The USOC has announced that they are starting a Men’s National Team resident program in Atlanta, Georgia. Players in the Atlanta area have already started practice 3 times a week at Morris Brown College under the direction of interim coach Chris Cappelmann. The goal is to ultimately establish the program so that athletes will be able to train full time with support from the Dekalb International Training Center, the USOC and ultimately a new Handball Federation.
In terms of certifying a new federation, I spoke recently with Eric Parthen, USOG National Governing Body (NGB) Development, and he indicated that the USOC is still evaluating both proposals and performing due diligence background checks. He anticipates that they will provide a recommendation to the USOC BoD in late 2007 or early 2008.
The full text of the USOC letter concerning the National Team is available at Matt Van Houten, the USOC Athlete Advisor Council member for Team Handball, Myspace Blog: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=73440975&blogID=324342930
"The full text of the USOC letter concerning the National Team is available at Matt Van Houten, the USOC Athlete Advisor Council member for Team Handball, Myspace Blog"
– Are you kidding me? Press realeases are now released on AAC's myspace. Please tell me this is a joke. Will the next tournament be announced in the chatbox section? UFB…
Well, it is actually appears to be a letter that was sent to prospective players. But I agree, a press release highlighting the restarting of the Men's team would make sense to me.
And more importantly… is there going to be any information on who is trying out or how to try out? Or will that be an underground myspace blog sent to the same group of players that keep getting beat?
The blog is open to the public and is not "sent" to anyone.
Send me your contact information and I'll let you know when and how to try out.
mvh@hgvmlaw.com