The first Hungarian Bandy Day ended successfully, many young people participated. What was the point of recruitment?

With the Hungarian Bandy Day, our goal was to introduce this sport to those interested. Many people have not heard of it at all, but especially they did not have the opportunity to try the game, the bandy stick and the ball.
Primarily, we were aiming for young players – boys and girls – with solid knowledge of the age to play bandy. To our great delight, the interested newcomers included not only junior boys, but also youth (U16), adults and girls.

The Bandy Nap schedule was quite complex and dense, what was the reason for this?

We wanted to give them a taste of the sport of banfy. The applicants could not only try a few shots or talk to the members of the national team that won the World Cup in Group B.

We gave them the opportunity to try themselves as team members. The program of the Bandy day consisted of theoretical education, ice training and real matches, similar to the training camps of the national team.

Many people have only recently become acquainted with this sport.

We asked goalkeeper Dóra Kaposvári, players Manó Harmathy and Kevin Dreysier.

How did you like it at first? What were the theoretical lessons like, did you manage to get to know the rules and the course of the game?

KD: It’s quite an interesting sport, it has collected something from every sport. To be honest, I expected much worse. We saw interesting match situations, got to know the rules, and good company.

HM: I really liked it. I think the theory sessions explained the rules well.

How did you feel at the ice training? How is it different from hockey?

KD: I heard from many people that it will be easier for us goalkeepers to get used to it. I think I can say that I didn’t get used to that big goal until the last second of the last game. And then I didn’t even say that everything is different. We don’t have a stick, our basic position is different, we as goalies starts the build ups and I could list more.

HM: The ice training sessions were very interesting. It seemed like a much more sophisticated and tactical sport than hockey.

DK: I didn’t really like this bandy sport at the beginning, I struggled a lot with the stick and the ball and I didn’t really understand the rules, but as we practiced and practiced it got better and better and I started to understand the subtleties of bandy. Technically and tactically, the two sports are completely different from each other. Both are team games, but they are structured differently. The only thing I missed were the tackles.

How was the afternoon tournament? What was it like to play a match?

HM: The tournament was good, but I felt a bit like someone who was thrown into deep water right away.

DK: I only got to know bandy during the training, I played it at the tournament, I fought and I found out about the mechanics of the game. By the end of it, I got into the game quite well and began to understand how team play and the rules system work here. I also scored a goal.

KD: We played four games with two goalkeepers. I can say that we were quite tired by the end, but we had a good time. It is important to add to this that the company and especially the coach and. referee Gábor Nagy contributed a lot. He actually kept our spirits up after the barrage of goals. It was very difficult to pay attention to the rules that were new to me, such as corner strokes and goalkeepers ball but he always helped me with that. The gift package received from the federation and Willisport for the persistent work was especially nice!

Among the members of the adult national team, we asked Márton Kleinhappel about training and the tournament. How was the first training session with the newly recruited players? What did you focus on during the morning training, what were the tasks?

The training was in a good mood, at the beginning there were easy warm-up tasks with passing and ball handling with a shot at the end. Of course, after that came the more complicated tasks, here the emphasis was on the reversals seen many times in Bandy, so we practiced ball deliveries, which included U-turns, passes and, of course, shooting at the end. We also did 2-2 situations.

How was the tournament for you? Marci, you were also team captain at the tournament. What was it like playing with the rookies?

I personally enjoyed it a lot, the tournament was just as good as the training. Yes, as you mentioned, I was one of the team captains. There were a lot of rookies in my team, but we fought hard, I helped them understand the game and it was good to see that they enjoyed the game. Of course, the hockey instinct was still visible in them many times, but this changes over time, when they begin to understand the essence of Bandy more and more. We drew in the first match, then lost on penalties, so we played our second match for 3rd place, which we won.

After the success of the first bandy day, is the well-deserved summer break coming? What are the plans in the Association for the future?

Summer is upon us – in all ice sports, this means less ice time – but the break is by no means over. We have a lot of administrative work to do in the Association and we can’t stop with the preparations