Under 22 Euro Championship Final: Belarus 96:91 Italy (1994)

Winning the Gold - July 10, 1994

Looking back at the European Championship Final game few things come to mind:

• The Final game is taking place in Slovenian Capital Ljubljana, at the old Tivoli Arena
• The atmosphere around the final game was unusual - it was very nice and quiet... only few local fans showed up because of disappointing performance of the Slovenia National Team
• Belarus blue uniforms did not even have the country's name written on them, no sponsors, no logos - just a player's number
• Thank God we are playing in real Nike sneakers (one of the first pairs we ever had)
• The best part was the medal ceremony - seeing Belarus banner being raised to the music of the Belarus Anthem - priceless!

More about European U22 Championship in this blog: February 2011 posts

Gold Medal from Euro 1994

The Team that made history

Final Part. The Life after... Winning European Championship.

As we jumped for joy and celebrated our victory in Ljubljana, little did we know that Belarus team will never be assembled according to its current 1994 roster ever again. That is the saddest part of modern team sports in general, and basketball in particular. We were young and when you young you don't think about things like this ... Not that thinking would help or change the flow of events that soon followed.



It turns out that there were some US College coaches among the fans in Slovenia and they had the eyes on our team. Their names were Mike Jarvis and Scott Beeten. As the story goes, Alexander Koul and Andrei Sviridov - the two 7' footers (2m10cm) - were the first to safely depart to the U.S. soil and join The George Washington Colonials for the 1994/95 season. Andrei Krivonos and I had followed that path a year later, after winning yet another Belarus Championship title in 1995.

Part II. FIBA Under 22 Championship: Gold Medal Journey. Slovenia.

Hello yet again, everybody. As you see from my blog posts, I do write a lot about that 1993-94 journey of Belarus U-22 team because that team was the ultimate underdog one can imagine. It's like a small NCAA school with six walk-ons going to play against All-American schools and winning not once or twice, but legitimately conquering the CHAMPIONSHIP. As I've mentioned before, FIBA Championship was for Under-22 players, but on Belarus squad only 2 players were that age, most was only 19 and me, about to turn 18 in three months. You know, that victory changed all of us once and forever, we realized that if you dream big and work hard everything is truly possible. Like they say, even the wind will blow your way if you are on the right path...

Introduction. We Are The Champions, My Friends!!!

Winning a gold medal in 1994 European "Under 22" Championship was simply surreal and out-of-this-world feeling for a young Belarus team. Till this day I feel like it was a blessing from God, but then again good things happen to those teams that work hard and have a great chemistry.

It's interesting how the big things are seen only from a far... Growing up in the post-Soviet era in Belarus, which was one of the fifteen Republics that composed the collapsed Soviet Union, was not an easy task. Like the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster was not enough, the country was limping and stumbling in its transition to market economy. The signs were way too obvious - unemployment, scarcity of food and political instability. But there was a promise, if not for all of the 10 millions of Belarussians,  for athletes for sure.