Volleyball academy ‘aims to raise strong, bold girls’

Özgür Gözler – ISTANBUL

The volleyball academy named after Giovanni Guidetti, the coach of the Turkish women’s national volleyball team, and his wife Bahar Toksoy, a professional volleyball player, aims to raise strong and bold girls, said the volleyball devotee couple.

“It is not probable for every girl attending our academy to be a professional player. But they can turn into women standing on their own two feet,” said Bahar Toksoy Guidetti.

Married 10 years ago, the couple formed the academy three years ago. The academy organized two summer camps and a project called “Sultans of Tomorrow,” reaching the girls in the eastern provinces and promoting volleyball in the region.

When asked why they formed such an Academy, Toksoy said, “We personally know how volleyball can change lives. Whatever we have today is due to volleyball.”

The motto of the Academy is “teaching life with volleyball.”

“We accept only 45 children in the summer camps to take care of each one easily,” said Guidetti. “The youngest is 11, the oldest is 16 years old.”

The Italian coach especially highlighted that the target of the Academy is not raising athletes to professional teams. “We are more interested in their characters than their talents,” he said and added: “We teach them to be teammates and act together.

The thing that will bring success to them in big clubs will be their characters, not talents.”