Sopot, Poland, April 10, 2015. On Saturday night the eventual winners of the 2015 CEV Volleyball Cup – Women will be crowned at the Ergo Arena in Gdansk-Sopot. The hosts of PGE Atom Trefl SOPOT are determined to write a piece of history for their club and a large crowd is expected to flock to the arena for the re-match starring the Atomic Girls and Russia’s Dinamo KRASNODAR. On Tuesday Dinamo cruised to a 3:0 home win to get the right edge for the return but the hosts are hoping for a comeback to call for the golden set.

“Since we travelled back home we have been working to get ready for this game both as a team as well as individually,” says PGE Atom Trefl captain Izabela Belcik. “If you look at the roster of Dinamo, they have some world-class players but we are not afraid of this and so it is not true that we lost the first match in Russia even before entering the court. We were a way too nervous in the early stages of the game and after that we were not able to change its course anymore.”

By Friday at noon the organisers of the ‘grand finale’ were proud to announce that as many as 4,000 tickets were sold already, so the crowd is expected to turn into the seventh player supporting the quest for glory of the Atomic Girls. “I can’t promise that we are going to win this game but one thing is for sure: we will fight for every ball until the end,” Belcik adds. “We are totally focused on our own game because that is the most important thing at this moment, it does not really matter how our opponent is going to play. We have to improve on each aspect of the game and we are confident that we can get a good result. We are angry because in Krasnodar we played well below our standards and expectations, so now we want to show our real value both to our fans as well as to the players of Dinamo.”

Dinamo’s team captain and Russian Volleyball icon Liubov Shashkova (Sokolova) is also confident about the chances of her team to lift a second European trophy after KRASNODAR won the 2013 edition of the CEV Volleyball Challenge Cup. This does not come as a surprise since the Russians won in straight sets on Tuesday night and they now ‘only’ need another two sets to finish atop the charts in Europe’s second most prestigious club competition.

“PGE Atom Trefl SOPOT played a bad game in Russia but this is because we forced them to do so,” she says. “We want to play our best again and we hope to win this trophy.”

The Atomic Girls are playing their first continental final, whilst this is already the third in four years for Dinamo KRASNODAR. Before lifting the trophy of the CEV Volleyball Challenge Cup in 2013, the Russians had indeed contested the final of the 2011 CEV Volleyball Cup losing  to Italy’s Chateau d’Ax URBINO.