Lacrosse is present for less than 5 years in France, in Czech Republic, the first matches took place while certain players of Lille had not even been born. Interview with Jakub Hurda, who presents us Czech Lacrosse and his team of Pardubice, a favourite of the Boxmania 2011.

Can you present the club, since when does it exist, which are its peculiarities ?

LC Pardubice is box-lacrosse club founded in 1986 with first box-lacrosse teams in Czech Republic. Since then we have ups and downs. In the glories times in our history we have 2 senior teams in Czech best league NBLL and one women lacrosse team. In recent days our team is growing again. Performance of our senior team is risik and we can play even matches with the top 3 teams in NBLL. We also have one junior team and thein performance is better from game to game. In Pardubice, every one likes box-lacrosse more, than field-lacrosse.

How do you explain that the Box Lacrosse knows a big success in Czech Republic ?

Box-lacrosse is really interesting, fast and tough game. Similar to ice-hockey, in which Czech Republic is very sucessfull. I guess, that this is the reason, why we like box more than field. Another reason is probably, that in CR we played box-lacrosse since 1986, so our young players have a lot of mentors. And we can’t forget, that some of Czech players played in North America leagues, Czech national team have been trained by Jim Veltman in 2 previous World Championship. That is a lot of box-lacrosse experiences.

How Pardubice discovered Boxmania ?

One of our players joined Boxmania 2010 as referee. Our team is trying to support every box-lacrosse activity in CR or even in Europe. That is why we are going to join your tournament.

Pardubice is certainly the big favourite of this tournament, what are your ambitions ?

We don’t know the exact qualities of our opponents yet, especially team from UK is mystery for us. But we would like to be in final match.

In what foreign tournaments, has Pardubice already participated ?

Sadly, there are just a few box-lacrosse tournaments in Europe. In 2009 we attends tournament in Hannover (GER) . Couple years before that some tournaments in Bratislava (SK) and regularly we are attending domestic, but the biggest international tournament in Europe – Ales Hrebesky Memorial in Prague.


What do you know about French Lacrosse ?

We don’t know much. As far as we know, lacrosse in France is quite young and players are oriented mostly to field-lacrosse. We found your attempt to offer box-lacrosse to teams from Belgium and Netherlands very commendable.
We are looking forward to see you in Lille !