Emirates Airlines - EK Tchoukball Club

On September 7th 2007, in Dubai, UAE, was held the first General Assembly of the EK Tchoukball Club, with the aim of its foundation and election of the president and executive committee.
The elected executive committee is composed by the following staff:
President - Julio Calegari (CC - GR2)
Vice-president – Juliana Amadeu (CC - GR2)
Secretary – Aneliza Trani (CC - GR2)
Treasurer – Ronney de Barros (CC - GR1)
Event director – Rafael Diniz (CC - GR1)
During the holy month of Ramadan the training session will be restarted and held in Dubai. These session will open to all EK staff, relatives and friends.
In partnership with Al Khaleej Arabi Secondary School (Sharjah) and Al Mawaked Private School (Dubai) will be organized the first tchoukball tournament in the UAE.
For futher information about the sport, EK tchoukball club, events, training sessions and how to learn and play tchoukball, please contact Julio Calegari - 050 260 6370 - julio.calegari @ tchoukball. org

Tchoukball in the UAE

Tchoukball came to the UAE in end of 2006, when Julio Calegari move to Dubai and start its promotion with the Tunisian physical education teacher Mohamed Zaghdoud.

Julio played with some success and has played in the Brazilian national team in five international tournaments in Europe and South America. He travelled to Switzerland and Taiwan, where he took courses to learn more about coaching and refereeing Tchoukball. He is now an international promoter of the sport and have travelled around the world to make presentations and teach the game, including to Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Kenya, Pakistan, Poland and Singapore.

Mohamed found tchoukball in the web and was looking for a way to spread the new sport in the country.

They started at Al Arabi Secondary Public School, in Sharjah to organise the first ever games of Tchoukball. Julio brought the Tchoukball frames and the official ball, explained the game and did a few simple exercises with the boys, and then they started playing. Within one to two hours they already had some great matches going.

In November 2006, they have been in contact with the UAE Ministry of Education and have met with those responsible for physical exercise (PE) in the Emirates. They were suitably impressed and they have been asked to prepare a presentation for 80 leaders of PE in the UAE. This presentation was held in march 2007 in Sharjah with a great success.

The next step now is to set up a course for any of the PE instructors who are interested to play and teach Tchoukball. And the bigger aim is to take part in November in the international Tchoukball tournament in Taywan, with the first emirate team!

What is Tchoukball?

Tchoukball is a non-contact sport, which combines the pace and excitement of handball and volleyball to make it the fastest handball sport around. It's a relatively new sport that was invented by Swiss biologist Dr Hermann Brandt in the late 1960s and introduced to the public in 1970.

Tchoukball is played by two teams of nine, and the aim of the game is to shoot the ball at one of the two frames set in a semi-circle at either end of the pitch. There are three main positions to play – shooter, centre pivot and inner. Shooters do the scoring, centre pivots concentrate on keeping the ball moving and inners defend the frame area.To score a point, the ball must hit one of the frames then bounce back outside the semi-circle without being caught by the rival team. It doesn't matter which end of the pitch you score. When the ball is passed or caught each player may only hold onto it for three seconds. Players can only move three steps while holding the ball, and teams are only allowed three passes before they must shoot.

Although a full size international court is 40m by 20m, the size can be varied to suit the age group and the number of players and space available. As Tchoukball is a non-contact sport it can be played by boys and girls as young as seven or eight. Like volleyball it can also be played on a variety of surfaces – indoors on wood, outdoors on grass.

For further information on Tchoukball see the International Tchoukball Federation website http://www.tchoukball.org/ and http://www.genevabeach.ch/