Italy's success in both their men's and women's program could be attributed to their excellent grassroots program for volleyball. The key to their success is by starting their players learn the sport at a very young age. Volleyball Schools were created and were tasked to train children on the basics of volleyball and at the end of each program, the children participate in Minivolley tournaments.

Another program that the Italian Federation launched was the "Club Italia". It aims to create conditions for the players in the national training pool to develop their technique up to the highest level. And indeed, the program is successful since most of the members of the National Team (Francesca Piccinini, Nadia, Centoni, Jenny Barazza, Rachele Sangiuliano, Eleonora Lo Bianco, Simona Rinieri) came from the Club Italia program.

In recent years the number of girls and women playing volleyball in Italy has risen to about 170,000, making it the nation's most popular sport for women.

In 2002, the Women's team won the World Championships, their first ever world championship title. Several members of the team expressed hope that their World Championship victory would inspire more Italian women to seriously pursue a sport which has seen the nation's men reap the glory up to now. The unexpected victory won front-page headlines in practically all the nation's newspapers, as the 12 Italians were transformed into household names and hot media items.

Many top names in the sport said in press interviews that their success in Berlin could draw more women to the sport and predicted swelling numbers of enrolments at the nation's 10,600 women's volleyball clubs.

The men's team, on the other hand, is the most successful team in volleyball history having won three straight World Championships and dominating the World League tournament and European Championships.

The Italians first learned about volleyball from the French during World War I. In fact it was only their Italian soldiers who brought the sport to their nation. In a few years time, volleyball was played in schools.

Italy also boasts the biggest and most prestigious professional volleyball league in the whole world, the Serie A. Players from around the world dream of making it to the Italian Serie A professional league. Both the men's and women's leagues are composed of teams with superstar players coming from different parts of the world namely Serbia and Montenegro's Nikola and Vladimir Grbic, Andrija Geric, Ivan Miljkovic; Brazil's Nalbert, Gustavo Endres and Giba, Russia's Roman Iakolev, Turkey's Lioubov Kilic; Cuba's Taimarys Aguero, Mirka Francia. The who's who in volleyball can be found in this league, making Italy the center of professional volleyball.