Eva Rucka - - 2024 W.A.S. Legend (Acrobatic Gymnastics)
Rucka has played a pivotal role in acrobatic gymnastics, not only in Poland, where she represented her country winning multiple National titles, but also in the U.S. and Canada as a successful coach, who produced champion athletes. Rucka began her career in Warsaw, Poland, and quickly dominated the acrobatic Women’s Pairs event. She and her partner Ewa Anderszewka won the Polish National Championships in 1974, ’75, ’77, and ’78. They also won the silver medal at the First European Championships, in 1978, held in Riga, USSR, and won the bronze medal at the 1978 World Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria. Rucka's coaches in Poland, Konrad and Gizela Zielinski were well-known on the international stage and Konrad Zielinski is a 2005 WAS Hall of Fame Legend.
Arriving in the U.S. during the late 1970s, she spent the next four years coaching Acrobatic Gymnastics in Quincy, Illinois at Tri-City Acrosports where she coached numerous Age Group, Jr Elite, and Elite National Champions in women's pairs and trios. In 1983, her Elite women's pair won the USSF National Championships earning them a spot on the USA National Team for the World Cup.
In 1983, Rucka moved permanently to Canada where in 1998 she opened the very first acrobatics club in Canada, Les Gymnastes de L’Ile, located in Quebec. In 2008, her women's trio was the first to represent Canada in an international competition in Glasgow, Scotland. Then her women’s pair competed in the 2010 World Championships in Wroclaw, Poland.
After many tireless years of paving the way for this beautiful sport in Canada, it was a proud moment when in 2010 Rucka, along with her husband Andre Cichalewska, a FIG judge, received word that acrobatics was officially recognized as a discipline within the Gymnastics Canada Federation.
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