MSU vs RANEPA

MSU vs RANEPA

The inter-university student handball championship ended a couple of weeks ago, and the exam period is approaching. Together, this means that the MSU team’s training sessions are gradually winding down. Last week, however, MSU’s head handball coach, Alexander Stepanov, arranged a friendly match with the RANEPA team before the season drew to a close.

Since I graduated from both MSU and RANEPA, my first thought was, “Am I supposed to split myself in two?!” Naturally, I was joking. For one thing, I have only ever trained and played for MSU. And for another, RANEPA has no shortage of players—they had two full line-ups on the bench.

The best part for us alumni was being allowed to take part in the match. RANEPA has a very strong, well-drilled team, and most of its players compete in the Russian Higher League. Playing against a team like that was incredibly difficult, but fascinating at the same time. In our own training sessions, we have become so used to one another that we can anticipate every possible direction an attack might take three moves ahead.

The RANEPA team was a completely different story. We had never seen them before and had no idea what they were capable of. Credit where it is due: they play at a very high level. They are fast, technically skilled and well coordinated—a joy to watch, and even more so to play against.

Of course, they had more stamina than we did. They were faster too. But experience was on our side: we knew when to ignore an opponent’s feints and when, on the contrary, to switch on and give it everything.

All in all, we had an incredible time playing this match. A huge thank-you to Alexander Yuryevich! Here’s hoping for more games like it.

P.S. The video shows one of the RANEPA team’s attacks which, despite all its combination play and repositioning, ultimately failed to get the ball into our net.