European Team Championship: 2015

The Ukrainian national team is preparing for the European Team Championship 2015

This year our men's and women's teams take part in the annual European Team Squash Championship and these competitions can be called the most significant for our athletes.

All European teams, depending on their level of play and last year's results, play in one of three divisions. Teams of the 3rd division will play in Ljubljana (Slovenia) on April 22-25, where our girls will go, and men will play on April 29 - May 2 in Herning (Denmark), which will host the teams of the 1st and 2nd divisions. The past year was significant for our teams: the men's squash took the highest in the history of Ukrainian squash 9th place in the 2nd division (or 17th place in the overall team competition), and the women's squash began its confident formation and declared itself on the European arena, taking 3rd place in the 3rd division. The composition of the men's team

Denis Podvorny
Konstantin Rybalchenko
Valery Fedoruk
Ruslan Sorochinsky
Dmitry Pogrebnyak

This year, 11 teams play in the second division among men, Ukraine is seeded 8th and plays in Group A with the national teams of Denmark (1) and Slovakia (9). It is difficult to say whether we were lucky with the sowing, but like last year we are in a group with the owners of the courts. We didn’t have to play with the Danish team before, but we had already met the Slovaks twice - at the last Championship and the year before last, and both times we played 2-2 with them. It is noteworthy that both times we played with the squad without Denis Podvodny, who was injured in previous matches. Hopefully, this time he will be able to play and reverse the established draw in our favor. After all, this victory will determine whether Ukraine will enter the Eight for the first time in history!

Konstantin Rybalchenko, captain of the national squash team of Ukraine, talks about the preparations for the Championship: “This year it was decided to hold a training camp in Ukraine. On April 17-19, our whole team trains 2 times a day for 2 hours: one workout in the morning and one in the evening. On Friday, we had an entrance to the training process with light intensity, the second training session in the evening was with a higher load. We mainly practice tactics - we play conditioning games, patterns, counting games according to tasks. Stefano Galifi is planning to join us on Saturday and this will be a good game practice for the national team. The seeding changed several times and we were with the Slovaks, then with the Hungarians, but, in the end, the third team in our group is still the Slovak national team and that's good. And Denmark, I would call one of the favorites of the second division, is a strong rival and the games with him will not be easy. We will arrive in Herning on April 28 and will train with the whole team in the evening. The tournament kicks off the next day, April 29th, and our first game against Denmark is at 20:00. Therefore, in the morning we have the opportunity to hold another training session, to look at and evaluate the opponents, since the teams of our group - Denmark and Slovakia - are playing before us. The national team is in a very good mood, we are all together, we are all in tune, we are all doing our best! So far, we have not decided exactly who will perform under what number, we will decide this at the end of the training camp, but we will rely on tactics."

And it’s true, the guys are in a very high spirits, they smile, laugh, give their all 100% and practically crawl out of the court. How nice it is to see our best athletes again as one team and one whole! But most importantly, their eyes are shining, and this inspires and gives us hope that this time they will perform even better than the previous one, will give all of themselves for every ball in favor of Ukraine and bring the victories we are waiting for! It is a pleasure to watch their preparation and this time everyone has such an opportunity, one has only to come to the courts in Sport Life Teremki.

Training schedule of the men's national team: Saturday 11: 00-13: 00, 17: 00-19: 00 Sunday 9: 00-12: 00 (training will be held in the format of a mini-tournament)