A tribute to our feminine volleyball team who won the French championship!

Earlier this year, we decided to sponsor CGI volleyball team. I have personally played with this group for almost 20 years, the CGI name surviving the absorption of the former company by IBM more than a decade ago.

This association has 4 volleyball teams playing in the FSGT league, a championship in France that gathers sport teams usually coming from Corporations. This year was a revival for the group, with many new members joining the association and it was actually the first year that a CGI feminine team joined the league.

The weekly championship takes place at local level but there is a national competition which gathers the best teams throughout the country.

Not sure whether it is the players’ quality or the brand on the jersey that made the difference (I like to think it is both as SoftFluent strives for excellence ) but they certainly dominated their league in the national championship, winning the semi-final and the final in Bordeaux without even losing a game.

Next year, they will compete at the "top level" of the French championship, with the opportunity to qualify for a world’s championship of these Corporation leagues in Brazil.

So thank you girls for defending the colors of our brand, you are the best and deserve all the kudos. Good luck for next year, it will be much tougher!

From left to right: Véronique Bruneau, Isabelle Lubas, Paola Gava, Alexandra Ferreira, Marie-Mélodie Baralle, Marie-José Duque-Ribeiro, Florence Dejean & Frédérique Sandro.

Missing on the picture: Nathalie Vivier, Bénédicte Deflesselle and Iris Mazzacurati.