By Petro MARUSENKO, The Day
The Volkov Cup is a red-letter day in the sports calendar. Over the past
five years, the children's tournament finals have been a real feast of
basketball.
This time, the feast was crowned with a match between the national team
of Ukraine and the US students' team pretentiously called All Stars Converse.
However, astute Kyiv fans were not led astray by the guests being students.
It is common knowledge that student basketball is on a very high level
in the US. So the Palace of Sports was packed. In addition, Mr. Volkov
and his like-minded associates had prepared a very interesting accompanying
program, including cheerleaders, gifts, musical numbers, and a competition
in basketball shots from center court. The latter drew special attention,
for the prize was an automobile. Also taking part in the contest was Lithuanian
Minister of Sports Rimas Kurtinaitis, who came specially for this match,
but he missed, as did the others. The match itself was riveting: the Americans
led for one and a half periods, but the Ukrainian players, with Leonid
Yailo as the best one, played a far better end game. As a result, the home
team won 79:70. The children's tournament was won by Dnipropetrovsk basketball
players, and their coach Yukhym Taslytsky received the coveted prize, a
Skoda car.







