One of the most accomplished young setters in female volleyball has just announced her retirement, per Volleywod.com. Citing chronic knee problems, Wei Qiuyue decided to call it quits and focus on her personal life and the start of a family.
Although very young, she won important titles in the court. Most notably, she captained the Chinese national team to a gold medal in the 2016 Rio Olympic games and in the 2015 FIVB World Cup. She also added 2014 World Championships’ and 2007 FIVB Grand Prix’s silver medals and a 2008 Olympic games bronze medal to her long list of accolades.
She made her final appearance on the court last week, at the recently concluded Chinese domestic league. Her farewell was made even more dramatic because it was done in front of Tianjin Bridgestone’s home crowd, the same team where she played 13 out of her 14 professional careers. There were lots of tears from her teammates, team officials, and the crowd.
Even though she retired from the national team after the Rio Games, it is still very sad to see one of the great players of her generations retiring so soon, specially from injuries. Sadly, this is too common of a trend, as we already have reported in Volleymob.com various cases of injury related early retirements in NCAA Volleyball:
- 2015 National Freshman of the year, Stanford sophomore Hayley Hodson has medically retired from collegiate volleyball
- Former University of Alabama All-American Kat Hutson has retired from the sport
- Wisconsin Badger, Junior-to-be Julia Saunders, a sophomore middle blocker, has decided to retire after being hampered by shoulder injuries and a series of concussions
- The University of Wisconsin women’s volleyball team’s backup setter Jordan Robbins has retired from the sports due to recurring injuries
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