Stories about Partizan - POP 5

Stories about Partizan, POP 5 - "The first coaches"

In the early years of the creation of the largest basketball club in our region, an important role was played by the people who were the first coaches of Partizan's basketball players. Many of them performed this role while they were still players, but the first professional coach of our club was Aleksandar Nikolić in 1958. The legendary "Professor" led the team until 1961, when he was succeeded by Božidar Munćan.
The first coaches of Partizan's basketball players, before Ace Nikolić, were Božo Grkinić (1946-1947), Ratko Vlahović (1948), Svetislav Šaper (1949), Janoš Gerdov (1950), Borislav Stanković (1951-1953), Miodrag Stefanović (1954). , Mirko Marjanović (1955-1958).
About those distant days, the first coach of Partizan, Božo Grkinić, once told: "Basketball before the war was not particularly popular. She mostly played in Sušak, Zadar, a little bit in Zagreb and Belgrade. All lesser-known fighters-basketball players received a command for Belgrade. We gathered at Kalemegdan, started to throw the ball into the basket. As a high school student, I played basketball and water polo at the same time. He also recorded some successes in both fields. That's why I was transferred to Belgrade. True, later on I became fond of water polo and that's why I didn't stay known in the basketball world. Few people know that I was the first coach of Partizan's basketball players, then a member of the national team at the European Championship in Prague in 1947.''