A volleyball festival that comes only once a year, how will it go this time?
On the 29th, the ‘2022-2023 V-League All-Star Game’ will be held at Incheon Samsan Gymnasium, the home stadium of Heungkuk Life Insurance.
The All-Star Game was slightly changed from the existing method of dividing based on the final score of the previous season. Reflecting the recent trend, online voting was conducted based on the date of birth. For a balanced composition of players, the men’s team was split before and after 1995, and the women’s team was split before and after 1996.
A total of 3,956,512 votes were counted in this online fan vote. This is an increase of about 66% compared to the last All-Star Game. In the women’s category, Heungkuk Life Insurance Kim Yeon-kyung scored 82,297 votes, and in the men’s category, KEPCO Shin Young-seok recorded about 69,000 votes, respectively, rising to first place.
As the manager who will lead the M-Star and Z-Star in the All-Star Game, the first and second-place command towers for each team in the men’s and women’s divisions based on the results at the end of the 3rd round will be selected. In the men’s division, Korean Air coach Tommy Tilikhainen and Hyundai Capital coach Choi Tae-woong will lead the M-Star and Z-Star teams, respectively.
In the women’s division, as of the end of the 3rd round, Hyundai Engineering & Construction and Heungkuk Life Insurance are ranked 1st and 2nd.
M-Star will be led by Kang Seong-hyung, director of Hyundai E&C. If it goes as planned, the command tower to lead the Z-Star team should be Heungkuk Life Insurance’s acting manager Kim Dae-kyung.
However, on the 12th, Acting Kim conveyed to this paper that he would not participate in the All-Star Game through a club official.
It seems that he felt a considerable psychological burden in the environment in which he had to lead the club in a difficult situation where former head coach Kwon Sun-chan was fired and former head coach Lee Young-soo left the team.
If Acting Kim’s intention to not appear is accepted, a peculiar situation arises in which Heungkuk Life Insurance has to select another ‘Agent of Acting’ to participate in the All-Star Game.
Regarding this, an official from the 먹튀검증 Korean Volleyball Federation (KOVO), who spoke with this magazine, said, “Even if the acting coach himself expresses his intention to not participate, it seems difficult to not go out in the current situation.” Regarding this), we need to discuss with the club.”
The Heungkuk Life Insurance team is carefully examining the new coach as well as recruiting additional coaches to sort out the current situation. However, it is expected that it will be difficult to appoint a new coach due to the tight time before the All-Star Game.