Scandicci defeated Vallefoglia with a hard-fought 3-2 (25-19; 25-22; 20-25; 22-25; 18-16) and it was qualified for the semi-finals of the Italian Cup 2026 women’s volleyball. The World Champions, who had finished the first round of the A1 Series in second place, prevailed against the seventh seeded team after a battle lasting over two hours in front of their home crowd at the Pala BigMat in Florence and thus deserved the pass to the Final Four, which will be staged on the weekend of 24-25 January in Turin.
Coach Marco Gaspari’s girls took off in the opening stages of the first set (7-3 and 10-6), held off the comeback attempt of the Marches (16-14) and then stepped on the accelerator with great personality. In the second set, however, the hosts pulled themselves up to 14-11, only to then suffer a comeback from the guests (14-14), extend the lead again in a peremptory manner (20-17), escape to 24-20 and close the score after having two set-points cancelled.
Savino Del Bene also made things clear in the third quarter (10-5) and at 14-8 they seemed to have done the paperwork, but had to deal with the recovery of their opponents (17-16). In the hottest moment it seemed that the Tuscan team’s greater technical ability could emerge and instead the Tigers, fresh from five consecutive victories in the championship, showed their muscles and managed to prolong the contest.
At that point Scandicci ran into difficulty, Vallefoglia persisted in its action and completed its comeback. The fiery tie-break was decided by the advantages, where the home team managed to make the decisive move to deserve passage to the next round, with the semifinal against Chieri.
Thick performance from the opposite Ekaterina Antropova (29 points, 2 aces) and the spiker Avery Skinner (16 points) under the direction of Maja Ognjenovic (5), the hammer tests should also be noted Caterina Bosetti (8 points) and the power plant Linda Nwakalor (15 points, 6 blocks!). Among the Vallefoglia ranks, the best were Erblira Bici (31 points) and Loveth Omoruyi (20), 8 goals for Sonia Candi.
