1. Comenius
School Partnership
2011-2013
Sitting Volleyball
Prepared by students from
8b

2. Short History
• Sitting volleyball started in Germany and
the Netherlands in 1948 after the World
War 2. Many soldiers had lost legs,
hands. So the game was invented for such
people. Everybody wanted them not to be
depressed.

3. • The first European championship was
in1970.
• Sitting volleyball was played first in
Paralympic Games in Montreal in 1976.

4. Representatives of the
players from Tumsupe,
Ropaži municipality.
• Two men from our village have played
sitting volleyball and they have
represented Latvia in international
competitions, in European
championships.
• Ingvars Ozoliņš
• Boriss Jeparovs

5. Boriss Jeparovs is the second from the left sitting;
Ingvars Ozoliņš is the fourth from the left sitting.

6. Ingvars Ozoliņš
• He has been living in Ropaži for almost
twenty-five years.
• Before service in the army he played
volleyball professionally.
• During the service in the army he injured
his knee and for many years he was not
allowed to jump on it. So he had to leave
active volleyball playing.

7. • When he returned from the army in 1989
he was asked to consult the new sitting
voleyball team. He agreed and soon
joined the team as an instructor and also
as a player.
• In 1989 the Latvian team won the bronze
medals in the USSR championship.
Ingvars was among the players.

8. • He played sitting volleyball for nine
years. He took part in many international
tournaments.
• Unluckily, he lost all his photos,
diplomas, medals, documents during the
fire in his house some years ago.

9. Boriss Jeparovs
• Boriss has been living in our village for more
than twenty-five years. He worked as an
electrician in the fur animal farm when a
terrible accident happened and he lost his leg
in 1990.
• After two years his neighbour Ingvars
Ozoliņš invited him to join the sitting
volleyball team of Latvia.

11. • Boriss has been in many countries of
Europe: Lithuania, Estonia, Finland,
Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic,
Russia, the Ukraine, the Netherlands.
• He regrets that there was only one team
when he played sitting volleyball till 2005.
But at the same time there were fifty
teams in the Netherland.

13. • In the interview Boriss remembered how
people in our small village looked at him
when he walked on pair of crutches. He
felt embarrassed, he didn’t want to go
out.
• But after some games abroad, he
understood that he is equal with others.
Nobody stared at him in the Netherlands,
in Poland. Why should he pay attention
to how other people were looking at him?

16. Women’s sitting
volleyball team
• In 1997 Latvian women’s sitting
volleyball team won the title of European
champions.
• They were the seventh in the Paralympic
Games in Beijing in 2008.

17. Latvian Paralympic athletes after Beijing
Paralympic Games

18. The motto of the
players:
Sitting volleyball is
the way of integration,
way of life, strength,
speed, acuteness.