Manami Kojima (born November 7, 1994) is a Japanese volleyball player who plays as a libero for LOVB Salt Lake and has represented the Japan women’s national team since 2022. Born in Sendai, Miyagi, the 158 cm defender was part of Japan’s Paris 2024 Olympic team and has built an international reputation through serve reception, digging and back-court organization.
Before moving to the United States, Kojima spent seven seasons with NEC Red Rockets, captaining the team in 2023–24 as it completed a second consecutive V.League and Empress’s Cup double. She was named Best Libero at the 2024 Volleyball Nations League as Japan won silver, then earned LOVB Libero of the Year honors in both 2025 and 2026. Her senior international career has also included the 2025 World Championship and Japan’s 2026 Asian Championship campaign.
Player Information
| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Manami Kojima (小島 満菜美) |
| Date of Birth | November 7, 1994 |
| Place of Birth | Sendai, Miyagi, Japan |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Position | Libero |
| Height | 158 cm |
| Weight | 55 kg |
| Spike Reach | 269 cm |
| Block Reach | 256 cm |
| Dominant Hand | Right |
| High School | Funabashi Municipal High School |
| University | Aoyama Gakuin University |
| Previous Club | NEC Red Rockets |
| Current Club | LOVB Salt Lake |
| Club Number | 16 during the 2026 LOVB season |
| National Team | Japan Women’s National Volleyball Team |
| National-Team Number | 8 during the 2026 VNL and Asian Championship |
| @manamiran.k |
Kojima’s current 158 cm listing is supported by both the Japan Volleyball Association and Volleyball World. An Aoyama Gakuin University profile lists her at 159 cm, but the current national-team and international competition records use 158 cm, making that the more relevant present-day figure. Weight, spike reach, block reach and dominant hand are supplied by the established Volleybox player database where current first-party profiles do not publish those measurements.
Early Life & Volleyball Beginnings
Kojima was born in Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture, although part of her childhood was spent in Hokkaido. She began volleyball in the third grade after a friend invited her to join a club team. After moving to Chiba, she initially continued as an attacker. During a Junior Olympic Cup selection process in middle school, she had to choose between pursuing the spiker or libero route and selected libero; the position became her full-time role after she entered high school. Her own explanation of its appeal was simple: keeping the ball off the floor keeps the team alive in the rally.
She chose Funabashi Municipal High School after experiencing its training environment during a JOC camp. The program had competed at a high national level, but Kojima later emphasized that her years there were also formative in learning awareness of teammates and responsibility within a group. Her former high-school coaches remembered a player who was vocal regardless of age and who could survey the entire court well enough to function almost like another coach from the back row.
Kojima entered Aoyama Gakuin University in 2013 and studied comparative arts in the Faculty of Letters. She was already the university team’s regular libero as a first-year student and collected collegiate libero awards while also entering Japan’s age-group national-team system. In 2013, she helped Japan take silver at the U20 World Championship and received Best Libero honors, an early indication that her defensive game could translate beyond university competition. She graduated in March 2017 before beginning her professional career with NEC the following month.
Club Career
Seven Seasons with NEC Red Rockets
Kojima joined NEC Red Rockets in 2017 and remained with the club for seven seasons. The period did not begin with immediate individual prominence. When she eventually left NEC in 2024, she acknowledged that people often described her as a late bloomer and framed her development in terms of gradual, step-by-step improvement rather than a quick rise. That progression became increasingly visible during the final seasons of her NEC career.
The 2022–23 campaign marked a major competitive breakthrough. NEC recovered from two opening league defeats to win the V.League championship and also captured the Empress’s Cup, completing the first league-and-cup double in club history. Kojima received the league’s reception award, particularly significant given that she has described serve reception as a skill she once considered a weakness and deliberately trained to improve.
Kojima became NEC captain for 2023–24. The team went 18–4 in the regular season, defeated JT in the final and repeated as V.League champion. NEC also retained the Empress’s Cup, becoming the first team in the club’s history to complete consecutive league-and-cup doubles, while Kojima was named Best Libero for the league season. Her final NEC campaign therefore paired her largest formal leadership responsibility with one of the strongest stretches of results of her domestic career.
Her departure in 2024 ended a seven-year association with the club rather than her career in Japan’s top level. Kojima had wanted to experience volleyball overseas for years, and after Paris 2024 she moved toward a U.S. professional environment where the defensive responsibilities and tactical assumptions were different from those she had learned in Japan.
