3×3 U18 Men National Team of Serbia has qualified for European Championship that is to be held in Hungary from 9-11 December. Our players won the third place at the qualification tournament held on July 16th and 17th in the capital of Latvia- Riga.
In our U18 Men National team in the qualification games Hadzic Ivan, Jerotic Nikola, Lakovic Martin and Cosic Marko appeared. Our team was accompanied by Goran Vojkic ,a Head Coach and professional person appointed by the KSS.
In the competition with 14 teams Serbia had to qualify among the first six teams that “travel” to European Championship. In the preliminary group (D) Serbia was at the beginning of the competition defeated by Turkey (that defended U18 title from the last year’s European Championship held in Belarus), with the score 14-9. This game was followed by two victories against national teams of Bulgaria (15-7) and Israel (18-10) that have secured second place in the group and qualification into quarter finals.
In the quarter final game that has been directly decisive on the qualification for the European Championship , our U18 players were better from the favorite peers from Germany (who by then have assuredly defeated Russia with 21-9 and Romania with 19-9 in their group) and have defeated them with the score 18-13. The game was very interesting – less than four minutes before the end German team had advantage of 12-7, but our team “woke up” and completely turned the situation in a very short period of time.
In the semifinal our players were defeated by the host , Latvia team , with the score 9-7, but they won the third place and have secured “visa” for European Championship. Beside our team after the qualifications held in Riga , teams that also travel to the European Championship are Slovenia , Latvia, Romania, Germany and Turkey. It is interesting to emphasizes that the tournament was very qualitative , and that U18 teams such as Spain and Russia did not manage to qualify.
At the same time a qualification tournament for the other six teams that are to participate in European championship was held in Hungary and the teams that go to this Championship are : Republic of Czech ,Georgia, Belgium, France and Andorra.