Switzerland

The history of wheelchair floorball in Switzerland has its roots in the sport’s popularity in the country, where it has been played since the 1970s. The Swiss Floorball Association was founded in 1985 and has since grown to over 30,000 licensed players in the country. The sport is still largely played in polysporting gymnastics, and is considered a secondary sport in Switzerland. There are 2-4 national fun tournaments a year, where disabled and non-disabled people from various Swiss wheelchair clubs play on the small field with 3 players. There is no national championship, and the Swiss Paraplegic Association does not support the sport officially.

In the late 1990s, wheelchair floorball began when the RC Thurgau (Wheelchair Club Thurgau) was founded. It wasn’t until around 2010 that the team was contacted by Petr Alina, who informed them about an international floorball tournament in Prague. In 2012, Team Switzerland was formed and consisted of players from Zurich, St. Gallen, and Thurgau. They had never played on the big field before, and only had short sticks (max. 80cm) due to national rules. As expected, they did not do well in the tournament.

After participating in the Paragames in Breda in 2013, the team realized that if they didn’t practice together on the big field, it made no sense to continue participating in tournaments. In 2014, Team Suisse was formed, and the RC Thurgau organized a regular practice on the big field, which took place about once a month.

Since then, Team Suisse has regularly participated in international tournaments, achieving their biggest successes with a 4th place in Breda in 2015 and a 5th place in the Prague Wheel Open in 2018. Urs was chosen as the best goalkeeper of the PWO 2018 tournament, following Fabienne’s award for best female player of the PWO tournament in 2016. However, there are still too few players in Switzerland, with most tournaments consisting of only 6 to 8 players. Despite this, the team is fully committed and always does their best for Team Suisse. The success of Team Suisse and the Swiss Wheely Open tournament is largely due to the initiative and hard work of the RC Thurgau and numerous long-standing sponsors who support both the team and the tournament.