Namibia’s senior men’s inline hockey team arrived back home on Wednesday after creating history at the Inline Hockey World Championships in Roccaraso, Italy.
They achieved their highest ever result by finishing fourth amongst the world’s leading inline hockey nations, while their success capped Namibia’s best ever overall performance at the world championships, with the junior women finishing third, the senior women fifth, and the junior men seventh.
National coach Nadia Schmidt, who was assisted by Trevor Cormack, said it was a huge achievement.
“This was only the second time that Namibia had sent four teams to the World Skate Games and incredibly getting all four teams into the top eight for the first time was a huge achievement,” she said.
“The atmosphere and mentality in the Namibian camp was great, and all the teams performed above expectations and their rankings. The junior women’s bronze medal and the senior men’s fourth place have now also ensured that they qualify for the 2025 World Games in China,” she added.
It was the best that Namibia’s senior men’s team had ever done at the biennial Inline Hockey World Championships, which forms part of the World Skate Games, and was a big improvement on their previous best performance when they came tenth at the 2021 world championships in Italy.
Namibia’s overall performances underlined their consistency against the best teams in the world at major international tournaments in recent years.
At the previous world championships in Argentina two years ago, Namibia’s junior women’s team won the gold medal, while the junior men came fourth, and at last year’s European Championships in Charleroi, Belgium, where Namibia competed on invitation, the junior women came second, the senior women third, and the junior men fifth.
In Roccaraso, Namibia’s senior men’s team was only ranked 21st in the world going into the tournament, but they produced some major upsets as they progressed to the semifinals.
They started off with an emphatic 19-1 victory against China, before beating Switzerland 3-1 to book a place in the last 16. Here they caused a major upset by beating third-ranked France 5-4, with Valerik Hilbert scoring the winning goal in extra time.
In the quarterfinals, they came up against Sweden and in another close encounter, Hilbert once again scored the winner two minutes from time to give Namibia a 2-1 victory.
In the semifinals Namibia came up against the top-ranked team at the tournament, the Czech Republic, and gave a good account of themselves but eventually lost 5-2.
After the Czech Republic took the lead, Amandus Röttcher equalised for Namibia, but they then conceded two goals to head into a half time with a 3-1 deficit.
The Czech Republic sealed the match with two more goals before Johannes Coetzee scored a late consolation goal for Namibia.
That put Namibia through to the bronze medal play-off match against Italy, where the hosts took an early 2-0 lead. Coetzee reduced the deficit with Namibia’s opening goal, but Italy immediately increased their lead to go into halftime 3-1 ahead.
In a tense second half both teams had penalties, but neither could capitalise as Italy went on to win the match 3-1 to claim the bronze medal.
Schmidt said the future looked bright for Namibian inline hockey.
“The performances of all four teams bodes well for the future of Namibia Inline Hockey and gives future inline players a platform to aspire to in playing at a world class level. With all four teams ending in the Top 8 rankings, they have now all secured Top 16 spots for the next World Skate Games in 2026,” she said.
Schmidt also thanked Spar Namibia for their support.
“We sincerely would like to thank Spar, proud sponsors of Namibia inline hockey, who made it possible for all four teams to travel and compete at the World Skate Games in Roccaraso, Italy.”
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