Twenty-eight years ago this week, a young nation’s women’s team walked into its first World Championship. Ten days later they left Japan sixth in the world, with a 21-year-old from Zagreb’s Mladost as the tournament’s best scorer.
On the afternoon of 3 November 1998, at the Kagoshima Arena on the southern tip of Japan’s Kyushu island, Croatia’s women played their first match at a FIVB World Championship. The opponent was South Korea. The format was still the old side-out scoring, with sets to 15, and it went the full distance. Croatia took the second and fourth sets but lost the decider 11–15, and with it the match, 2–3.
It was a hard start for a team that had only been competing as Croatia since the early 1990s. But this was no ordinary newcomer. Their coach was Ivica Jelić, a former international who played at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Its spearhead was his daughter Barbara, a 1.93 m opposite born in May 1977. She had gone to Japan at 17 to play professionally, so this tournament was, in a sense, a homecoming.
Croatia did not arrive in Japan as strangers to the big stage. At the 1995 European Championship in the Netherlands, Ivica Jelić’s side swept through group unbeaten and reached the final in Arnhem, where the hosts won 3–0. Two years later in Brno they were back in the final, losing 3–0 to Nikolay Karpol’s Russia, and Barbara Jelić was named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player. Those two silvers were the young nation’s first European Championship medals, won only a few years after its debut in 1993, when finished sixth.
The next day in Kagoshima brought another five-set defeat, this time to Lang Ping’s China, 2–3. On 5 November Croatia beat Thailand 3–0 (15–9, 15–13, 15–10). That was enough for third place in Pool D and a ticket to the second round in Fukuoka.
That is where the debutants grew up. On 7 November at Marine Messe Fukuoka, Croatia beat Bulgaria 3–1 (15–9, 16–14, 11–15, 17–15). The next day came the result that announced them. Against Italy, a team featuring setter Maurizia Cacciatori and a teenage Francesca Piccinini, Croatia were 1–2 down in sets. They took the fourth 15–12 and the fifth 15–12 to win 3–2. Defeat to an unbeaten Cuba followed, 0–3 (11–15, 14–16, 6–15), but Croatia’s place in the final round in Osaka was already secure.
In Osaka the classification semifinal on 11 November paired them with the hosts. Croatia beat Japan 3–0 (15–13, 15–5, 15–9) in front of a home crowd that had come to cheer the other side. The fifth-place match the next morning was one step too far. Italy took their revenge 3–0 (15–7, 15–10, 15–8). Croatia finished sixth with a record of four wins and four losses (16 sets won, 15 lost). It remains the country’s best finish at a World Championship.
When the individual awards were read out, the Best Scorer was Barbara Jelić, ahead of a list of players from Russia, Italy, Cuba and China. It was the clearest sign yet of what she would carry Croatia to two years later in Sydney: a seventh place in the country’s only Olympic women’s volleyball tournament.
That evening in Osaka, the title went where most people expected. Cuba, coached by Antonio Perdomo, beat China 3–0 (15–4, 16–14, 15–12) to win the world title for the fourth time, after 1978, 1990 and 1994. Cuba won all eight matches in Japan and lost only two sets. Regla Torres was named Most Valuable Player and Best Blocker, and Ana Fernández was Best Spiker. Russia beat Brazil 3–1 for bronze.
For Croatia, though, the story of November 1998 is not about a medal. It is about a first step on the biggest stage, and about a father and daughter who made a small volleyball nation impossible to ignore.
