BGUFK-SKA

Meshkov Brest is the name that raises the temperature whenever the fixture list comes out, and the meeting between the two is the closest thing Belarusian handball has to a derby — the "Belarusian Clásico," people call it.

BGUFK-SKA carries that weight partly because of what came before it. The line runs back to Politechnik, a team Vitaly Dobrovolsky put together at the Belarusian Polytechnic Institute in 1960, folded into the Belorussian Military District in 1976 and renamed SKA-Minsk, then later brought under the university that gives the club its current, double-barrelled name.

The team plays out of the Palace of Sports "Uruchye," seating 2,750, in green and red, and answers to "Armeys" around Minsk.

None of that record softens the fixture against Meshkov Brest. It is the one result the "Armeys" are measured against every season, whatever else the table says.