Tikvesh HC

Tikveš is back in the Macedonian Super League after taking the second tier in 2019–20, and by 2022–23 the side had climbed to fourth place in the top flight, enough to reach the EHF Cup. Kristijan Grčevski runs the squad now, and this season's business has brought in a fresh spine: goalkeeper Vasilije Pečurica, left back Tomče Stojanovski, right back Mohamed Elazhary and right wing Balša Cejović.

None of that was guaranteed a decade ago. The original club, founded in Kavadarci in 1955 under Lazar Lalkov, had already lived its best years and gone quiet by the time a group led by Dobre Stavrov — one of the founders — brought handball back to the city in 2014, first as GRK Lozari. A year later the name changed to GRK Tikveš 2014, a deliberate reach back to what the club had been before. The Tikveš winery, the drink that gives the region its name, backs the club today.

What it had been was considerable. Through the 1960s and 1970s Tikveš won the Macedonian championship four times and the national cup three times, built on players such as Pane Malinkov and the Kjurchievi brothers. Milan Levov came through later, went on to play for Vardar and Metalurg, and still won caps for the national team. Slavjan Paunov took a longer road: he started as a goalkeeper at Tikveš back in 1997 and kept playing into 2026.

Home games are played at the Jasmin Sports Hall in front of up to 3,500, and the fixture that matters most is against HC Alkaloid of Skopje, a derby the club's supporters describe with no love lost. Behind the first team, more than 140 young players are working through the academy, the base the club is building its next promotion push on.