The “TTBL Player of the Month January”: Hugo Calderano from TTF Liebherr Ochsenhausen
TTBL fans were able to vote for their “TTBL Player of the Month January” in a social media poll. After the Liebherr Cup Final Four and the first four match days of the TTBL second half of the season, there were four candidates to choose from in view of their consistently good performances (in alphabetical order): Hugo Calderano (TTF Liebherr Ochsenhausen), Benedikt Duda (TTC Schwalbe Bergneustadt), Ruwen Filus (TTC RhönSprudel Fulda-Maberzell) and Cedric Nuytinck (Borussia Dortmund). Top 10 player Hugo Calderano received the most votes.
The Brazilian's success in the public vote reflects Calderano's dream start to the new year. The South American first became the key player for Ochsenhausen in the Liebherr Cup Final Four in Ulm/Neu-Ulm on the first weekend in January, winning twice in the semi-final against TTC OE Bad Homburg and in the subsequent final against Champions League winners 1. FC Saarbrücken TT. Thanks to his spotless record of 6-0 wins in three TTBL matches against Fulda-Maberzell, Dortmund and TTC Zugbrücke Grenzau up to the end of the month, Calderano played a key role in his team's leap to the top of the table.
His brilliant form after the bitter defeat in the bronze medal match against French superstar Felix Lebrun at the Olympic tournament in Paris last summer can certainly be seen as a statement by fans and opponents alike: Hugo Calderano is back. “The last few months after Paris 2024 were very difficult for me, I was really just in survival mode all the time. But at some point, I reached the point where I had to keep going. That's when I was able to really motivate myself again for the goals of my club,” said the right-back after the cup win, looking back on his interim journey through a deep valley of disappointment.
But Calderano bounced back in the manner of a champion. At the cup finals, the multiple Pan and Latin American champion only dropped one set in his four matches against Homburg's Yuma Tsuboi and Kristian Karlsson (both 3:0) and Saarbrücken's stars Darko Jorgic (3:1) and Patrick Franziska (3:0). In the TTBL, Calderano then only had to go into the fourth round twice in his victories against Hsu Hsien-Chia, Filus (both Fulda-Maberzell), Nuytinck, Erik Bottroff (both Dortmund) and record junior Marlon Börner and Feng Yi-Hsin (both Grenzau).
“He has improved,” Franziska described his impressions of Calderano at the cup final round, ”in the serve/return area, plays with a lot of confidence. His game is even more difficult to read and predict than before.”
With these strengths, Hugo Marinho Borges Calderano, as his full name is, wants to celebrate even more often with Ochsenhausen's team - preferably in the current season. The cup win seems to be a parallel to the successful 2018/19 season: Six years ago, the cup win also formed the basis for the subsequent double. The 28-year-old does not want to conceal the corresponding objective: “It's still very early days, but of course we will try to win another title.”
Florian Manzke