Teqball national team captain Lee Jun-seok (27) started playing football when he was in elementary school.

Like other friends, he dreamed of wearing the Taegeukgi national flag and standing on the stages of the Asian Games, Olympics, and World Cup.

However, Lee's dream did not come easy.

Pushed out of the fierce competition, he brought an end to his football career at the age of 21 after playing in the K4 League, which is considered the fourth tier of senior football.

Still thirsting for the national team patch, Lee transitioned to jokgu, but that path did not work out either.

That was when teqball, a newly emerging sport, caught his eye.

Invented in Hungary in 2012, teqball is a sport where players hit a football back and forth over a curved special table. It initially gained attention as football players enjoyed it for training purposes, and it began to establish itself as a professional sport with the founding of the International Teqball Federation in 2017.

After balancing a livelihood with teqball, Lee heard the news in February of this year that teqball had belatedly been adopted as an official event for the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games. Following this, he resigned from his job as a contract production worker at a major corporation to dedicate himself to training.

Although the teqball national team had to prepare for the tournament in poor conditions without being able to enter the Jincheon National Training Center like other national athletes, Lee's dream of a medal was no different from athletes in other sports.

Lee's stage moved to a teqball table, which is about 1/1,400th the size of a football field, but his desperation for a medal was by no means small.

"When I first started teqball, my mother bought me a teqball table for a large sum of 2 million won despite our difficult financial situation," he said. "I prepared for this tournament thinking of my mother, and I endured with the tenacity to win a medal no matter what."

Ahead of the tournament, Lee used his own money to travel to Hungary, where he reached out blindly to Hungarian players via social media to receive private coaching.

Lee was desperate.

"I thought that winning a medal in this tournament would help widely publicize the sport of teqball and serve as a stepping stone for my fellow athletes who, like me, gave up their livelihoods to leap into this sport so they can continue their careers without worry," he said.

Lee advanced through the group stage with a clean sheet and all wins. In the semifinals held on the 19th, he secured his ticket to the final when his opponent, Zaid Eidan of Kuwait, retired due to a left thigh muscle tear sustained during the match.

Lee stood on the stage of his dreams.

He faced Iraq's powerhouse Ali Jalil Mezher Alleyawi, who was considered a favorite to win, in the men's singles teqball final of the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games held at the Higashi Sports Center in Nagoya, Japan, on the 20th.

Although he seemed to fall behind by conceding three consecutive points early in the first set, he regained his concentration and secured a 2-0 set victory through flawless game management.

(Photo: Yonhap News)