Monthly Archives: October 2024

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USA Handball Talk (Episode 29): Bret Harte Middle School Coach, Thomas Schumake

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:24 — 6.3MB)

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Thomas Schumake is the head coach of the Bret Harte Middle Schools boy’s and girl’s handball teams. This past weekend both teams took home the California Youth Cup Middle School titles. I sat down with Coach Schumake to discuss his approach and journey to become a handball coach. And, we also discuss what it might take to get handball to become an officially sanctioned school sport in California.

Watch on YouTube or listen/download the mp3 file at the top of the page

If you have any suggestions for future topics that you would like us to consider please let us know on social media.

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And, be sure to check out the podcast archive with interviews and great handball discussion going all the way back to 2006: Link

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USA Team Handball Board of Directors Meeting Minutes (May-September 2024)

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Good Governance and the Importance of Meeting Minutes

Meeting Minutes are one of the few windows to the inner workings and decisions made by the USA Team Handball Board of Directors. A “window” because they sometimes don’t provide enough context to fully understand what’s being discussed or decided. They’re not perfect, but they’re better than nothing and reviewing them can give one a better sense of what’s going on.

Making them readily available for everyone to read is certainly “good governance” and USA Team Handball’s By-Laws, Section 16.1 lists multiple requirements for meeting minutes including this sentence: “Every reasonable effort will be made to publish the minutes within fifteen (15) days of approval by the Board.“

Needless to say USA Team Handball has historically very rarely met this guideline. If you been around awhile, you’re probably not shocked by this. And, there can be multiple reasons for this to include short staffing and problems with the website. But, if you think those are the only reasons and that USA Team Handball would never delay the posting of meeting minutes to delay the exposure of what might be considered a convoluted sequence of events… you just might be a little naive.

For the past several months USA Team Handball’s Meeting Minutes webpage section hasn’t been updated. The last listed minutes go all the way back to March 7th. That’s over seven months and the board has met multiple times and made multiple decisions. And, since the 15 May meeting the practice of announcing upcoming meetings and making the open session available for anyone to view online as part of a Zoom webinar has been discontinued. Perhaps that had something to do with former Board President Mike Wall’s resignation on 5 June. Perhaps that’s just a coincidence.

A Window of Transparency Opens…

Anyway… On Wednesday, 23 October, as I periodically do, I checked the USA Team Handball website to see if any new Board of Directors Meeting Minutes webpage had been added. Usually, this is a fruitless check, but, lo and behold it had been updated. “Finally,” I said to myself, “A little smidgen of transparency for this organization.” I immediately downloaded all the newly posted meeting minutes and started to try and piece together what in the hell exactly had happened the past few months. Not an easy task and after a couple of hours sorting through the documents and with a two day trip to California to attend the San Francisco Cal Heat Youth Cup to get ready for I had to pause my efforts.

…And Closes

But, I thought it would be nice to let everyone else know that these meeting minutes were now available so I prepared some social media posts to get the word out. A seemingly simple task, but it takes a bit of time to pull up Facebook, Twiter and Instagram, find a suitable picture, and craft a few bullet points. I did that and then went back to the USA Team Handball website for the meeting minutes link… only to find the meeting minutes had disappeared for some reason.

I suppose there could be a number of reason as to why such a window opens and then closes. I’ll leave it to everyone to speculate further. But, any excuses as to logistical reasons for not posting minutes due to time constraints… well, those excuses are pretty silly.

USA Team Handball Board of Directors Meeting Minutes (May – September 2024)

So, if USA Team Handball isn’t going to post Board of Director Meeting Minutes, I guess I will. (Good thing, I downloaded)

  • 16 May 2024: Link
  • 15 June 2024: Link
  • 2 July 2024: Link
  • 10 July 2024: Link (Removed per USA Team Handball’s request)
  • 15 July 2024: Link
  • 6 August 2024: Link (Removed per USA Team Handball’s request)
  • 27 August 2024: Link (Removed per USA Team Handball’s request)
  • 10 September 2024: Link (Removed per USA Team Handball’s request)
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Major Changes at USA Team Handball: A New CEO and More Board Resignations

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The past few weeks have seen some major changes with USA Team Handball’s Board of Directors, Committees and Administrative Staff. Here’s a summary of those changes:

