Great news shortly before the IWBF EuroLeague
National coach Nicolai Zeltinger has nominated the twelve players, who will be wearing the German eagle on their chest representing their country at the Men’s World Championship from the 5th until the 14th of July in Incheon, South Korea. Six of those players come from German champions and cup winners RSV Lahn-Dill: Thomas Boehme, Jan Haller, Christopher Huber, Dirk Koehler, Bjoern Lohmann and Marco Zwerger.
A great feature of the team will be the Junior-world champions from last year. As well as Boehme and Huber there will be Jens-Eike Albrecht from Thueringen and Kai Moeller from Zwickau fighting for the world title. This means the team will be young and future-orientated, and those players will get an early chance to get important experience to prepare themselves for the Paralympic games in Rio de Janeiro.
Another change in the squad since the Europeans in Frankfurt/Main is the return of RSV old-dog Dirk Koehler. No longer participating will be Frankfurt Mainhatten Skywheelers Lars Lehmann, Sebastian Magenheim and Sebastian Wolk as well as RSV-centre Felix Schell. “We used a long and intense selection camp to observe the players and make a decision about whom to take, judging athletic abilities, intelligence in the games as well as coping with pressure. Instead of choosing the best players we focussed on selecting the twelve players who would form the best team together.” said Nicolai Zeltinger in a first statement after the nomination, which now has to be officially nominated by the DBS. “We have picked three players from our U22-world-champions-squad, coached by my colleague Peter Richarz, who will hopefully be the beginning of a new era and prepare us for the future. After not being part of a World Championship in twelve years we want to get good results in Incheon. But at the moment we are excited about the group draw.”
The men’s squad for Incheon: Jens-Eike Albrecht (RSB Team Thüringen), Thomas Becker (Mainhatten Skywheelers), André Bienek (Unipol Briantea ´84 Cantu), Thomas Böhme (RSV Lahn-Dill), Jan Haller (RSV Lahn-Dill), Matthias Heimbach (FCK Rolling Devils), Christopher Huber (RSV Lahn-Dill), Dirk Köhler (RSV Lahn-Dill), Björn Lohmann (RSV Lahn-Dill), Kai Möller (RSC-Rollis Zwickau), Dirk Passiwan (Goldmann Dolphins Trier), Marco Zwerger (RSV Lahn-Dill).
Zeltinger’s colleague in Hamburg, Holger Glinicki, will nominate the Women’s squad that he will take to Toronto (20th until 28th of June 2014) at the end of March, where they are hoping to win more medals. The team was beaten in the finals in Birmingham, GB, in 2010, but were looking like the next champions until the last couple of seconds. Now they will have to keep a close eye on hosting team Canada, title-defendants USA, European Champions the Netherlands and Paralympic Silver Medallists Australia. Part of the women’s squad is Paralympic gold medallist and RSV-player Annabel Breuer.
More information about Team Germany at www.teamgermany.net