Karvina

Michal Brůna now runs the bench at HCB Karviná. František Brůna scored for the club through the years when it still played under Czechoslovakia and stood out enough to be picked for the 1968 World All-Star match.

The group that became the club started in 1952 among students at the vocational school attached to Mine 1. May, and the name Baník stayed with it once Karviná turned it into a proper club in 1955 — a name that still points back to the coalfield the town sits on. Handball in Karviná has rarely had to share the spotlight with a genuine rival at home; the closest thing to one, HC Zubří, is more geography and history than a fight for the same trophies, and in recent seasons it is Talent Plzeň that has pushed Karviná hardest for the championship.

There has been little for anyone else to take. Fourteen Extraliga titles, stretching from the turn of the millennium through consecutive wins in 2024 and 2025, make Karviná the most decorated club in Czech handball, and the club added Czech Cup wins in the same recent years to go with an older pair of Czechoslovak league titles from 1968 and 1972. Home games are played in front of 2,200 people at the Handball Hall, in black, green and white — the same colours that trace back to a school handball group that had no ground of its own at all.