PARIS, France, August 11, 2024.- The United States won the Paris 2024 Olympic Games silver medal on Sunday at the South Paris Arena 1 making their fifth-straight Olympic podium appearance and becoming the country with the most Olympic medals in women’s indoor volleyball.
United States won the silver medal for an overall of seven Olympic medals after falling to Italy 3-0 (25-18, 25-20, 25-17), the number one team in the FIVB World Ranking.
For the USA, getting silver meant making a fifth-straight podium appearance after taking silver in Beijing 2008 and London 2012, bronze in Rio 2016 and gold in Tokyo 2020. Their roster in Paris contained nine Tokyo Olympic champions, including outside hitter Jordan Larson, who was present in the team’s last four Olympic campaigns.
“It’s bittersweet but mostly sweet,” middle blocker Haleigh Washingon added. “It’s hardware and it’s second-best in the world. We went through so much adversity and for us to come out of this tournament with hardware, it’s really great. You take the victories where you can get them. There’s definitely the feeling that we could have done better in the final. But to be able to represent the United States again and to be able to compete at such a high level and still get a result, it gets me thrilled.”
Opposite Paola Egonu led the Italian offense with 22 points. Outside hitters Myriam Sylla and Caterina Bosetti also had solid scoring displays, tallying ten and nine points respectively.
The Americans made several substitutions during the match to try and find the best way to stop Italy and had in opposite Jordan Thompson, who came off the bench, their most productive player, with eight points. Outside hitter Avery Skinner added another seven.
“Knowing where we started at the beginning of this quad and even where we were two months, to be able to play for gold, we couldn’t have asked for anymore,” setter Jordyn Poulter reflected. “Italy are the best team in the world. They could have been in the last quad too, but I think they had some little things to figure out. I think they felt very confident and assured of what they were chasing coming into this final and I feel happy for them as a country and a program for getting their first medal and for it to be gold.”
The gold won in Paris was the first-ever Olympic medal for Italian women in volleyball and are now the seventh nation to hold Olympic gold medals among the women, joining the former USSR (four), China (three), Cuba (three), Brazil (two), Japan (two) and the United States (one).
The Italians were more effective than the Americans in every scoring skill, beating their opponents in kills (45 to 35), blocks (11 to zero) and aces (seven to three), which made their higher numbers of errors (17 to 12) don’t have much of an impact in the match.
“We’re all very emotional and happy about all that happened,” middle blocker Sarah
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