Refugee sports associations

Soon after the settlement of Asia Minor refugees in Chania, the first refugee sports associations were established. The first major one was the Ionia Sports Association. It was founded by a group of refugees who wanted to create a refugee team in an effort to rebuild earlier sports associations which had been lost due to the Catastrophe and the displacement. The main activity of the Ionia Association was football.

From the beginning, the association lacked basic necessities. According to a piece in the newspaper Athlitika Nea, in 1923, the association ‘had no offices and the managing board met in the Public Garden. […] There was no money for football boots and outfits […] initially the team practiced at the Agios Ioannis airport’.

During those first years, but also later in the association’s life, it was the refugees themselves who donated money and time in order to meet the team’s financial needs. Kyriakos Balis, vice president of the Asia Minor Refugee Brotherhood of Chania and an active member of Ionia’s managing board, explains that the team never had sponsorships. ‘We supported the team with our own funds. Everyone contributed from their own pocket because they loved Ionia. Because they were from Ionia, from the coast of Asia Minor. They were Ionian’.

From early on, the association started branching out into other sports besides football. By 1924 it already had a swimming team and in 1928, Ionia was the champion in the volleyball league. Simultaneously, the association’s members also offered services to refugees. The first years after the refugee arrival, Ionia operated employment agencies for refugees. Later, in 1932, there was this announcement in a newspaper: ‘The sports and football association Ionia is organising a free film screening at the cinema of the Public Garden’.

The team flag referenced the history and perhaps also reflected the expectations of the refugees who arrived in Greece. It was a triangular black flag embroidered with the name ‘Ionia’. Next to it, there was a winged goddess Nike standing over Constantinople and Asia Minor and, underneath, the island of Crete. The flag was recently displayed as part of the exhibition ‘Ionia, Ikaros, Kritikos Astir, the guiding lights of the refugees. Football stories from Asia Minor to Chania’, to commemorate the centenary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe.

In Chania, more football associations were established after Ionia, some mixed and others exclusively made up of refugee members. Some of these associations were ‘Apollon’, from the area of Varousi-Nea Chora, ‘Aris Vamvakopoulou’, later renamed into ‘Anatolikos Astir’ [Eastern Star] and ‘Kritikos Astir’ [Cretan Star], and ‘Ikaros Pasakakiou’.