Sitting Volleyball

Prepared by students from 8b

ComeniusSchool Partnership

2011-2013

Short History

• Sitting volleyball started in Germany and the Netherlands in 1948 after the World War 2. Many soldiers had lost legs, hands. So the game was invented for such people. Everybody wanted them not to be depressed.

• The first European championship was in1970.

• Sitting volleyball was played first in Paralympic Games in Montreal in 1976.

Representatives of the players from Tumsupe,

Ropaži municipality.• Two men from our village have played

sitting volleyball and they have represented Latvia in international competitions, in European championships.

• Ingvars Ozoliņš• Boriss Jeparovs

Boriss Jeparovs is the second from the left sitting;Ingvars Ozoliņš is the fourth from the left sitting.

Ingvars Ozoliņš

• He has been living in Ropaži for almost twenty-five years.

• Before service in the army he played volleyball professionally.

• During the service in the army he injured his knee and for many years he was not allowed to jump on it. So he had to leave active volleyball playing.

• When he returned from the army in 1989 he was asked to consult the new sitting voleyball team. He agreed and soon joined the team as an instructor and also as a player.

• In 1989 the Latvian team won the bronze medals in the USSR championship. Ingvars was among the players.

• He played sitting volleyball for nine years. He took part in many international tournaments.

• Unluckily, he lost all his photos, diplomas, medals, documents during the fire in his house some years ago.

Boriss Jeparovs

• Boriss has been living in our village for more than twenty-five years. He worked as an electrician in the fur animal farm when a terrible accident happened and he lost his leg in 1990.

• After two years his neighbour Ingvars Ozoliņš invited him to join the sitting volleyball team of Latvia.

• Boriss has been in many countries of Europe: Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Russia, the Ukraine, the Netherlands.

• He regrets that there was only one team when he played sitting volleyball till 2005. But at the same time there were fifty teams in the Netherland.

• In the interview Boriss remembered how people in our small village looked at him when he walked on pair of crutches. He felt embarrassed, he didn’t want to go out.

• But after some games abroad, he understood that he is equal with others. Nobody stared at him in the Netherlands, in Poland. Why should he pay attention to how other people were looking at him?

Women’s sitting volleyball team

• In 1997 Latvian women’s sitting volleyball team won the title of European champions.

• They were the seventh in the Paralympic Games in Beijing in 2008.

Latvian Paralympic athletes after Beijing Paralympic Games

The motto of the players:

Sitting volleyball is the way of

integration, way of life, strength, speed,

acuteness.