Zvezda Zvenigorod Women

The Sports Complex "Zvezda" holds only a thousand people. It sits in Zvenigorod, a Moscow Region town whose governor, Boris Gromov, and mayor, Leonid Stavitsky, set the club up in 2004.

What followed came fast. Evgeny Tretyakov took over in 2006 and brought players across from HC Lada Togliatti. The 2006/07 season brought the Russian Super League title and the EHF Cup Winners' Cup, won against Ikast. The next season went further: Zvezda beat Hypo Niederösterreich to take the EHF Champions League, still the only Russian club to have won it, and followed that with the European Super Cup. Irina Poltoratskaya captained and ran the side through those years, while goalkeeper Olga Sanko arrived straight from Hypo.

The rivalry with Lada Togliatti, the club Tretyakov had raided for players, defined the following seasons and came to a head in the 2008 Russian Superliga final. Zvezda kept winning the Russian Cup through 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2014, and lifted the first Russian Super Cup in 2014. It took until 2023, under coach Alexey Gumyakov, for Zvezda to return to the podium with a bronze medal.