  • August 27, 2024: The USA Team Handball Board of Directors met and decided to hire Michael King, the former Executive Director of the US Handball Union as the new CEO for USA Team Handball
  • September 7, 2024: The Judicial Committee reinstated Ebiye Udo-Udoma on the Board of Directors. Udo-Udoma had been removed from the Board of Directors by the Athletes Advisory Committee (AAC) in the June timeframe, but the Judicial Committee determined that the proper procedures had not been followed.
  • September 9, 2024: Michael King assumed the CEO Role; Former CEO Martin Branick is retained on staff in a new role that was to be defined
  • September 20, 2024: Camille Nichols resigned from the Board of Directors
  • October 8, 2024: Lawrence X. Taylor resigned from the Board of Directors
  • October 15, 2024: David Buckman, resigned from his position as the Chair of the Nominating and Governance Committee.

When contacted, USA Team Handball confirmed these changes and Patrick Jalabert, the Interim Board of Directors provided the following comment:

The board decision to hire a new CEO followed lengthy discussions between USA Team Handball and the US Handball Union aimed at resolving a divide in the US handball community, and was not a decision taken lightly. While the recent resignations are regrettable for the organization, USA Team Handball is thankful to the individual contributors for their passion and engagement during their time with the organization. We remain committed to the growth of the sport in the United States, and look forward to welcoming new contributors to support that mission.
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Are the Cook Islands Becoming the Faroe Islands of Beach Handball?

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Not the Usual “Look at Us. We’re Growing Handball” Exaggeration

I have a daily Google search feed for “handball” that shows up in my inbox every day and it’s often an eclectic mix of stories. One type of article that regularly shows up is the “Look at us. We’re growing handball in a far flung region of the world.” I generally, read these stories with a few shakers of salt as typically they are about some IHF project that shows up for a couple of days, hands out some balls, runs a clinic and takes a few photos for social media. These are not bad initiatives… It’s just that they are typically trumped up for accomplishing a lot more than they really are.

The past few days there have been several articles from the Cook Islands about a beach handball competition there including an article about two IHF referees and an officiating clinic, the Prime Minister playing and record participation. The usual, “Look at us. We’re growing handball,” articles… except my curiousity was piqued, so I dug a little bit more… and went way down a rabbit hole.

The Cook Islands: Per Capita, Beach Handball’s #1 Nation

What initially triggered my interest was the article on record participation which stated that participation for this year’s event had more than doubled to 444 participants. In case you were wondering… that’s quite a few participants. I’ve been to the largest U.S. Beach Handball competition, the Southern California Beach Handball Championships twice and that seemed like a bigger number. Turns out the Cook Islands competition is, indeed, a little over twice the size of this year’s U.S. competition. The U.S. competition had 18 total teams (12 Men and 6 Women). While the Cook Islands competition had 37 total teams (10 Men, 9 Women, 6 Youth Men, 6 Youth Women, and 6 Masters) Source: Cook Islands Handball FB Page

And, get this: The current estimated population of the Cook Islands is 13,594 so 3.3% of their population has been playing beach handball the past few days. That is a ridiculously high percentage. And, here you thought that the Faroe Islands having 10% of their population in the stands at the European Championships was impressive.

What Exactly is Going on in the South Pacific?

Well, it would appear that some real growth is indeed actually taking place. If you scroll the Cook Islands Handball Facebook page you can get a sense of the competition by checking out the photos and videos. The Cook Islands Games is a multi sport competition which appears to be simlar to state based games in the U.S., but on a much smaller scale because the Cook Islands is a pretty small country. If one looks at the team names they mostly match the different small islands that make up the Cook Islands. Some of these islands have just a few hundred inhabitants so it’s a lot more feasible to field a beach handball team than a regular indoor handball team. And, in Polynesia I’m sure finding a beach to play on is way simpler than a 40×20 Meter indoor court.

Future World Championship Qualification?

Based on a few video clips the competition was spirited, but not at an elite level. That said… if you have that many people playing, some cream is going to rise to the top. And, they had 12 youth teams (6 men and 6 women) participating. Take the best players from each of those teams, give them a little training and there’s surely some potential there for a solid national team. One that could challenge for an Oceania Championship title and qualficiation for the World Championships. In fact, according to this report on 2023 Oceania qualification they did play Australia and New Zealand close last time around.

While a total population of around 14,000 people is not a lot to work with against those two much larger nations the Cook Islands could well be on a path to a Beach Handball World Championship.