Teqball players aiming high

After months of practicing Teqball, he went to Budapest to compete in the 2019 Teqball World Championships, enabling him to play with mature foreign Teqball players.

Since then, he has been honing his skills in a suitable venue in Xiamen, Fujian province, the city in which he lives.

Serving as a financial executive in a local company, Zhang devotes his spare time to Teqball training, typically doing three training sessions per week, each lasting more than three hours.

Last summer, Zhang, along with a group of like-minded Teqball enthusiasts, founded a Teqball club with the goal of better promoting this emerging sport in China and discovering more talented players.

"Our primary difficulty at the moment is the absence of skilled opponents within the country who can provide us with challenging competition, enabling us to progress rapidly in our skills," says Zhang.

When speaking at the 2023 Beijing Teqball Challenge, he highlighted how such domestic competitions can help them evaluate their progress at different stages of training and serve as a source of motivation.

To enlarge the domestic population of Teqball players, Zhang closely examines videos of football enthusiasts demonstrating their ball-juggling skills to determine if they possess the technical abilities that can translate into success in Teqball.

When he identifies promising individuals, he reaches out to them privately, extending an invitation to join the Teqball community and get involved in competitions.

Gao Hui, a senior student at the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, is one of the football enthusiasts who received encouragement from Zhang to give Teqball a try.

Gao, a member of her university's female football team, frequently shares video clips of her playing football and showcasing her skills on various social media platforms, including TikTok and Bilibili.