The Slovakian Teqball Federation organised the “Teach them about Teqball – make an impact” event with workshops and a tournament for 40 players from the Visegrad region. from the financial fund of Visegrad fund.

Between 16 & 20 June, the city of Prešov, Slovakia, hosted 40 Teqball players, clubs’ representatives and coaches from 4 Visegrad countries at series of events about Teqball. The purpose of the happening was to provide a platform for the participants to improve the work of their respective Teqball clubs and organizations through a series of seminars and practical demonstrations.

The participating clubs improved their competencies in areas such as marketing and visibility of their club, the attraction of new players, training methodology, social inclusion projects and the creation of an environment attractive for players regardless of gender. Apart from participants with Teqball background, the event hosted students of University of Prešov’ s Faculty of Sports. The future P.E. teachers learned about Teqball, its values, and vision and were guided to utilize Teqball in their future careers to attract young people to the sport. Social events and a mini competition in singles and doubles categories during the event brought together the participating countries and created new partnerships between the clubs, their representatives and national federations.

Among the 40 players, Bartolomiej Franczuk, Konrad Tarkowski, Stefan Orlowski from Poland, Branislav Rodman, Marián Badár, Adriana Kecerová from the hosting nation, Gergo Varga, Abel Hegedus, Zsofia Dezsenyi from Hungary were in Presov, as well as many young players, youngest being 11 years old boy from Slovakia. 

“We are glad that the project was met with relatively high interest. The City of Prešov hosted both, amateur and young players, as well as the more experienced ones, representatives of well-established clubs, such as Infinity Teqball Club (Hungary), Rodman Teq Academy (Slovakia) or Warszaw Teq Club & Czyzew Teq Club (Poland), as well as the newly founded ones. With the feedback we are getting, we feel it was a useful tool for Teqball’s improvement in participating countries and we certainly hope it might be a start of deeper cooperation between the countries in the future.” - said Jakub Mihalik, Secretary General of the hosting federation.

In the three categories, Zsofia Dezsenyi (HUN) won in WS, Bartolomiej Franczuk (POL) in MS and Gergo Varga/Abel Hegedus (HUN) in MD. Besides the professional's categories, the organisers also had time for fun as smashing/attack accuracy, pass accuracy, serve accuracy and playing with 2 balls at the same time type of challenges were also present.

“After the first two international tournaments which Slovakia organized in 2022, the Visegrad project is another event held to improve the quality of Teqball in our region. The world of Teqball is moving fast and it is important to educate its stakeholders to keep up with the speed. One of our goals as a national federation is to improve the work on the grassroots level and this was the perfect opportunity to share the knowledge and experience among our countries, to inspire those who are in touch with Teqball on a daily basis and to improve our work with the young generation. We would like to thank the Visegrad fund for the support and we hope the event will inspire others to organize similar events, not only on the federation level, but also on club or individual level.” highlighted Artúr Benes, President of Teqball Federation of Slovakia.