I gotta tell ya! I really had to explain the gist of my “Hypocrisy reigns” article. Not sure why but it did not sit well with certain readers.
Some took it (very) personal, others didn’t quite grasped its tone. Overall, I am happy to report that most of you did get the “message”.
So much so that two members of our US team handball family acted on it.
There is nothing I’d love more, than to take credit for what Vlad Gramma and Mohamed Emira did in Salt Lake City this past weekend.
Here it is, in their own words.
[color=#6600ff]Bogdan: Mohamed and Vlad. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer some questions for the THN readers. Obviously, your time this past weekend was very precious. Tell me, what happened and why?[/color]
[color=#ff0000]Mohamed: Vlad and I had a meeting yesterday. We’ve been talking about starting a new club where we could contribute to building handball. I have a little bit of experience in creating websites. Vlad and I are also former professional handball players. I played for 13 years in Egypt, 6 of these years as a pro, and Vlad has a similar experience from Romania. Between us we have the most experience in Salt Lake City. We are still slowly building a team, but at least we got things started. I spent 4 hours yesterday night and I finally got the website up and running. I still need to work on the contents, but that was only one day work so hopefully I will get the website where I want during this week. We decided to name our club the Utah Falcons. You can visit our website at www.utahfalcons.com . What motivated me to take such a step was that I felt the need to contribute to the US handball community. Besides, I watched the Olympics and I felt unfortunate that I now live in a country where the sport is not appreciated and that I can’t enjoy it on a daily basis. I am a huge Utah Jazz fan but I would like the be a fan of a team handball instead of basketball.[/color]
[color=#000066]Vlad: Mohamed is right. We have handball and leadership experience. I have been around this sport long enough to know that it all comes down to individuals. The time was right to act on this. Now, we’ve added our name to the [link=http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=103598029638506187982.000440c7641749acb6497]map[/link].[/color]
[color=#6600ff]Bogdan: Fair enough. Now, that the easy part is out of the way, what’s next for the Falcons?[/color]
[color=#ff0000]Mohamed: Some of you will share with me my feelings that at one point in my life, handball was everything to me and it was the thing that I cared a lot, so maybe, the future will now allow me to make handball my career instead of doing something I love less. This is a dream come true.[/color]
[color=#000066]Vlad: I have a full time job so this will take some sacrifice. It will not be easy. I love working with kids. I believe they are the future and without them handball will not survive. I am very excited right now. I would like to contact former handballers in the Salt Lake area and ask them to come back and help us again. These people left because they got tired of people taking credit for their work. Maybe Mohamed and I can fix what others broke.[/color]
[color=#6600ff]Bogdan: Soooo, do you think I could take credit for your work and claim it as mine? As in feed my ego? Some still do that… I hear.[/color]
[color=#ff0000]Mohamed: I know you are joking but after reading [link=http://teamhandballnews.com/news.php?item.585]your article[/link] I got the message, that we can’t depend on the new federation entirely, I’m sure they will do their best but we have to do our best at the same time as clubs and community. I know that your article made a lot noise and I felt for a moment that I’m one of the hypocrites, but I don’t take anything personal! I will try to do my best to be an active part of the community. We could face failure or success but in both ways we learn.[/color]
[color=#000066]Vlad: You know we laugh about this all the time. But if everybody will start doing something for this sport and then we all take credit for it… I think we would be doing handball a huge favor…[/color]
[color=#6600ff]Bogdan: I am just glad you got the message. I’m not sure I had the energy to explain myself to you too. Besides, with our English there’s no telling the outcome. Do you think that the title of this article (The Art of (Making) Noise) is loud and clear enough? [/color]
[color=#ff0000]Mohamed: I hope it is loud enough, and I hope we continue work together as community to grow and focus our attention on the grass roots instead of talking about tournaments don’t mean that much and it’s not going to take us anywhere, we should think about 2016 and who is going to represent the USA, is it going to be some amateurs or real pros.[/color]
[color=#000066]Vlad: I never read the titles.[/color]