Maritza extends NVL winning streak to 100

Maritza Plovdiv extended its winning streak in the National Volleyball League to 100 matches. The amazing series started more than five years ago, on November 21, 2015, when Maritza was defending its first NVL gold from the spring of that year. Ever since, the Yellow-and-Blues from Europe’s oldest living city have been in total domination in Bulgaria’s domestic league, which has led them to five more consecutive national titles.

The club from Plovdiv was hoping to reach the 100 victories mark during last season’s playoffs, but with the pandemic prematurely interrupting the league when it was just three wins short, it had to postpone it.

The total set ratio achieved by Maritza in these 100 games is even more impressive. While winning 300 sets, the Bulgarian champions have lost only 19. In fact, 84 of the matches were clean shutouts and only three were resolved in tie-breaker fifth sets.

The 100th victory was one of the rare occurrences (total of 13) when the opponents managed to win a set. On Wednesday evening, Maritza reached the important milestone with a 3-1 (25-8, 25-10, 21-25, 25-18) away victory at Kazanlak Volley. With many of the NVL games in November and December postponed, it was only now that Maritza played its third match of the season, putting an end to Kazanlak’s five-match winning streak and spoiling its perfect record.

The champs have three domestic home matches to play before departing for Poland to participate in the second round-robin tournament of Pool C in the CEV Champions League. Turkey’s VakifBank Istanbul, France’s ASPTT Mulhouse and tournament hosts LKS Commercecon Lodz are the other three teams in the pool. The games will take place on February 2, 3 and 4.

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