2010-02-05 13:45:00
Moscow, February 5, Interfax – Rector of the only Orthodox parish in Mongolia provides pastoral care to the country’s select ball hockey team and hopes this kind of sport will be included in the Olympic program.
Fr. Alexey Trubach told in his interview published by the Rossijskaya Gazeta on Friday, the idea to organize a club for playing ball hockey at the Trinity Cathedral in Ulan-Bator came to him after he got acquainted with former coach of the Irkutsk team Baikal-Energia Evgeny Vyborov. Soon the parishioners made a skating-rink and announced enlisting of about forty children to a children sport school.
Today the Russian Ball Hockey Federation supports the club as it signed an official agreement with the Russian Orthodox Church in late 2009.
According to Fr. Alexey, players themselves decided to call sport club Troitsa (Russian for Trinity - IF).
“First I offered them White Panthers as a variant, but after a discussion they decided, if the parish was dedicated to the Holy Trinity then its team should be called Troitsa!” the priest said.