Blue-White-Sky Blues kick off the Russian U19 Championship semifinal round

From January 17 to 24, Zenit children's youth teams will take part in the first stage of the semifinal round of the Russian U19 Championship (Children's Youth Basketball League).

The reigning champions of the competition, Zenit U19, will compete in Group P1-1. The games will be held from January 17 to 22 at the court of the Magnitogorsk State Technical University sports complex in Magnitogorsk. Zenit’s opponents will be the host team Metallurg, UOR 3 — Khimki, UNICS-СYBL, as well as MBA-СYBL and Nizhny Novgorod — FOK Meshchersky, whom the Blue-White-Sky Blues faced in the previous stage of the competition.

Zenit U19 head coach Dmitry Nikolaev shared his thoughts ahead of the start of the semifinal round.

— Less than a month after the previous CYBL stage, the team is heading to Magnitogorsk for the semifinal round. How did the preparation for the next stage go?

— Yes, indeed, less than a month has passed, and we tried to use this time as effectively as possible, adjusting some aspects that didn’t work well for us in the previous stage. The main goal was to bring the players into good physical condition. Unfortunately, we couldn’t avoid some losses.

— What can you say about the group opponents? You have already faced MBA-CYBL and Nizhny Novgorod this season.

— This is the semifinal round and the first group, so there are no weak teams here. In addition to the already familiar MBA-CYBL and Nizhny Novgorod, three teams from another group will join us: UOR 3 — Khimki, Metallurg, and UNICS-CYBL. All the opponents are strong. Everyone, like us, wants to win. Tough games await us, so we’ll fight.

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At the same time, Zenit-2010, coached by Vadim Dodeus, will play in Group P1-6 in Kaliningrad. The youngest squad of the Basketball Academy will face Universal STC (Tomsk), Baltia (Kaliningrad), Enisei Basketball Sports School (Krasnoyarsk), Nizhny Novgorod–SSOR №7, and SKIF–Rostov Region.

Zenit-2009, coached by Vladislav Shumkov, will enter the next stage of the tournament later than the others and will play its matches from January 19 to 24 in Chelyabinsk. Group P1-2, in addition to the Blue-White-Sky Blues, includes CBK-2–Chelyabinsk Region, Samara–SSOR №1, Parma-CYBL (Perm), SSOR CSKA Moscow, and Krasnodar’s SSOR–Lokomotiv Kuban-CYBL.

The match schedule for the youth teams is available in a dedicated section on the club’s official website.