Tábor

Tábor is a small South Bohemian town, but hockey has run through it since 1921, when the club started life as DSK Tábor, a workers' sports outfit that only took up the game properly in 1924. The name changed with the political weather that followed — Tatran, then Vodní stavby, then a spell as HC VS VTJ Tábor after joining forces with the local army club — before it settled on HC Tábor in 1994.

The club's one real taste of the top flight came just after the war, in 1945, when it spent two seasons in the Czechoslovak state league; its game against I. ČLTK Praha that year was the first league match played in the country once the fighting stopped. Nothing since has come close to that level, and in 2011 the club went the other way entirely, sliding into insolvency and dropping as far as the fourth tier. It bounced straight back up in 2012, and the rebuilding since has been steady rather than dramatic: a title in the 2. Liga West in 2009, then back-to-back climbs through the 3. Liga in 2022 and again in 2025.

Locally the fixtures that matter are against Písek and Milevsko, both close enough for the games to carry the weight of a derby regardless of league position. The Kohouti — the Cocks — play in blue and white at the Tábor Ice Stadium, a ground built for just over 5,000 that has seen a handful of names pass through worth remembering, Jiří Dopita among them for a single season in 1989–90.

The 2025 promotion put HC Tábor back in the 1. Liga, and holding that place is now the task in front of the club.