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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

YOUR SHIP WON’T LEAVE, CAPTAIN

13 November, 2012 - 00:00



Photo by Borys Khovkhun, Sportyvna hazeta

Last weekend we had to stop calling him Melya, mainly because of the boys from Brovary College of Physical Culture whom he will be training. After playing with Shakhtar of Donetsk, Svitlotekhnika Kolos team captain Yuri Meleshko finally left big-time handball for coaching.

He recently said, “Somehow it’s strange. Boys born in 1981 are starting to play in the top league. I was born in 1961 and was still on court with them. That’s enough, I think. The time is ripe to quit.”

Team coach Leonid Ornstein, just named meritorious trainer of Ukraine, recalls that he was like a flash in the breakaways. He always knew where to pass the ball and when to keep it. Defensive players would get him for being so talented at the game: Meleshko had just as many injuries as soccer knight Volodymyr Bessonov. And just like him, Meleshko always came back.

Life was not easy for him at all. He moved from Kyiv to Zaporizhzhia about fifteen years ago. There he could not totally devote himself to the game due to complications in his private life. He coached children on the Zaporizhaliuminbud team. Of course he was happy to see his boys grow to be real ball masters in ZTR, even though he would have preferred gold to silver medals at the end of his career.

But, anyway, go for it, Melya, we mean Yuri Viktorovych. The main thing is that we will always have faith in you.


 

By Yevhen Karelsky, The Day
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