Armenian Korfball Gets Global Air Time
Thursday, 16 June 2005
International Korfball Federation, Belgium
June 16 2005
TV programme Good Morning Armenians, which has a world-wide audience
and is broadcasted by Armenian TV, aired on June 14th a special
interview with the chairman of the Korfball Federation of Armenia
(KFA) – Rob van Geenhuizen, KFA secretary – Arman Alaberkian and the
p.r. member Satenik Avetisian. The one hour programme was devoted
solely to korfball.
Topics discussed included the origin of korfball, unique playing
aspects of the sport, suitability to mixed gender participation, the
rules, World Championships, the global development of the sport as well
as its domestic growth within Armenia. Between question and answer
segments, highlights of international games involving the Armenian
national team, including some beautifully completed attacking plays,
were shown.
After the programme everybody was very satisfied and many Armenians
around the World will have learnt much about our sport. This
programme was the culminating point of the p.r. covering of Korfball
in Armenia. All the tournaments (youth and seniors) have been shown
on the sport news segments of Armenian television and two sports
newspapers have paid close attention to the sport. One newspaper went
so far as to publish a full page article with three photographs.
“We are waiting for the time when we could organise a big international
tournament. The final will definitely be broadcast worldwide and the
other games will be covered by television stations and newspapers”,
KFA President Rob van Geenhuizen was quoted as saying. The recent
publicity on the Good Morning Armenians programme has been followed
by many telephone calls from people who have only just seen korfball
for the first time in their lives as a result of the programme. Calls
came from as far afield as Washington D.C.
Armenia is a country with a global Diaspora and it is likely that
hundreds of thousand Armenians around the world will have seen the
feature introducing korfball.