The 1st World Beach Sports Games (ANOC World Beach Games Qatar 2019), organized by the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC), took place in Doha (Qatar) on 12-16.10.2019. The competition was attended by over 1,500 players from 70 countries, representing 15 sport disciplines. One of them was beach handball. Polish women national team with Sylwia Bartkowiak (PhD student and employee of the Sports Theory Department).
Beach handball. Polish women national team with Sylwia Bartkowiak (PhD student and employee of the Sports Theory Department) played in group B, in which they competed with Greece (current World Champions), Spain, Vietnam, Australia and China. After the group phase Poland was on 4th place and advanced to the next phase of the competition. After a very exciting game Polish team lost to Brazil in the quarter-finals, which did not prevent them from winning the matches with Spain and Argentina in subsequent matches. Finally, in the tournament the Polish National team took historically a very good 5th place out of 12 teams.
– The opportunity to represent Poland during the First World Beach Sports Games was a great honor and fulfillment of my sport dreams. I am glad that we won the 5th place in the historical first Games, I consider it to be a great success. Next to me, the team consisted of 3 more graduates of our university, namely: Martyna Matysek, Alicja Ślęzak (players) and Karolina Peda (coach) – Sylwia Bartkowiak said. – The organizers made every effort to ensure that we do not lack anything – when it comes to organization, the tournament was at a very high level. However, it was difficult to play in such extreme weather conditions. During the morning matches the problem was the heat and sun, as the temperature often exceeded 40°C. In the afternoon, the problem was humidity reaching about 70%, which made me often feel like there was no oxygen in the air – added.
Sylwia Bartkowiak has been in the Polish national team since 2013. During this time, she participated four times in the European Championships and took part in The World Games 2017 in Wroclaw. In 2017 in Zagreb Polish national team won the second place of the European championship. This year during European Championship in Stare Jabłonki we tried to defend it – unfortunately, despite the high motivation, the tournament in Poland cannot be considered successful as we took 12th place out of 20 teams.
