Literally only three weeks ago, a call for applications appeared in Tulsa for ladies who want to join a new floorball team – with or without experience. It turns out that so many women have been silently waiting for this, that the team was formed in a flash. The new floorball team “Talsi” participated in its first tournament, from which it brought home the bronze.
Unbelievably, this is only the third practice of the new floorball team. Mothers of young floorball players who want to get to know this game from a different side, as well as ladies who have returned to this sport after a break of many years, have gathered here. “I’m also a sports teacher and a fitness trainer, because all kinds of movements are relevant to me all the time, but floorball is on a completely different level. You need a lot of speed, reaction, endurance… Everything,” says Diāna Mazjāne, a player of the floorball team “Talsi”.
When asked if it is not strange to be seniors – veterans -, Sanda Krontäle, captain of the floorball team “Talsi”, answers: “I laughed a lot at this combination. Senior women – veterans… Of course, we don’t consider ourselves that way. If you look at how the girls run on the field and with what enthusiasm they work, you will never say in your life that they are seniors.”
It’s like riding a bicycle – once you’ve learned, all you have to do now is pick up a stick and you already know what to do. “I have not forgotten anything. You could simply do all that better, faster and more technically, but the skills are all the same,” says Diāna Mazjāne, a player of the floorball team “Talsi”.
“Performance keeps getting better with every training session. It’s like in any sport – whatever technique is acquired during training, it remains mostly that way. The only thing we need is to learn cooperation, we need speed,” says coach Natalia Yonichenko.
At the moment, the team is preparing for its first game, which is already in a couple of days. Reinforcements from other cities are expected there. While the team is not yet in full force, the coach herself also joins the field. The players admit that a different age also has a different mindset.
Krontale: “You pay much more attention to details, you look much better at who is playing. Also, when you come to the boys’ games, supporting our Tulsa boys, you see how they move, how the plays are formed, how they make patterns on the field, etc. You immediately think more analytically. Then, when we were young and small, the main thing was to play, to score a goal, you weighed it all individually, but now the team game is much more important, and you can really, really feel it.”
The fact that the new floorball team was formed at the end of the season is not an obstacle. Ladies’ training will continue in order to have a successful team next season. At the moment, on average 10 to 15 players come to training once a week, but the team hopes that by the beginning of the new season, more interested players will join, so that the team has a stable 15 players and a reserve.
Krontāle: “Of course, we will aim for the fact that it will not be just to come to play or to some individual competitions, but we would really like to be able to climb the career ladder to the first league again – that is such a big, big dream that we would like to fulfill . I think that Tulsi could become such a metropolis of floorball because we are very, very strong, very talented, very persistent.”
There are several floorball teams of different generations in Talsi, and now the women’s floorball club “Talsi” has taken them under its wing in order to build a united floorball community.
