Panthers Wrocław – a professionally managed amateur club

Any moment now the Polish American football club - Panthers Wrocław - can celebrate promotion to the play-offs of Europe's most important competition. If successful, however, there won't be much time for this celebration - on the next day most of the players will return to their normal lives, starting the day with a typical routine and then going out to their usual work. Such passion for sports cannot be found in any other sports organization.

Panthers Wrocław captain Kamil Ruta starts each day as early as 5:30 a.m. He has to manage to walk his children to the nursery in order to report to the unit at 7 a.m. - he is a professional soldier. After work, he picks up his kids and rushes to see them off to his parents - so that he can show up at 6 p.m. for training and finish at 10:30.

This is what life is like for most of the Panthers Wrocław players, though not all. Some of them come from abroad and are under contract at the club. They don't have to go to work and can make a living from playing, although they don't make millions. The club is managed in a professional manner, so they don't lack anything. Such players include A.J. Wentland, an American linebacker whose daily routine in Wrocław is to attend meetings with coaches, train in the gym and on the field, or stay in the physiotherapy room - all in the team's modern sports base at the Olympic Stadium.

It is the story of the two aforementioned players that is told in the latest Panthers Wrocław mini-documentary, which can be viewed on YouTube.

Watching soccer matches involving small national teams, such as the one of San Marino, you will often hear that the players there, in addition to their sports careers, also lead normal lives - they are constructors, doctors or car salesmen. The same way it works for the Panthers Wrocław and many clubs in Europe, which, like the aforementioned national teams, compete at the international level.

On Sunday, September 3rd, the Wrocław club will travel to Hungary to compete in a game against the Fehervar Enthroners to advance to the play-off stage of the European League of Football, a competition that is the European equivalent of the NFL. The European league includes teams from Barcelona, Milan, Paris, Berlin and Vienna, among others, and operates in a similar fashion to the Panthers Wrocław. If the Polish representatives win on Sunday, they will be among the six strongest teams in Europe and will continue the fight for the championship. And the players? They will return to work the next day.

– We have built a great organization. Nearly 350 players and athletes in four different sports train under the wings of Panthers Wroclaw. We have a professional training base at the Olympic Stadium, which can be envied by not one sports club in Poland or Europe. We have a budget that would easily allow us to compete in the basketball extraleague. Despite this, due to the specifics and costs associated with American football, where we travel about 80 people per game, our players still have to reconcile their sports careers with work, because without it they couldn't make a living – says Michał Latoś, president of Panthers Wrocław.

It's a passion. The club has reached a very high level and operates in a completely professional manner, just like basketball or volleyball teams, but its popularity is not yet high enough for the players to make a living from the game. Therefore, they have to reconcile their great sporting aspirations and dreams with ordinary life. Often at the cost of great sacrifices, but no one complains - everyone focuses solely on the goal, and that is always to win the championship.