Gold-winning handball players: students should be encouraged to play sports

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Gold-winning handball players: students should be encouraged to play sports

Students should be motivated to play sports

The female handball players from the University of Rijeka have won the third gold medal for Rijeka at the European Universities Games. The path to the final was not easy: they won against the University of Porto in the quarterfinal, and against the University of Ljubljana in the semi-final. Although the final against the Lithuanian Sports University started badly for them, the Rijeka team turned over the game around at the very end, winning by a single goal.

Nataša Miočinović, twenty-one-year-old player from Zamet, born in Virovitica, studies at the Faculty of Economics in Rijeka. She would like for women’s handball to become more popular and appreciated. She also hopes that the European Universities Games might help in that.

Kika Vrkljan is 22 years old and did not expect gold, considering her team’s fatigue over the tournament, but, of course, was happy to win it.

‘We made it in the end,’ says Kika, who hoped that maybe female students would become more interested and start practicing handball after seeing the matches at the Games. She thinks that women’s sport deserves more attention in general.

Rijeka’s coach is former handball player Adrijana Prosenjak, who was named the best Croatian player in 1993. She admitted that it had been hard for her to gather thirteen players for the Games. Academic sports is not nearly as developed in Croatia as in the USA.

‘The problems will stay until some more specific changes are made. Young students need to be encouraged to start playing sports, and they should do it for several reasons, not only for the joy of playing,’ she said.