Polzela

No fierce local rivalry stands out in Hopsi Polzela's record. What has defined the club instead is its size relative to its results.

The peak came in the mid-to-late 1990s, when Polzela reached the Slovenian First League final three times running, in 1995, 1997 and 1998, without ever winning it, and took the Slovenian Cup in 1996 — still the club's only national trophy.

Since then Hopsi has settled into a pattern of near misses and yo-yoing between divisions: a Cup final defeat in 2019, paired with a runners-up finish in the Slovenian Supercup that same year, and two Second League titles, in 2007 and again in 2025, either side of a runners-up finish in 2006. Goran Jagodnik's spells at the club, from 1994 to 1999 and again from 2009, span nearly the whole of that up-and-down history.

It is a history that goes back to 1972, when a group in Polzela formed a basketball association that would spend the next five decades moving between Slovenia's top flight and its second tier, never quite settling in either.