Date of Release:June 22, 2009

Evergrande Volleyball Club was established and created a new way in the mode of “self-financing, self-survival and self-development”

Yangcheng Evening News,Reporter Su Xing: China’s first professional volleyball club - Evergrande Volleyball Club was established a few days ago. Yesterday，Evergrande Women’s Volleyball Team and Guangdong Women’s Volleyball Team held a tournament and the former defeated the latter with a result of 3 vs. 2 (21 vs. 25, 23 vs. 25, 25 vs. 16, 25 vs. 22 and 15 vs. 11).

It’s reported that Evergrande Volleyball Club is China’s first club totally independently operated by an enterprise with registered capital of 20,000,000 yuan and operated completely in the business mode of self-financing, self-survival and self-development. In this “new mode”, Evergrande is responsible for overall operation such as the matters on coaches, athletes and the training ground. Its front-line players directly registered at the national volleyball management center may participate in any national match on behalf of Guangdong and intends to establish the second and third teams with Guangdong Provincial Sports Bureau which will reserve, develop and provide back-up talents. After the second and third teams are “available”, they will join Evergrande’s front-line to “make achievements”. That means that the system of Evergrande Volleyball Club is powerfully supported by the government, so its ability to increase its own strength is strong.

It is reported that Evergrande Women’s Volleyball Team is coached by Qiu Fengrui, a national senior coach and winner of 2006 national young men’s volleyball team coach and that most of the team members once worked for the “national” team.

Zhao Baoguang, deputy director of the basketball and volleyball center, said yesterday after watching the matches, the operating mode of Evergrande Volleyball Club was basically the same as that of Guangdong Hongyuan Basketball Club. As for the possibility to participate in National Women's Volleyball League in the future for Evergrande Women’s Volleyball Team, he gave a positive reply: “With the development of the league, it will be possible each province has two league teams.”

It is reported that Evergrande Women’s Volleyball Team intends to conduct a series of “tournaments” with China’s strong teams such as Guangdong Women’s Volleyball Team, Yunnan Counterpart, Beijing Counterpart, Hebei Counterpart, Hubei Counterpart, Shandong Counterpart and Fujian Counterpart from May 21 to June, all of which will be broadcast live by TV stations. At that time, a few volleyball stars, including Xue Ming, a main second spiker from the national team, Sun Xiaoqing, a former ace spiker with the national team, and Zhang Xian, an ingenuus from the national team, will go into battle.