IFF GoGirls! Ambassador Gunita Karklina (LAT) – 16.11.2017

Gunita Karklina has played floorball for 17 years. The 30-year-old defender is currently part of the Latvian team NND Riga and works in Project Management in the Scandinavian market. This year’s WFC will be her 7th adults’ WFC with team Latvia.

How does Men’s Floorball and Women’s floorball differ in your country?
For one I´m sure - floorball in Latvia is growing, but i can´t say women’s and men’s floorball development are the same, in the reality the growth of the male floorball is greater than women´s. As in all team sports, men´s teams are at least one step further. One of my future goals is to help Women’s Floorball development in Latvia. We have to learn from our neighbours- greatest floorball nations Finland and Sweden how they manage to be so good in the both sides. We have an issue and a lot of work to do to be better.

How do you practice floorball?
My weekly training approximately looks like this: 2 floorball trainings with NND team, 2 times per week jogging, strength or power training (individually) and games in the weekend but in fact, this is the first year after 17 seasons when other life priorities are taking over floorball.

How did you become a national team player?
My road in the National team started in Tampere U-19 WFC 2004 and the next big step was 2005 WFC in Singapore. It was unforgettable -  my first WFC experience with women´s national team in so extraordinary special place for floorball like Singapore. For now, I have participated in 6 World Championships and WFC 2017 will be mine 7th and this is a 10th year as a National team captain.

What has been the most peculiar situation that has happened to you during a floorball match?
In the match when the referees wanted to give me a red card, they had forgotten the red card in the dressing room. There is no red card to show? No penalty! In the end I had "just" a 10-minute penalty for "judging" referee´s job. So don´t do that! Referees are always right ;)

How will you prepare for the WFC?
Individually I have been training with my club team NND RIGA. With National Team we had a weekend camp in Latvia where we had 3 trainings per day where we paid attention to tactics, we played a lot- trying to find right lines and just spent a great time together. We were also in the camp in Finland where we played training games against the Finnish U19 and teams from the Finnish elite league. Very useful experience! Thanks Finland. We were also at the 6 Nations tournament in Slovakia.