A short introduction

If we consider the number of its residents, Szeged is the fourth most populated city in Hungary. At women’s basketball it stands in the third place so far. Our team is going to start its seventh season in autumn in the highest-level Hungarian championship in the First Division Group A and we can conﬁdently claim it is strongly determined to make progress again in order to reach its goals.

The team trains at the City’s Sports Hall in the garden city of Szeged called Újszeged on the leﬅ bank of river Tisza and also receives its opponents there. The hall can be found just two corners from the Tisza bridge, beside road M43, which connects Budapest and Bucarest. The handball team Pick Szeged, which ﬁghts in the Champions League, holds its trainings there too. The rich sport life of Szeged is also determined by the rowers of DÉMÁSZ VSE and by the best water polo team of the provinces, the Szeged Beton VE, who could obtain the sixth place in the extremely strong Hungarian championship. Péter Lékó, the Hungarian chess grand master also started his career in Szeged and lives here even at present. (More about Szeged:click here!)

Nagyobb térképre váltás

The rebirth of the formerly quite successful women’s basketball in Szeged was built upon Orsolya Donkó – who just moved to Szeged at that time – and upon the returning Kornélia Mészáros. Both of them are known in the international ﬁeld as well. Since 1999 Viktória Roczkov, former member of the national team in her age-group, has also been helping the team. The key of our success was the head coach, Gábor Ujhelyi, who won the bronze medal in the Hungarian Cup at the year of his arrival at Szeged. It was important that he brought to Szeged two of his distinguished players: Judit Kajdacsi, member of the national team and the Russian Anna Bulatova. In the 2001/2002 season we played quarterﬁnal as newcomers with the posterior silver medallist, the team of GYSEV. Finally, we ﬁnished at the eighth place, which we can put down as a success considering our initial diﬃculties.

The Romanian international player, Andra Mandache started to play in our team in 2002. Unfortunately, she leﬅ in June 2004, just as the junior, later adult international player, Diána Fűrész. We managed to end the 2002/2003 season successfully: our team ﬁnished at the sixth place in the championship and gained the right to play in the play-oﬀ of the championship. With that result the team also acquired the right to take part in the international cup.

At the beginning of this season the experienced player, Petra Russai has become the member of our team and Petra Ujhelyi, who otherwise shines in the WNBA, also played at us for a while. Before her, Merima Secserbegovics, the talented Bosnian centre strengthened the team. In the third season the team spent in the highest-level Hungarian championship it achieved the sixth place again and obtained the bronze medal of the Hungarian Cup by its brilliantly executed play. Due to that result we again have the chance to compete in the European Cup.

Aﬅer a long interval, in the 2002/2003 season our team gained access to the international ﬁeld again. In the ﬁrst round we had to ﬁght with the German champion, the Croatian champion and the Slovakian silver medallist. It surprised the international basketball world too that we managed to beat the teams of Marburg and Sibenik and that we succeeded in qualifying for the next round despite of our group full of strong opponents. The second round did not bring success to Szeged true enough we had to ﬁght against more powerful teams (Roverto, Dinamo Moscow, Glyfada). In the ﬁrst round of the next season we met Orenburg, Dorsten and Gospic. We managed to play at the quarterﬁnal. It is the best place, that basketball team ever reached in Szeged.

Our goals are clear. We want to manage a better and better team. In the season before the last season two great player choosed Szeviép Szeged for their home team. We hoped, Emőke Fürész, Milena Tomova and the all the great players of Szeviép-Szeged would help to achieve our goals. We ﬁnished in the third place once again in the national champhionship.

For the last season, Szeviép changed a lot. With Desire Almind, Ildikó Szakács, and all of the very young new players we could make our dreams come true.

The won silver medal involves a responsibility for us. Our team steps out to the ring of Europe’s best 24 teams on the Euroleague’s matches and the with the hope of a better championship’s place we start the national championship.