EUROPEAN GOLD FOR SERBIAN WOMEN FROM CHICAGO: The English played the Spanish anthem for us, but we sang “Bože pravde” (VIDEO)

by Antonije Kovačević3. December 2024.

Three Serbian women from Chicago won a gold medal for Serbia at the European Pickleball Championship in London, England, a few days ago. This sport is rapidly gaining popularity worldwide. Natalija Todorović Shaw, Svetlana Nedeljković Schroeder, and Ivana Nikolić, after a tough battle in the final, defeated the favored hosts, England, and climbed to the top of the podium among 24 countries from the old continent, where they listened and sang the Serbian anthem wrapped in our tricolor flags.

The three of them used to play tennis in Belgrade’s Partizan for years, since they were young girls, and then, thanks to that very sport, they got scholarships to continue their studies in America, at Northwestern University in Chicago.

That friendship that has lasted almost 50 years has helped them a lot to become European champions:

“Pickleball is a game where tactics are very important, communication, and in some moments, it was enough for us to just look at each other and know what the other was thinking and what we needed to play”, says Natalija Todorović Shaw, who is also the team captain.

The road to gold was by no means easy as they faced strong opponents from the start, and their first match was against England.

“Apparently, the English quickly realized that we would be their biggest opponents, so from the beginning, an English coach followed us wherever we went, spying on every one of our trainings. But that’s not all we experienced from the English”, our champions recall…

And what kind of plots did the English try to use before the final match to hinder them on their way to victory, and what kind of provocation they experienced during the anthem, you can listen to in an exclusive interview they gave to our editor Antonije Kovačević.

In it, they talk about the problems they had to solve to even travel to the championship, then the real boom that pickleball has made in the world, the chances of playing at the Olympic Games, but also respond to Novak Djokovic’s criticism of pickleball as a sport. Enjoy the story of these charming champions!