Who Is Paola Egonu: Career, Stats, How High She Jumps and Salary

Paola Egonu is the opposite for the Italian women's volleyball national team, born on 18 December 1998 in Cittadella, in the province of Padova, to Nigerian parents. She is 190 cm tall, plays for Numia Vero Volley Milano and with Italy she has won Olympic gold at Paris 2024 and the 2025 World Championship. She is rated as one of the most powerful attackers in world volleyball.

Profile: the key facts

• Full name: Paola Ogechi Egonu
• Date of birth: 18 December 1998
• Place of birth: Cittadella (Padova)
• Position: opposite
• Height: 190 cm
• Current club: Numia Vero Volley Milano
• National team: Italy women
• Family: Nigerian parents, Ambrose and Eunice; two siblings, Angela and Andrea
• Instagram: @paolaegonu

Her club career

Egonu started out playing around Padova and was spotted very early. She joined Club Italia, the federation team that gathers the best young talents, and in that shirt she climbed the divisions all the way to Serie A1.

In 2016 she moved to Igor Gorgonzola Novara. Those three years are when she exploded: with Novara she won the Supercoppa and the Coppa Italia, and in 2019 the Champions League.

From 2019 she played for Imoco Volley Conegliano, in the most dominant run recent Italian volleyball has seen: Club World Championship, league titles, Coppe Italia, Supercoppe and the 2020-2021 Champions League.

In the 2022-2023 season she went abroad, to VakifBank Istanbul. She came back to Italy in the summer of 2023, signing for the Vero Volley project in Milano, where she still plays: the club has confirmed she will be there for the 2026-2027 season too.

Her national team career

Egonu made her debut with the Italy youth teams in the mid-2010s and reached the senior national team very young. The main milestones:

• 2017 — silver at the World Grand Prix.
• 2018 — silver at the World Championship.
• 2021 — gold at the European Championship, beating Serbia in the final.
• 2022 — Italy's first Nations League win.
• 2024 — Olympic gold in Paris, the first ever for Italian women's volleyball.
• 2025 — gold at the World Championship, with the final won in a tie-break against Turkey.

Olympic gold and a world title just over a year apart: that had never happened before in the history of Italian women's volleyball.

How high Paola Egonu jumps

It's the most searched question about her, and it deserves an honest answer: the figures going around put her spike height at around 3.40 metres, meaning the highest point her hand reaches in the air above the net. It's a number reported by the sports press, not a value certified by a published testing protocol, so take it for what it is: a ballpark.

To put it in context: the women's net is 2.24 m high. A spike height of around 3.40 m means hitting the ball more than a metre above the tape. That gap is what lets her attack at angles nobody can block.

One thing to watch out for: spike height is not the same number as your vertical. Spike height adds up your standing height, your arm reach and the centimetres you jump. At 190 cm tall, the jump itself is only one part of the total — an important part, but only a part.

Off the court

Egonu has always combined sport with study: she got a diploma in accounting and has spoken several times about wanting to keep studying. Forbes put her on its list of the most influential under-30s in Europe, and she is one of the most followed Italian athletes on social media, as well as a public voice on identity and representation.

Her salary: what is known and what isn't

Volleyball players' contracts are not public. The figures you find out there — often in the range of several hundred thousand euros a season — are press estimates, not official data, and they don't account for sponsorship and image rights, which for an athlete with her visibility count for a lot.

What can be said for sure is that Egonu has historically been among the best paid players on the circuit, and that her contracts have helped raise the bar for pay in Italian women's volleyball. The rest are numbers nobody has ever confirmed.

What you can take away from her career

Height helps, but it doesn't explain everything: what makes Egonu who she is comes from years of work on strength, on arm speed and on the ability to repeat maximal jumps for whole sets without dropping off. None of those show up on their own.

The starting point for anyone, at any level, is knowing where you are right now. On the site you'll find a free jump test: you upload a two-second video of yourself jumping, the system works out the height in centimetres from the flight time, and the video never leaves your device. The method is always the same, from a local court to the national team: measure first, then train, then measure again.

JHP programs for volleyball players

• Jump Higher Program — 10 weeks of jump work with bodyweight only, €60.
• Spike Revolution — 16 weeks built around the spike, €60.
• Volley PowerShot — arm power in attack, bodyweight only, €40.
• Volley Advanced — the complete volleyball package, €90.
• The full list is on the JHP courses page.

With the JHP membership at €99/year you get all 13 programs, with WhatsApp support and free cancellation.

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