball Federation since 1986, is used to success.

At club and international level the 56-year-old had led his teams to a number of impressive successes, including fifth place at the 1995 World Championship.

Sonnenbichler first took the role of coach of both the youth and junior sides from 1986-1993 before moving into one role as the coach of the German Junior Women’s side in 1993.

Since he has seen his Women’s Junior team collect a bronze medal at the 1994 European Championship, 5th place at the 1995 World Championship and 1st place at the junior Olympics in 2001. More recently, Sonnenbichler’s team has finished 4th and 8th at the 2001 and 2002 European Championships respectively.

The Bavarian does not only demand a lot of himself but also of his teams: “I want to make the current age group strong for the junior European Championship and bring some talent into the national team,” he said.

To realize this goal, Sonnenbichler wants to achieve a closer cooperation with the clubs and state federations. “Together we want to achieve more creativity and quality for the training and taking care of top upcoming players. A good example was the possibility to let the female junior’s national team play in the first women’s league in the season 2002/2003, successfully. In the national league they won altogether 7 matches and they also qualified for the female junior’s WCH in Thailand with successes against Bulgaria, Georgia and Turkey.”

Rudi Sonnenbichler has three children and is a Physical Education teacher