BIOGRAPHY
Bosnian-born Indira Kastratović was a relative late-comer to handball, only specialising in the sport at the age of 16 after growing up also playing basketball, volleyball and athletics. She was spotted by a local coach who persuaded the left-hander to take handball seriously.
Kastratović joined ŽRK Halas Jožef in 1998, where she met her husband Zoran and developed as a player. Zoran would later become Kastratović’s coach when she played in Novi Sad.
A pivotal moment in Kastratović’s career came when her Belgrade-based club, ŽRK Voždovac, went to Skopje in North Macedonia for a tournament. Kometal Gjorče Petrov approached Kastratović and asked her to join: she signed for two years initially, and 30 years later, is still based in North Macedonia.
With Kometal, Kastratović reached the EHF Champions League final in 2000, losing in the away match against Hypo Niederösterreich. Two years later, and less than a year after Kastratović gave birth to her daughter Sara, Kometal lifted the trophy.
Kastratović spent the rest of her career - bar a short period in Gran Canaria - at Kometal.
On a national level, Kastratović played over 100 matches for the Yugoslavia national team. In 1997 she received North Macedonian citizenship and was the top scorer at the 1997 IHF Women’s World Championship, when the team achieved their best-ever result - seventh.
Her transition to coaching began while she was still playing, when she and Zoran opened a handball academy in 2003, which ran for 10 years. She spent a number of years at WHC Vardar, leading the team to three EHF FINAL4s before stepping down in 2016. Kastratović then became Vardar sporting director for several years.
