This is me: Ausra Fridrikas

THIS IS ME: Ausra Fridrikas

Before I started to play handball, I was an athlete, a sprinter; this is where I got my coordination, dynamics, and speed from. My handball career started quite late, when I was 15 years old, at the club Zalgiris Kaunas in today’s Lithuania. It took only one year until I was playing in the first women’s team, even being part of the IHF Cup.

They recognised my talent quite early, so I moved to top club EGLE Vilnius at the age of 17, we were top of the Soviet league, finishing third twice and even won the IHF Cup, beating Buducnost Titograd in the 1989 final. At that time, I already played for the Soviet national team. After becoming world champions with the under-20 team twice, in 1985 and 1987, we were on top of the podium at the 1990 Women’s World Championship in Korea, my biggest success on national team level, regardless for which team I played later.

When the end of the Soviet Union had come, I played for Lithuania and we had some major achievements for our little country, including the promotion from the B to the A World Championship. In 1995, I received Austrian citizenship, as since 1992 I had been playing for Hypo Niederösterreich after two years at Spain, in Gran Canaria and San Sebastian.

Many of my previous Hypo teammates also got Austrian citizenship and we formed the best ever women’s team of Austrian handball, winning two bronze medals at major events: EHF EURO 1996 and the World Championship in 1999, when I was awarded MVP and later elected World Player of the Year.

We were a kind of world selection at Hypo that time, with many big names, who imprinted an era of women’s handball. This club was organised and coached in a highly professional way, a great achievement mainly of Gunnar Prokop. I had the dream of playing in the Champions League and I wanted to develop and increase my potential. In domestic competitions we were unbeatable, and our international development only knew one way: straight upwards.

In 1992, we reached the top for the first time, winning the Champions Cup, the forerunner of the Champions League, then defended this trophy in 1993. We became the first ever Champions League winners in history in 1994. In 1995, 1998 and 2000 we managed to win this trophy again, with a historic team. Looking back, I cannot name one triumph as the best one, every trophy was unique, every victory with Hypo was unique, as all was about development and getting better day by day.

I am very proud of those years and how I grew step by step as a player. As a team we formed an era, and I still have a lot of very good relationships to my former teammates. Sportive, mentally and as friends we grew together, we knew each other inside and out, you could rely on everybody.

Looking back, it was a tough time with really hard training up to six hours per day, but this time has imprinted my career. Maybe not everything was perfect, but working hard like this, we were a class of our own in Europe. And by integrating some young Austrian players, the Hypo system was perfect for the development of Austrian handball. And in Austria I got to know Robert, my former husband, who was a Lithuanian professional football player.

In 2000, I left Vienna and signed for a similar team and project: Slagelse in Denmark, with another great coaching personality, Anja Andersen. She was a bit similar to Gunnar Prokop. I played there for five years, won the Champions League twice, in 2004 and 2005, but then the team fell apart.

At that time, Denmark was the place to be in terms of top women’s handball, and Slagelse were the most professional club in Denmark. For one more year I returned to Hypo and ended my career in 2007 at the age of 40. From 2011 until 2017, including some breaks, I took over the Austrian girls’ national team as my first coaching experience.

The biggest thing I learnt in my handball life was the significance of discipline and hard work. As a player and especially as a coach you must have a strong character, a mental strength, an impetus and will, you always have to achieve to become better than the rest, then you can manage all challenges. It is all about your ambition.

This is what I dislike in the current generation, they do not burn as we burnt for handball, they do not want to train six hours per day to get better, they surrender too early, they are not willing to give 100 per cent. They expect praises for everything, but have not understood that work is always ahead of praise. And the most important thing: they have to respect criticism, as without criticism you cannot improve.

In this respect, I never was an easy-to-handle coach. All my players had to stand the heat, they had to be ready for this experience of discipline and hard work. But in the end, they understood that you can only make it this way.

I played together with Bojana Popovic at Slagelse, one of the world’s most remarkable players, she is a coach today, and she still is the role model for all players at Buducnost and Montenegro, coaching the way she was coached: working hard, showing respect for teammates and coaches, learn from those, who have achieved something in their lives. And always be open for new input, listen to people, try to learn the whole life. And never go the easiest way, as in most cases only the hard way brings you to the top.

My son Lukas is football professional in Austria, like his father was. He played handball until he was 11, 12 years old, then decided to change. He went his way, and sometimes I hoped he would have wanted to ask his mother for some more advice.

For some years I have been living in Germany now: First I was youth and development coach at the women’s Bundesliga team of TuS Metzingen, then I was head coach at Bundesliga team Nürtingen, now I coach 13, 14-year-old boys in Bremen, where I live.

Next to handball, I became a licensed Kieser training instructor and work in the fashion company of my partner. But I am still connected to handball, of course, and if I get an offer to coach a top club or a national team, I would not say ‘no,’ I guess. But at the moment, those two youth training sessions per week are perfect for me.

I still live for handball, my energy starts flowing, when I enter an arena. Coaching those boys, it is not about professional training, but more about sharing my experience. They do not have any pressure. I have fun, they have fun, I am really enjoying every moment with this team, and I try to provide them with knowledge, what you can achieve with a positive personality, attitude and character.

When I look upon today’s professional handball, it is a different view. They play faster, they score more goals, but I am sure in terms of individual skills, we played the better handball. We had matches when we caused only three technical mistakes, today you can win matches on the highest level with 10 to 15 technical mistakes. And I am sure our range of shots and passes was bigger, our handball was more elegant than today. It was more about agility and mobility, like for example from Bojana Radulovics, who was perfect in those matters.

And in general, I hope that women’s handball will be more respected, that all players, who want to play handball in a professional way, get the chance in their clubs and do not have to work or study besides sports. Women’s handball needs more investment, a stronger financial base. Otherwise, it is impossible to have those two or three training sessions per day, which you need to develop.

When you have worked six to eight hours and then go to training, the batteries are empty, then it makes no sense for the players. And in handball, you only have 10 to 15 years for your career, to take out the optimum to care for you and your future. I had some years more, and I am really happy for that.

Ausra Fridrikas
May 2023