Simona Rinieri Dennis

Simona Rinieri was on the Italian volleyball squad at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the first Italian women’s team to compete at the Olympics. A spiker with a great athletic power, she was soon recognized as one of the premiere forces in Italian volleyball after her début in the First League at the age of only 18 with Ravenna. On 2 January 1997, at 19, she played in her first match with the national team in the Bremen’s tournament (Italy-Russia 3-1). The following year she joined the Club Italia, a youth selection with a permanent training camp.

From 1999-2001 Rinieri had two seasons with Bergamo, with whom she captured the 1999 Italian SuperCup and the European Cup in 2000. After leaving the team, she returned to Ravenna for one year, and then wore the shirts of Forlì, Cannes (France, where she won titles and the French Cup in 2004), Pesaro (where she won the CEV Cup 2006), Jesi, Sopot (Poland), Modena, Rovigo and finally Klub Leningradka in Russia.

Rinieri earned even more distinctions with the national team: gold at the 2002 World Championships in Germany, with a squad coached by Marco Bonitta, and at the 1997 and 2001 Mediterranean Games; and silver at the 2004 Grand Prix and at the Europeans in 2001 and 2005. From 2006 to 2008 she held the record for caps with the Italian team (390), before being surpassed by Eleonora Lo Bianco. In 2002 she was a recipient of the title of Knight of the Italy’s Republic and, in 2004, of the Collare d’Oro for sporting merits.