Brda Women

Off that stage, Brda Women live at OŠ Ravne njive, the gymnasium attached to the Ravne njive Elementary School, and train at Poljud. Supporters call the team Brdašice — the girls from Brda, a name that stuck through seasons spent well outside the title picture.

The closest the club came to a trophy was in 2017/18, when coach Mario Stipkov led them to the Croatian Cup final, the club's first appearance there in more than a decade. They lost it, and the run has not been repeated: recent Cup campaigns have ended in the 9th and 5th brackets, and a 5th-place league finish in 2020/21 remains among their better domestic showings. What has held up over the years is the pipeline of players who went on to the Croatian national team, several of them medallists between 1993 and 2016, a record the club's league position has never quite matched.

That gap is the story of Croatian women's volleyball generally. HAOK Mladost has taken more than sixteen championships, and Marina Kaštela broke through for its first title in 2017, leaving Split's other club to measure itself against two sides that have simply won more often — a distance the Cup final of 2017/18 narrowed for one season without closing.