The online voting for The World Games Athlete/Team of the Year 2018 is ending soon, but you still have time to support the Burkina Faso women’s floorball team by voting (you can vote once per day) – Vote here! On January 15th (21:00 CET) the 10 best candidates continue in the race.
After the first round, lasting until 15th January, the ten athletes or teams with the highest ranking will move into the final. These candidates will take the votes already cast into the final round. The winner will then be determined on 31st January at midnight UCT. The 25 candidates from 25 The World Games sports have been proposed by their international federations based on extraordinary achievements in 2018 or for several years. Everyone can now vote once per day during January for their candidate online.
The Women’s team from Burkina Faso won the first-ever Africa Floorball Cup, played in September 2018, and overcame a tough competition schedule by winning all their matches. With only 12 players the Burkina Faso women’s team dominated the tournament, underlining their dominance with a 5-0 win over Côte d´Ivoire in the gold-medal match. The team traveled over 1000 km by car from Burkina Faso to Abidjan in Côte d´Ivoire for the love of the sport, and also showed some real ‘sportswomanship by supporting all the teams that participated in the tournament.
The players are recruited from poor neighbourhoods and community schools, and 40% of the players come from the small agricultural village Nakamtenga, 50 km from the capital Ouagadougou. At the first training sessions, only one of the 12 girls had sport shoes. The national team coaches and leaders visited the homes of all the players and spoke to the parents, to get their permission to let the players participate in the Africa Floorball Cup. The Africa Floorball Cup participation was funded by donations from individuals in Sweden and Burkina Faso. In Burkina Faso, floorball has opened new opportunities to get girls and women into sports, and especially into team sports.
