Volleyball players' season opener: Stories from the Thuringian Forest

What do the Thuringian Forest and the women's volleyball league have in common? They both want to become more visible nationwide. And so it is no coincidence that the Supercup held at the start of the season between champions VfB Suhl and Dresdner SC was held on Saturday under the name “Thüringer Wald Supercup 2026”.

The regional association “Thuringian Forest” acquired the naming rights from the organizer, the host club from Thuringia, which is officially called VfB Suhl Lotto Thuringia, in order to boost the tourism business. The Thuringian lobbyists accepted that the event on German Unity Day was voluntarily moved to Coburg in Bavaria, 50 kilometers away. However, this had little to do with the holiday; the local hall in Suhl, also known as the Wolfsgrube, simply does not harmonize well with the word Supercup and the demands that the clubs and the league derive from it due to its school hall character.

But you can't escape provincialism that easily. As the Volleyball Bundesliga announced, after VfB Suhl's 3-0 win (26:24, 29:27, 25:23) against Dresdner SC in Coburg, Upper Franconia, the gold medals for the winners were handed out by the Thuringian Justice Minister Beate Meißner and the trophy by the Thuringian Interior Minister Georg Maier. After all, joint appointments with cup winners are a rare blessing for Thuringian state politics.

The surprise team from last season also started the new one with surprising clarity. Although the competition in Dresden, Schwerin and Stuttgart have much better budgets, the Thuringians were able to amaze everyone with the cup and championship title in 2026. And the departure of US outside attacker Mackenzie Foley, who played so convincingly in Suhl last season, to Dresden could also be compensated for in this first duel, even if the individual sets were quite competitive.

VfB Suhl actually sees itself as a training club and is now competing against the European elite in the Champions League for the first time. These special encounters, including against the CEV Cup winner Galatasaray Istanbul, will also be played in Coburg.

These are good opportunities to attract attention beyond Thuringia. VfB Suhl hasn't always tried to do this with the best possible means in recent years. An advertising slogan “prachtregion.de”, also a tourism campaign by a Thuringian district, which could be read across the players’ buttocks in the 2018/19 season, brought the club more awareness, but also a shitstorm and a reprimand from the German Advertising Council. The degradation and sexualization of female athletes was denounced.

Even if the new Thuringian tourism campaign in the Volleyball Bundesliga may not seem so great, but rather backwoods, this can be seen as progress. And the league officials are doing everything they can to show that they are playing at the cutting edge. There is a master plan for 2030, a future budget and strategy maps and lots of visions.

In Suhl and Coburg, people mostly talk about volleyball anyway. Saturday's performance makes VfB coach Laszlo Hollosy optimistic: "We showed today that we are competitive again this season. After last season we lost a lot of good players to other clubs, but now my team has shown again that they can handle any situation."