PRAGUE – In less than three weeks, a fierce competition will start among the best university floorball teams in the world. The championship has attracted the best student floorball teams of the world to the heart of Europe, where they will compete in the FISU World University Floorball Championship from May 23rd until May 27th, and will try to win a prestigous victory for their countries.
Prague is the first capital city to organise the university championship in this rapidly developing sport. This will also be the largest championship so far in terms of participants. The tournament has never before attracted as many as twelve teams. There will be eight teams in the men’s competition, and four in the women’s category.
Floorball fans who find their way to the games certainly have something to look forward to. For the first time, the four strongest floorball countries in the world will meet in both categories in this competition. Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and, of course, host Czech Republic will be putting out men’s and women’s teams. The Czech team will be led in the competition by Radim Cepek, who is still active as a player, and by long-term national team trainer Zdeněk Skružný. Markéta Šteglová and Michalem Jedlička will be attempting to get a winning performance out of the women, who will be defending a silver medal from the previous championship.
“Czechs may not like to sound boastful, but we can’t set ourselves lower targets than to win the whole tournament,” says trainer Skružný before the beginning of the five-day championship. “We have a strong team, in which almost half of the players are from the national team.”
His squad will be defending the bronze medals that they won in Umeå, Sweden, in 2010. In the game for the bronze medals, Skružný and Zahalka’s team outplayed the team from Norway, winning by 9 – 1. In the final match between the top teams at the university floorball championship, Sweden managed to beat Finland 3-2. The blue and yellow Swedish colours were also successful in the women’s competition.
(Source: Organizing Committe 2012 WUC Floorball)
Free entry for most of the games at Sparta and at Střešovice
Most of the games in the women’s tournament will be played in the Tatran sports hall in Prague, and the men will play most of their group games in the Sparta sports hall at Letna. In the weekend, attention will turn to the Sparta sports hall, where all four semi-finals will be played on Saturday, and also the finals on Sunday. Plenty of spectators and a good atmosphere are anticipated, since the organisers have decided to make entrance for the group games free-of-charge. At the play-off games, floorball fans will be asked to make only a symbolic payment.
In addition to the four top teams, fans will also be able to assess the skills of the teams from Slovakia, Austria, Belgium and faraway Japan. The women’s teams will play all against all, and the Czech girls will appear against Finland, Sweden and Switzerland. According to the FISU rankings, the Czech men will be in the weaker group on paper, meeting Austria, Belgium and Japan. However, this straightforward-looking group does not suit the Czech team.
“It’s not a good group, because there is going to be a difficult semi-final game that will decide whether we are successful or not,” says Zdeněk Skružný. “One thing is clear – we certainly want to get to the final,” he adds. He is not afraid of the confrontation with a strong team from group B in the semi-final.
The key fourth game of the Czech team in the tournament will be on May 26th.
