International match – ladies’ wheelchair basketball in Göttingen before the national league game of BG 74 vs. Skyliners Frankfurt
Five-time European Champions, two subsequent awards for Team of the Year – now all the German national ladies’ wheelchair basketball team needs is a medal at the Paralympics in Beijing (September 6 to 17, 2008). As part of their training, the team is playing the runner-up in the European Championships from the Netherlands in the Lokhalle Göttingen on Sunday, April 13, 2008 starting at 3:00 pm. This will be followed by the national basketball league game between BG 74 Göttingen and Skyliners Frankfurt starting at 7:00 pm. BBL.TV will feature live coverage of the game.
At the 2007 European Championships in Wetzlar, 33,000 fans experienced the excitement of wheelchair basketball. In the Lokhalle Göttingen, visitors can also look forward to a reunion with former Göttingen players Maren Butterbrodt and Simone Kues.
Eleven tournaments, international matches, and training courses in China, Germany, the USA, and Canada during the first half of 2008 – leading up to the Paralympics, German head coach Holger Glinicki and his team are training hard. The international match in Göttingen, an event hosted by BG 74, the medical technology company Otto Bock, and Lokhalle Göttingen, was added at short notice. As 2007 Team of the Year, the ladies' team was invited to the Champions Weekend in Duderstadt by Paralympics sponsor Otto Bock. The match against the strong Netherlands team will form the crowning conclusion of the event.
“We are very happy to host this extraordinary sports event in conjunction with BG 74 and the Lokhalle leading up to the Paralympics,” says Joachim F. Hamacher, Company Spokesman at Otto Bock. Otto Bock has been supporting all summer and winter Paralympics since 1988, and is also providing technical service with 130 prosthetists at the 2008 games in Beijing.
“As a national league team, supporting wheelchair basketball is a matter of course for us. With the ladies’ national team, we are meeting a very successful team in Göttingen which will make for an interesting game of basketball. The dynamics of the sport matches our own style in the BBL (German national basketball league),” says starting five
manager Marc Franz in reference to the international match. Starting five GmbH holds the licenses for the ladies' and men's national league teams of BG 74 Göttingen.
After Athens, where they came in 4th place and narrowly missed earning a medal, the German team was reinforced by European Championship top scorer Marina Mohnen (Köln), Gesche Schünemann (Lahn-Dill), and Nicole Seifert (Hamburg). Germany will be up against the USA and Australia, the Athens finalists, in the preliminary round. However, coach Holger Glinicki considers this more of an advantage: “Even if we go into the quarter final in third place, we will then be up against a group of weaker opponents who are easier to beat.” That group will likely be dominated by Canada. He thinks the USA are the gold medal favourites. And Germany? “Anything from 1st to 5th place is possible.”
Tickets to the national league game of BG 74 Göttingen vs. Deutsche Bank Skyliners Frankfurt also include admission to the international match between Germany and the Netherlands starting at 3:00 pm. The tickets are available from the website www.bg74.de, the ticket hotline 01805 / 44 70 111 (€ 0.14 per minute on the German landline network; additional charges may apply for mobile telephone service), and all official Ticketonline ticket agencies. Between the two games, Otto Bock is organising a sports-themed social programme with promotions related to the Paralympics. Among other things, fans will have the opportunity to test drive the SuperFour® outdoor vehicle.
