Togliatti Women

When coaches Andrei Stepanov and Alexei Zhavoronkov moved a handball squad from Novokuznetsk to Togliatti in the mid-1990s, that transplanted roster was registered as GK Lada on 7 April 1998.

Lada took the Super League title six years running between 2002 and 2008. Two more EHF Cup wins followed, in 2012 and 2014, even as the run of domestic titles gave way to a longer string of silver and bronze finishes at home.

Irina Bliznova, who came through the club's own academy and went on to become an Olympic champion, later returned to Togliatti as its director. Among the players brought in during the club's strongest years, Polina Vyakhireva arrived already an Olympic and world champion, part of a squad built to hold off Astrakhanochka — the Astrakhan side against whom every meeting is billed as the Volga Derby.

The championships have not returned since 2008, but the medals have kept coming: third place in the Super League as recently as 2022.