Moving to the United States
Kojima’s first competitive experience in the United States included the 2024 Athletes Unlimited Pro Volleyball season. She played all 45 sets across 15 matches, finished with 196 digs and was selected to the league’s All-Position Team. She returned to Athletes Unlimited in 2025 and finished second on the individual leaderboard with 1,638 points while recording 140 digs in 36 sets.
Her larger U.S. club commitment was with LOVB Salt Lake. League One Volleyball’s inaugural professional season began in 2025, and Kojima quickly became one of its most productive back-court players. She led LOVB with 224 digs, averaged 3.67 digs per set and finished fourth in pass efficiency at 2.45. Those numbers earned her the inaugural LOVB Libero of the Year award.
The transition required technical adjustment as well as a change of country. In an interview about her first U.S. season, Kojima explained that Japanese defenses often build a precise relationship between the block and the defenders behind it, sometimes deliberately leaving an attacking lane for the back-court player. In the U.S. game she encountered blockers who were more likely to pursue the ball independently, which could change the deflection or open space at the last moment. She also found that an American libero was expected to take a larger share of balls that might be divided more evenly among receivers in Japan.
A Second Straight LOVB Libero of the Year
Kojima’s second LOVB season was even stronger statistically. She played every set of Salt Lake’s regular season and finished with a league-record 256 digs, becoming the first LOVB player to reach 250 in a season. She ranked second in digs per set at 3.46, good-pass percentage at .631 and pass efficiency at 2.73. LOVB named her Libero of the Year for a second consecutive season, while the league’s players, coaches and fans voted her onto the 2026 LOVB Icons First Team after she had been a Second Team selection in 2025.
Salt Lake also made its first championship-series appearance in 2026. Kojima recorded 19 digs in the opening five-set win over Austin and 20 in the second match, but Austin forced a winner-take-all golden set and retained the championship. Salt Lake therefore finished as LOVB runner-up, adding a deep postseason run to Kojima’s second Libero of the Year campaign.
Her stay in Utah has continued beyond that run. The club’s July 2026 announcement confirmed Kojima among the returning core for the 2026–27 roster, describing her as a two-time LOVB Libero of the Year.
Club Career Timeline
| Seasons | Team | Country |
|---|---|---|
| 2013–2017 | Aoyama Gakuin University | Japan |
| 2017–2024 | NEC Red Rockets | Japan |
| 2025–present | LOVB Salt Lake | United States |
Kojima additionally competed in the Athletes Unlimited individual-team format in 2024 and 2025. Those appearances are part of her U.S. professional record but are separate from her fixed club affiliation with LOVB Salt Lake.
National Team Career
Age-Group Success Before the Senior Team
Kojima had significant international experience long before becoming a senior Japan regular. Her university years included the 2013 U20 World Championship, where Japan won silver and she was named Best Libero. She later helped Japan take silver in women’s volleyball at the 2017 Summer Universiade and received Best Digger recognition.
The senior breakthrough arrived comparatively late. Kojima entered Japan’s senior national-team program in 2022, at age 27, after already spending several seasons in the domestic professional game. Her rise thereafter was rapid enough that within two years she had become both an international individual-award winner and an Olympian.
2023–24: Asian Honors, VNL Silver and Paris
At the 2023 Asian Championship, Japan finished third after defeating Vietnam in the bronze-medal match. Kojima was named the tournament’s Best Libero, adding a major senior international award to the libero honors she had collected earlier in her career.
Her 2024 Volleyball Nations League campaign was an even larger step. Japan reached the VNL final for the first time and finished with the silver medal after losing to Italy. At the tournament awards ceremony, Kojima was selected as the VNL’s Best Libero, joining Sarina Koga as one of two Japanese players on the competition’s Dream Team.
That run preceded Kojima’s first Olympic selection. Japan chose both Kojima and Satomi Fukudome as specialist liberos for Paris 2024, reflecting the importance the coaching staff placed on back-court defense. Kojima later said that reaching the Olympics had followed several years in which she had also experienced being left out of major-event squads, making the eventual selection especially significant.
Japan did not advance from the Paris preliminary phase, but Kojima’s Olympic role extended beyond first contact. In discussing her strengths, she has repeatedly emphasized communication, and her former high-school coaches recognized the same trait in Paris: she was one of the players consistently directing and encouraging teammates from the back court.
Remaining in Japan’s Core Through 2025 and 2026
Kojima remained in Japan’s senior program after the Olympics. She was selected for the 2025 World Championship squad, with Japan advancing to the semifinals and finishing fourth. Aoyama Gakuin University’s post-tournament profile of its alumna records that fourth-place finish, while Volleyball World identified Kojima among the key experienced pieces in Japan’s World Championship roster.
