Former Finnish women’s goalball national team coach Riikka Juntunen is the ninth writer in the Pajulahti 2017 blog. She is also a Director in the Finnish Sports Association of Persons with Disabilities, the organizing body of the 2017 IBSA Goalball European Championships.

Juntunen coached the Finnish national team for a decade (2000–2010) and lots of memories, coincidences and experiences, both good and bad, were included in those years.

Shw shares some of her favourite memories in her blog entry here – http://www.pajulahti2017.fi/en/blog/4264-my-story-in-goalball.

Juntunen actually returned to the sidelines past weekend as she coached a team called Vintage to second place in an international goalball tournament in Madrid, Spain. Vintage consisted of five experienced Paralympians: Finns Katja Heikkinen and Päivi Tolppanen, American Jen Armbruster and Asya Miller and Brazilian Ana Carolina Duarte.

There will be total of 22 blog entries from 22 different writers in the Pajulahti 2017 blog. A new entry will be published every Wednesday and the last entry will be out a week after the European Championships.

Each entry will be published both in English and in Finnish. The 2017 IBSA Goalball European Championships will be held in the Pajulahti Sports Institute, Finland on 18-22 of September.

The previous Pajulahti 2017 blog texts can be found here: http://www.pajulahti2017.fi/en/blog

Pajulahti 2017 website: www.pajulahti2017.fi

Pajulahti 2017 on Facebook: www.facebook.com/pajulahti2017