Dela nyhet
Ny i laget: Przemek Smereka!
4 sep 2020
Today we are thrilled to present one of our new team members, Przemek Smereka! With experience from Poland, where volleyball is a far more popular sport, but also swedish divison 1 and the Elitserien he will make a perfect match in our team. Not only is he a really nice guy and a good volleyball player, he is also a well educated engineer and brings stability and good vibes to the club. We are not sure how we can make use of his engineering skills in volleyballpractise, but it certainly won’t do any harm… (good skills in math and science can never be a bad thing).
Please welcome Przemek to Falkenberg!
Please, tell us a little about yourself and your history of volleyball:
My name is Przemyslaw Smereka. I am a 25-year-old opposite coming from Poland and I cannot wait to represent Falkenberg Volleybollklubb in the upcoming season of the Elite Series.
Volleyball in Poland is an extremely popular sport and many kids start their first trainings at a fairly young age. It was similar in my case; however, I started a little later than my peers. When I was 12 years old, I got scouted by a volleyball coach from my hometown during physical education classes and after that I joined my first volleyball club - UKS Olimpijczyk Pruszcz Gdanski.
3 years later I joined one of the best volleyball high-school and team in Poland - Trefl Gdansk where I spent the next 3 years training on the highest youth level. After finishing high-school I wanted to continue my volleyball career and my education at the same time. That is why I decided to join Gdansk University of Technology where I could combine both volleyball and education on a high level for the next 5 years.
During that time, among many other achievements, we won the bronze medal in the Polish Academic Championships in University types. At my last year of studies I decided to go on a student exchange in Sweden and luckily at that time I got accepted to Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg where I studied Structural Engineering and was writing my master thesis at the same time.
After my arrival I quickly realised I cannot live without volleyball for too long and therefore started to look around for a new volleyball club. Not long after I joined Göteborg United (now Gothia Volley).
Looking for new challenges I decided to play the next season (2019/2020) for the Elite Series team from Halmstad (Hylte/Halmstad Volley) where we formed a quite exciting team. Unfortunately, at that time my job required me to work full time in Göteborg which made it difficult to practice daily with the team. That is why I stayed there only for the first half of the season and not long after, the season got cancelled due to the world pandemic.
The pandemic has also proven that nowadays a lot of office jobs like mine as a Structural Engineer can be performed from home making it much easier to practice volleyball on elite level. Thanks to a good connection with Olle Åström (who I met as a coach in Göteborg United) and great communication from other members of the board of FVBK we came to an agreement that Falkenberg will be the right place for me to develop as a player and a great place to prove my skills in the league.
I honestly believe that the experience of the coaches and the great organisation of the club will have a huge impact not only on me as an individual but also on the whole team. From what I already noticed is that Falkenberg is a charming city with a strong fan base for volleyball and sports in general which makes it very exciting to be a part of this community!
Age: 25
Height: 194cm
Spike reach: 335cm
Block reach: 308cm
Position: Opposite
Dominant hand: Right