04/10/2019 09:00
Joel Banks to lead Finland until EuroVolley 2021
News from the National Federations
Helsinki, Finland, October 4, 2019. The Finnish Volleyball Association have launched a two-year project leading to EuroVolley 2021, a competition they will be co-hosting together with Czech Republic, Estonia and one more country still TBD. The event will be taking place in Tampere, Finland, and with this major goal ahead, the Finnish Volleyball Association will continue their cooperation with head coach Joel Banks up until EuroVolley 2021.
“For me, it has been an honour to work with Finland this last summer. There were clearly many challenges for the programme and we met those challenges head-on. This past summer has been a steep learning curve for both the players and the staff as we got used to working together. The future will be a lot of hard work, requiring dedication and sacrifice in order to make the necessary steps forward. I look forward to making that work and the expectation is that we all go all in together to improve ourselves and the Finland Men’s National Team,” says Banks.
The Finnish Volleyball Association plans to invite a larger group of players, especially younger ones, to join this long-term project. The first year’s programme includes the European Silver League, training camps and participation in a number of friendly tournaments and matches. Since Finland are one of the hosts, they will not participate in the EuroVolley qualifiers scheduled for the summer of 2020.
“As a new coach, Banks had to deal with a challenging situation. Even though the losses were staggering, working with the team has been uncompromising throughout the summer and the results eventually followed at EuroVolley. In Slovenia and France, we had a well-managed and tactically well-organised team,” notes Seppo Siika-Aho, CEO of the Finnish Volleyball Association.
EuroVolley will return to Finland after the land of a thousand lakes previously played host to the men’s competition in 1993 as well as to both the men’s and women’s tournaments in 1977.
|