Ten girls from Irpin won the regional handball tournament and secured Kyiv region's place in the final, fifth nationwide stage of the school competition "Shoulder to Shoulder" for the 2024–2025 season. The final will take place in June in Kyiv — the capital will host handball matches among younger participants.
Team and the path to victory
The winning team included Kateryna Karapuzova, Maria Hromenko, Oleksandra Bratkivska, Kateryna Zakharchenko, Vladyslava Semenischeva, Ksenia Diakova, Veronika Shamshudinova, Maria Bykova, Maria Bondarenko, and Marharyta Sokolyuk. To reach the regional final, the team passed through four qualifying levels — school, territorial, district, and regional.
Handball is one of the few sports in the "Shoulder to Shoulder" program where girls' teams have a separate competition bracket at all stages. This is not a minor detail: in most school leagues, mixed standings are used or women's teams are represented only formally.
Context: what is "Shoulder to Shoulder" and why it matters
"Shoulder to Shoulder nationwide school leagues" are the largest student competitions in Ukraine, covering twelve sports and running ten months a year. During the 2024–2025 season, more than 21 thousand participants and over 2,300 school teams from across the country took part — and this during a full-scale war.
"Shoulder to Shoulder" is a competition under the motto "Together we will win." Winners of the fourth regional stage advance to the final, fifth, nationwide level.
scl.gov.ua — official program website
Irpin Lyceum No. 3 is a school where handball is part of a long sports tradition: the school has sections in taekwondo, tennis, basketball, handball, futsal, rugby, and cheerleading. However, a victory in wartime and from a city that experienced occupation and massive destruction in March 2022 gives this result a different dimension.
What's next
At the nationwide final, the Irpin team will represent Kyiv region in competition with winners from other regions. Kyiv will host handball matches in June 2025.
The remaining open question is whether the girls can maintain their form and team composition until June — in schools of frontline and affected cities, the training process depends on the condition of shelters, the schedule of air raid alerts, and the simple resources of coaches. If these conditions do not worsen, Irpin has real chances to make a surprise at the final.
