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Charting a Way Forward for USA Team Handball (2024 Reboot): Yet Another Reboot

John Ryan

Team Handball is a great sport and virtually everyone introduced to the sport has wondered why this most American of sports hasn’t caught on in the U.S. As someone who has followed handball development (or the lack thereof) in the U.S. for over 35 years I have been continuously frustrated with the overall lack of planning to move the sport forward. Our small community is very committed and has been willing to work hard, but without a plan… we’ve mostly been spinning our wheels in place or worse, regressing backwards as other niche sports have passed us by.

Retrospective

While I’ve been having the typical after match, barstool discussions on these topics since the late 1980s I didn’t start to document those opinions until I started this website. In 2014, I first systematically addressed planning with the identification of several alternative initiatives for consideration. These options included strategies for improving out national teams, placing more emphasis on collegiate handball, on women’s handball and the adopting a regional (instead of nationwide) development strategy. Links to these initiatives and others from the original series are at the end of this post.

In 2018, USA Team Handball developed and approved a Strategic Plan. While not a perfect document the organization now had a documented starting point to guide efforts to move the sport forward in this country. In 2019, with new leadership in place I took the opportunity to reboot the original series and to first assess where USA Handball stood as an organization and how that might fit in with the goals and objectives of the strategic plan.

I covered what “What We Have” and “What We Want to Be” pretty thoroughly and those links are at the end of this post in the First Reboot (2019) section. Surprisingly… or not surprisingly the What We Have section is still pretty accurate 5 years later.

The New Reboot

The 2019 Reboot ended, however, with my just barely having started the hard task of assessing “How We Get There” and the necessary changing of “What We Want to Be” to “What We Actually Can Be.” This incomplete effort was partly due to the COVID Pandemic and partly due to my actually working for USA Team Handball for a brief time.

Now in 2024, with the COVID pandemic clearly behind us and Olympic qualification guaranteed for 2028 it’s high time to move forward. The next four years present a lot of challenges, but also a lot of opportunities the sport in this country has not had since the 1990s. Honestly, the opportunities are so great we could basically muddle through the next four years haphazardly and still make progress. We could… but, we don’t do that. Instead we need to maximize these four years as much as possible with a constant eye towards actions and initiatives that can help lead to sustainable growth after 2028.

Bottom Lines… Up Front

While I generally prefer a methodical process without pre-ordained answers there’s not a whole lot of time to waste. Honestly, this sort of effort should have started in the midst of the pandemic when all we could do was plan for the future. That said, I’m alreadly leaning towards several bottom lines that could inform a Strategic Plan update as well as follow on actions that should be implemented. I’ve even already written some commentaries addressing one of the topics. Here are some bottom lines… up front:

I’ll be putting some more “meat on the bones” on these bottom lines and you can already see two posts that I’ve written on the challenges facing the U.S. Women below

Picking Winners and Losers

It goes without saying that these proposed bottom lines are going to make some people unhappy. The good news for everyone is that I’m just some guy with a website. I’ve got some influence, but the reality is that this is a Board Member/CEO driven process. The bad news is that these things take time and USA Team Handball has historically been a risk averse, keep as many people happy as possible organization. One that has often avoided picking winners and losers. And, the really bad news is that indecision is essentially just a decsion to maintain the status quo.

I’ll go on record that my intent here is to hopefully be read and to stir discussion towards decision making. Preferably, adopting what I’m proposing, but I’ll take actually making a decision as a little victory too. Because, the reality is that there isn’t always one clearly right answer, but multiple possibilities to choose from… Pick one and move out.

Subject to Revision

I’ll also go on record that I’m more than open to having my mind changed. To be introduced to new data that makes me rethink my bottom lines. One thing that I’ve learned is that when one starts to go beyond yakking over a beer and puts their thoughts down on paper… what was once certain can become a bit fuzzy. Can even lead to a full 180 degrees change of view. That’s happened more than once and that’s a good thing. We’ll be discussing many of these topics in upcoming podcasts, sometimes with guests that are sure to have contrary views. So don’t be surprised if over time this post get revised.

Yet Another Reboot (2024)

The Original Series (2014)

In 2014, I wrote several commentaries on the newly implemented Residency Program at Auburn. Over and over I hammered away with all the concerns I had with this well intentioned, but poorly conceived effort. After some reflection, though, I thought it would make sense to identify some alternative strategies. Here are some links to the commentaries from that series… and some missing links as I never finished this effort:

The First Reboot (2019)

Introduction: Link

What We Have

What We Want to Be

How We Get There

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