Namibia will compete in the FIRS Junior Men’s Inline Hockey World Championships in Dusseldorf, Germany from June 27 to July 2.
The team will depart for Germany on Friday and will be led by Michael Falk as captain. The vice captains are Gunnar Visser and Otwin Forster.
The Namibian team has experienced skaters in the form of Dominic Denker, Tyrone Miles and Sebastian Pahl, all of whom attended the 2008 Junior Men’s World Championships 2008 that were held in the USA. Other experienced players include John-James Tromp and goalie Oliver Jooste, who also participated as part of a Namibia Development team that attended the 2008 FIRS Olympic awareness tournament in the USA. The team is complimented by other players like Janko Meyer, Stefan Jooste, Joost Schneider and Dwen Brown who all competed in the Inter Conti Cup held in Swakopmund in December 2008.
The Team’s Head Coach is Brian Sobel, who previously coached the junior national USA teams that participated in the FIRS 2008 Junior Men’s Championships. The USA came second then, losing in the finals to Britain. Assistant Coach, Mathieu van Hout, also has many years of experience as a national inline hockey player for the Netherlands and later as a coach in France before he joined the Namibian Inline Hockey team.
In 2008 Namibia managed to climb to eighth in the world rankings after competing in that year’s FIRS World Championships. Namibia however dropped out of the world rankings after the team did not compete at the 2009 FIRS Junior Men’s World Championships.
Namibia will begin their campaign on June 28 by playing against the USA in the morning and then France in the afternoon. On June 29, Namibia will play against Italy. On June 30, Namibia will face Mexico in the morning and then Canada in the afternoon. That will conclude the round robin stage of the world championships.
Other nations taking part are Australia, Colombia, Czech Republic, Germany, Spain and Switzerland.