Zane Klabere captained her national side, Latvia in the floorball world championships and is now taking a look at the sport from a different point of view.

 

Zane started playing floorball in her early teenage years as a regular part of a junior team and said “I fell in love with the sport immediately”. She kept going through the ranks until she was called up for the national team. The sport floorball has been growing in popularity the past decades as people believe it is cheap, easy and accessible. Zane, a sporty person from a young age said “I saw an information sheet that said that they were going to be starting a new sport called floorball. And of course, I went!” Zane had tried many other sports at a young age but floorball was the one that stuck with her.

Zane then went on to captain her side at the world championships saying the journey was “unbelievable”. She was a candidate for the national side in 2003 but didn’t make it in. “I was very sad and very disappointed, but these disappointing moments came and made me stronger.” In 2005 she was first called up to the national side in Singapore. Coming into the next championships in 2007, in Denmark, Latvia were without a captain. The team voted on the captain and Zane said “Somehow they ended up voting for me. It was a surprise of a lifetime”. Performing for the national team was always “an indescribable” moment for Zane saying, “I’ve always been very hard to handle the national anthems, it is such an emotional moment.”  Zane felt that the year she captained the side wasn’t the best year for her as a player but also saying “I will never regret that experience in my life”.

30 years on from when she first started playing floorball, Zane is still involved in the sport in an administration role for the International floorball federation and the Latvian floorball federation.