She was again registered with Japan in 2026. During that year’s VNL, Kojima wore No. 8 and was used in the first preliminary week, returned for the third week and remained in the squad for the Finals. That participation pattern matters because Japan carried several liberos during the season rather than using one unchanged roster at every stop.
Kojima was also selected as No. 8 in Japan’s 14-player squad for the 2026 Asian Championship in Tianjin. Japan lost its semifinal to Thailand but defeated Iran 3–0 in its final match, finishing among the tournament’s top three and securing qualification for the 2027 World Cup.
Playing Style & Strengths
Kojima’s defensive identity is built first around reading. She has described preparing for attacks by predicting where the hitter wants to send the ball rather than simply reacting after contact. At 158 cm, she does not have unusual reach for an international libero, so early recognition, body position and the quality of the first movement are central to the way she covers the floor. She has also said that she personally enjoys digging attacks more than receiving serves—the satisfaction comes from recovering a ball the attacker believed had already scored.
Serve reception, however, became one of the most important examples of deliberate technical development in her career. Kojima has openly described it as an earlier weakness. She concentrated training on the skill and eventually reached a point where reception became one of the areas for which she was most recognized, including the 2022–23 V.League reception award and strong passing numbers in LOVB. In 2026, she finished second in LOVB in both good-pass percentage and pass efficiency while also setting the league dig record.
Communication is another player-specific strength rather than a generic description of the libero position. Kojima identifies vocal direction that helps the team win as one of her own strengths, while former coaches remembered giving her a court-wide organizing role even in high school. That trait remained visible at senior international level and fits the broader tactical responsibility of coordinating defenders as the block, attack angle and reception responsibilities change.
Her move to the United States also forced her to broaden the way she reads defense. Kojima explained that U.S. blocking patterns initially made it difficult to wait in the same defensive spaces she would expect in Japan. She had to react later to the blocker’s hands and take more responsibility for balls that American teams expected the libero to cover. The adjustment was significant enough that she said it took time before she felt comfortable with the different system.
Movement efficiency has become another deliberate area of work. In a 2026 training interview, Kojima explained that she had been working on reducing an overly long running stride and improving how quickly she could cycle her legs through short defensive movements. Bike and sprint training helped her generate quicker first steps, but the improvement created a second challenge: because she could arrive sooner, she also had to relearn the timing of when to wait and contact the ball. That description offers a useful window into the precision behind her defensive game—it is not simply about being fast, but about arriving under control at the correct moment.
Major Achievements
Selected National Team Honors
| Year | Competition | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | U20 World Championship | Silver medal |
| 2017 | Summer Universiade | Silver medal |
| 2023 | Asian Championship | Bronze medal |
| 2024 | Volleyball Nations League | Silver medal |
| 2024 | Paris Olympic Games | Olympic appearance |
| 2025 | FIVB Women’s World Championship | 4th place |
| 2026 | Asian Championship | 3rd place / 2027 World Cup qualification |
Selected Club Honors
| Season | Competition | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 2022–23 | Japan V.League Division 1 | Champion |
| 2022 | Empress’s Cup | Champion |
| 2023–24 | Japan V.League Division 1 | Champion |
| 2023 | Empress’s Cup | Champion |
| 2026 | LOVB Championship | Runner-up |
Selected Individual Awards
| Year / Season | Competition | Award |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | U20 World Championship | Best Libero |
| 2017 | FISU World University Games | Best Digger |
| 2022–23 | Japan V.League Division 1 | Reception Award |
| 2023 | Asian Championship | Best Libero |
| 2023–24 | Japan V.League Division 1 | Best Libero |
| 2024 | Volleyball Nations League | Best Libero |
| 2024 | Athletes Unlimited Pro Volleyball | All-Position Team |
| 2025 | League One Volleyball | Libero of the Year |
| 2025 | LOVB Icons | Second Team |
| 2026 | League One Volleyball | Libero of the Year |
| 2026 | LOVB Icons | First Team |
The sequence of those awards is unusually revealing for Kojima’s career. She was already an age-group Best Libero in 2013, yet her highest-profile senior individual recognition came much later: the domestic reception award in 2022–23, Asian Championship Best Libero in 2023, V.League and VNL Best Libero honors in 2024, followed by consecutive LOVB Libero of the Year awards after age 30.
Personal Life & Interests
Kojima’s public interests away from competition include cooking, baking and fashion. Athletes Unlimited lists all three among her hobbies and interests, while her LOVB profile notes that she enjoys books by Japanese mystery novelist Keigo Higashino.
