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Some of the members of the Serbia and Montenegro team (left to right): Snezana Vujicic, 18, Kristina Vujicic, 16, Djurdja Zekic, 16, Ana Vlajic, 17, and coach Mirela Milojevic. |
As they stood on the side of the pitch at the tournament, the girls giggled, twisted their hair around their fingers, smoothed their bright blue jerseys and squealed with delight when someone mentioned professional football player David Beckham of Real Madrid. Yet the girlishness of the teenagers from Kruševac in central Serbia belied their indelible spirit, formidable determination and sheer guts, not only as a football team but as part of the Roma population, a people who for centuries in Europe and across the world have been subjected to ill treatment, rejection, exclusion and discrimination.
"The Roma children have enormous spirit," said Mirela Milojevic, their coach and teacher. "There are 30 Roma children in the school and we want their days to be full — with sports and with learning — which helps integrate them into the mainstream society," she said.
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Snezana Vujicic, team captain said, "We train four times a week and we play on a hard asphalt court at the school. We need equipment, uniforms and boots." |
At an age when most Roma girls have left school, are married and have several children, the girls on the team are being allowed by their families to go to school, take up sports and travel abroad. Team captain Snezana Vujicic, 18, and her sister, Kristina, 16, live with their parents and 11 brothers and sisters and go to the local special school. Their parents are unemployed and the family ekes out a living from a small garden they have. Snezana, feisty and confident, commands the respect of her team mates. She and her sister have extra training sessions with two of their brothers who play football on a local all-Roma team. "Our brothers teach us tactics and they say we are good players. Our entire family is proud of us," said Snezana with pride.
Despite rejecting common Roma practice of school-age marriages, the girls on the team — and their parents — are not treated as outcasts but rather as examples in their tradition-bound community. "More Roma parents now want their children — girls as well as boys — to participate. They understand that Special Olympics can offer their children not only the chance to overcome prejudice because they have an intellectual disability, but also because they are Roma," Milojevic said.
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