This weekend Steve went to Vinnitsa to play floorball and I (Jo) will be telling his story.
There is a professional floor ball league in Ukraine and one of their players, Artem, is a Christian and plays floorball professionally in Zaporozhye. Artem wanted to teach young guys about the sport and create a new club in order to make an amateur league. Steve has been practicing with the Molochansk guys and was asked by Artem who is their coach to play in a tournament in Vinnitsa. This was apparently the third leg of their season, which consisted of three tournaments.
They took the train which was a less than pleasurable experience but it was time together with the guys. They arrived at the train station in Vinnitsia on Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m and their first game was at 10:00 a.m so they took a marshrootka straight to the sports hall.
They played three games on the first day, winning two and tying one.
The guys spent the night in a dormitory. Not a dormitory for any college, school or any purpose, just because there are dormitories lying around from the Soviet era and people can stay in them like hotels. Terrible, gross hotels for super cheap. It was $4 for a night. Here is their room:
Steve described the bed as a metal hammock. Thank goodness we don't think Ukraine has bedbugs because if it did, this place would have had them.
The second day didn't go nearly as well. They played two games on Sunday, both against more difficult teams and they were under-manned, having only eight players whereas most of the other teams had 12-13. Therefore, both games ended up being losses.
Final results of all three tournaments (their team had only one win before this tournament). FK Zaporozhye is in fifth place:
The trip home was as highly unorganized as expected (feared? maybe?). The person arranging travel just....didn't arrange it.....and the online ticket booking service for the train said that there were no tickets available so five of their guys ended up showing up at the train without tickets. Thankfully, this is Ukraine and you can pay to get wherever you want to go and after talking to the conductor all the guys magically found places on the train. The train stopped in Dnipro so they still had to catch the bus back to Zap which isn't all that difficult.
Now in Steve's own words:
"All in all it was quite a nice tournament. Travel and accommodations left MUCH to be desired but floorball seems like a really good, fun sport to play. I'm very thankful for the opportunity to play a sport so similar to one I'm good at (ball hockey) with a bunch of guys who are interested in sport, English and learning more about the Bible."
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