She has also attached personal importance to the idea that effort can improve the chances of favorable opportunities arriving. In discussing the motto she has carried with her, Kojima connected luck with doing the right preparation beforehand rather than waiting passively for an opportunity. That outlook fits a career in which her senior national-team breakthrough did not arrive until her late twenties.
Training remains an unusually documented part of her life away from matches. Kojima has continued Wattbike-based movement work that began during her NEC period, using it to improve leg recovery, first-step speed and endurance. In October 2026, she said one of her longer-term physical goals was to be able to maintain performance through three consecutive five-set matches as she continued working toward the Los Angeles Olympic cycle.
Where Is Manami Kojima Playing Now?
Kojima remains with LOVB Salt Lake for the 2026–27 season. The club confirmed her as part of its returning core in July 2026 after Salt Lake came within a golden set of winning the 2026 championship. She enters the new campaign as the league’s two-time reigning Libero of the Year, with Salt Lake also adding another libero, Maya Sands, to the roster.
At international level, Kojima remained a registered member of the Japan women’s national team in 2026. She appeared in the VNL’s first and third preliminary weeks and Final Round and later wore No. 8 at the Asian Championship. Her most recent documented senior-team season therefore extends beyond the Paris Olympic cycle rather than ending with the 2024 Games.
Recent Performance Snapshot
| Competition | Team | Performance |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 LOVB regular season | LOVB Salt Lake | League-record 256 digs; 3.46 digs/set; .631 good-pass percentage; 2.73 pass efficiency; Libero of the Year |
| 2026 LOVB Championship | LOVB Salt Lake | Runner-up; 19 digs in championship opener and 20 in the deciding match before the golden set |
| 2026 Volleyball Nations League | Japan | No. 8 libero; rostered in Week 1, Week 3 and Final Round |
| 2026 Asian Championship | Japan | No. 8 libero; Japan finished in the top three and secured 2027 World Cup qualification |
The 2026 LOVB numbers reinforce the balance in Kojima’s defensive profile. The dig record highlights floor defense, but the passing rankings show that her value was not produced by emergency saves alone. She simultaneously finished near the top of the league in the two primary first-contact responsibilities of an elite libero.
Frequently Asked Questions
How tall is Manami Kojima?
Manami Kojima is listed at 158 cm by the Japan Volleyball Association and Volleyball World. An Aoyama Gakuin University alumni profile lists 159 cm, but the current federation and international-competition records use 158 cm.
What position does Manami Kojima play?
Kojima plays libero. She originally played as a spiker when she was younger, chose the libero pathway during a middle-school JOC selection process and became a full-time libero in high school.
Which club does Manami Kojima play for?
Kojima plays for LOVB Salt Lake in the United States and is confirmed on the club’s 2026–27 roster.
What number does Manami Kojima wear for Japan?
Kojima wore No. 8 for Japan during the 2026 Volleyball Nations League and was also listed as No. 8 for the 2026 Asian Championship.
Did Manami Kojima play at the Paris Olympics?
Yes. Kojima made her Olympic debut at Paris 2024 as one of Japan’s two specialist liberos alongside Satomi Fukudome.
How many times has Manami Kojima won LOVB Libero of the Year?
Kojima won LOVB Libero of the Year in both 2025 and 2026, giving her the award in each of the league’s first two professional seasons.
What is Manami Kojima’s Instagram?
Her official Instagram handle is @manamiran.k, which is listed in Athletes Unlimited’s official player materials.
References
- Japan Volleyball Association — 2026 Japan Women’s National Team registered players
- Japan Volleyball Association — 2026 Volleyball Nations League roster and participation record
- Japan Volleyball Association — 2026 Asian Championship match against Iran
- Japan Volleyball Association — Olympic women’s national-team roster archive
- Volleyball World — 2024 VNL Dream Team and Best Libero award
- LOVB — Manami Kojima official athlete profile
- LOVB Salt Lake — 2026/27 roster announcement
- LOVB — 2025 season awards
- LOVB — 2026 season awards
- LOVB — 2026 LOVB Icons teams
- LOVB Salt Lake — 2026 championship deciding match
- NEC Red Rockets Kawasaki — Club history
- NEC Red Rockets Kawasaki — Manami Kojima departure and seven-season reflection
- Funabashi City — Manami Kojima feature and interview
- Aoyama Gakuin University — Manami Kojima profile and 2025 World Championship record
- Athletes Unlimited — Manami Kojima official athlete profile
- Athletes Unlimited — 2025 Volleyball Season Review
- Sportiva — Manami Kojima interview on adapting to U.S. volleyball
- Wattbike Japan — 2026 Manami Kojima training interview
- Women Volleybox — Manami Kojima player data and physical measurements
