USATH (ex-?)president Mike Hurdle has announced that the 2006 National Championships will be held in Gainsville, Georgia. The hosts will be the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta, the Georgia Sports Foundation and Condor Club Sports.
The tournament will involve full 60min games (one per day) and will hence cover 5 days from May 25-29, 2006. There will be an open division and 3 junior divisions.
See the [link=http://teamhandballnews.com/download.php?list.4]files in the download section[/link] for more details.
[file=request.php?7]2006 Letter from Mike Hurdle[/file]
[file=request.php?8]2006 Nationals Annanouncement[/file]
[file=request.php?9]2006 Nationals Schedule[/file]
Author Archives: Björn Brembs
Kuwait, South Korea and Qatar qualify for 07 WC's
As reported on the [link=http://www.handball-wm-2007.de]official website[/link] for the 2007 World Championships in Germany, the Asian Championships ended with Kuwait taking the Gold (third time in a row), South Korea Silver and Qatar bronze.
The tournament in Germany will include 6 brackets with 4 teams each. After the first round, the top two teams in each bracket will play for the title and the bottom two teams play for the President's Cup. The games will take place all over Germany in stadiums featuring capacities of up to 19,000 spectators.
USOC decertifies USATH
Probably no surprise for all those who followed the developments over the last months: the USOC has decided to revoke USATH of its status of National Governing Body (NGB):
[blockquote]On February 11, 2006, pursuant to 36 U.S.C. § 220521(d) of the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act and Article X of the USOC Bylaws, and upon the recommendation of a Panel appointed to hear a complaint filed by the USOC Chief Executive Officer against US Team Handball Federation (USTHF), the USOC Board of Directors terminated USTHF’s membership in the USOC and revoked USTHF’s recognition as the National Governing Body for the sport of Team Handball.[/blockquote]
[file=request.php?6]Complaint finding[/file]
So we can start anew…
Team Handball Podcast (Episode 1)
Our inaugural podcast is now available for download.
[file=request.php?5]Episode 1[/file]
Topics covered:
– 2006 Men’s European Championship
– Handball in Brazil
– 2005 Women’s World Championship
– Men’s Team trip to Spain
– Itajaí Handball Tournament
– US Handball Current Status
– Future Podcast Plans
We will eventually make the podcast available as a subscription (RSS) service, depending on demand.
Itajaí Handball Cup Brazil
I've just returned from the 2006 version of the [link=http://itajaihandballcup.com.br]international handball tournament in Itajaí[/link], Brazil. This fantastic tournament is, to my knowledge, the only week-long, one-game-a-day tournament for club teams. For all other competitions like that, you need to be member of a National Team.
It was a fantastic tournament with 78 teams of all age groups (male & female). Despite our small and very diverse roster, we managed to secure bronze, in an unexpected and outstanding team effort!
The tournament takes place in the Brazilian summer and sports not only indoor handball but also a very well-organized beach handball tournament. The level of play varies quite a bit as most teams do not field their standard roster from the preceding season. A good estimat is that the level of play is about 4th division in Germany, with a variation of one level up or down. Individual players may have a much lower or higher level, though. In total, the level is significantly higher than that of, e.g. US Nationals.
There are more pictures of this and the previous tournaments on [link=http://bjoern.brembs.net/e107_plugins/coppermine_menu/index.php?cat=3]my image gallery[/link].
The first two games were against the later finalists, the home team of Itajaí (9th of the past Brazilian div. 1 season) and the team from Unisuam, Rio de Janeiro (second Brasilian division), each of the teams sporting former and current Brazilian National Team members. Each of the games were 2x20min. Expectedly, we lost to both teams by significant margins. The game against Itajaí ended 21-14 and the one against Unisuam was lost also by 7 goals, 15-8). The final group game against Sao Paulo would decide if we had a shot at the semi-finals or play for 7th place. We beat the physically stronger team by only one goal 19-18 and went on to the cross-over game against Florianópolis (2nd of the other bracket). A young, fast-running team with their strongest player in a junior NT left back. However, the team apparently underestimated us, saving their best player for the anticipated semi-finals until about 10-15 minutes before the end of the game. By that time, we had a firm grip on the game and went to the semi-finals. The game ended 16-12.
The semi-finals were on the same day as the cross-over game and against the number one team from our group, Unisuam, who had beaten Itajaí in the group games. Even rested, we probably wouldn't have a chance against this team and with the cross-over game just 2-3h behind us, the match was no match at all. Notable in this game was a series of dubious referee calls in the last minutes against us, leading to Unisuam intentionally missing all their last shots in rejection of what even they saw as unfair calls in their favor. Unisuam was by far the most sympathetic team, on and off the court, not only because of this demonstration of fair-play!
In the bronze medal game, we faced the second team from Rio de Janeiro. They had won the other bracket and lost to Itajaí by one goal in overtime in the semi-finals – despite being one man short because of work commitment of some of their players! So we were warned that this would be a hard team to beat, even one man down. Their consistent 1.95m backcourt surely was physically impressive!
However, the team seemed to still be tired from th semi-final. After 4 successive post-shots from their backcourt players, only the goalie kept fighting. Past-season's Most Valuable Goalie of Brazil elminated one wing shot after the other from our 17-year-old wing players, even from very good angles. However, in the end, even he resigned and we won the bronze by a safe margin.
[link=/e107_images/newspost_images/itajai06team.jpg][img]http://teamhandballnews.com/e107_images/newspost_images/itajai06team_thumb.jpg[/img][/link]
The successful team. Upper row from left: Diana Pauly (PT), Björn Brembs, Olaf Degen (both VfL Lichtenrade, Germany), Alexander Schmidt and coach Horia Markel (both HSC Bad Neustadt, Germany).
Lower row from the left: Arthur Tenorio Bibeiro Clark, (17-year-old Brazilian player who helped us out), Michael Deller, Florian Kirchner, Florian Demling (all HSC Bad Neustadt, Germany) and Silvio Alvin Soares de Laureano (Sao Caetano, Brazil).
Confidentiality Issues Related to Ongoing Legal Actions
As of this hour, neither party within USATH has released any information on whether they have filed a response to the USOC complaint by the deadline this past Friday, January 6. Neither has the USOC released any information on whether they have received any response. We have received some notes citing confidentiality, possibly explaining the lack of information.
TeamHandballNews.com understands that confidentiality issues may limit full disclosure at this time, but we hope to be informed soon, as a minimum, on the current status of the process. Any Board Member who wishes to inform the USA membership should feel free to post either an informal update in the chatbox/comments sections or to contact us directly.
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