There was a plethora of news from the recent Pan American Team Handball Federation Congress held in Brazil. I’ve been busy catching up on all of the EHF Champions League games this past weekend, so I haven’t prioritized time to comment on Pan American activities. (By the by, last weekend was one of the best ever in my opinion with 4 of the 5 key matches coming right down to the wire. My only complaint is the ehfTV www.ehftv.com video stream quality. If they were 1,500 kbs I would be in fat city.)

Fortunately, USA General Manager, Steve Pastorino, had a couple of informative write-ups on the Congress. In his first article http://www.usateamhandball.org/news/index.html?article_id=61 a key paragraph diplomatically mentions some past PATHF shortcomings:

“Some major shortcomings of the past four years were acknowledged as well, such as PATHF’s inconsistency in managing a federation website, disciplinary inequities relative to incidents involving Brazil, Argentina and Canada, as well as the handling of issues of Greenland, Cuba, and Chile related to global competitions. More time will be spent on these topics in the following days.”

Here’s some further explanation of the paragraph’s contents

– inconsistency in managing a federation website: The PATHF website has often been down and only has been sporadically updated

– disciplinary inequities relative to incidents involving Brazil, Argentina and Canada: Brazil and Argentina had a game ending brawl at the PANAM Games which resulted in only minor penalties. Meanwhile Canadian coach Stefan Rusimov was suspended for two years for a spitting incident.

Brazil – Argentina Brawl: https://teamhandballnews.com/news.php?item.360
Canadian Coach incident: https://teamhandballnews.com/news.php?item.533

– as well as the handling of issues of Greenland, Cuba, and Chile related to global competitions:

The PATHF’s handling of Greenland’s membership status was mishandled in a number of ways. First, it could be argued that their PATHF membership should never have been downgraded in the first place. But when their membership was downgraded it was not communicated to Greenland in a timely manner, preventing them from appealing and attempting to qualify for the World PANAM Championships.

Commentary: Why the recent downgrading of Greenland’s membership is wrong: https://teamhandballnews.com/news312.html
Greenland PATHF Membership still unresolved: https://teamhandballnews.com/news.php?item.500

In regards to Cuba and Chile the PATHF apparently mistakenly informed Chile that they would take Cuba’s place at the Men’s 2009 World Championships. https://teamhandballnews.com/news.php?item.614 Cuba, in fact, is still planning on participating.

Regular readers to this site have seen my previous references to Rugby and how I think that in some respects, USA Handball should try to model it’s development after USA Rugby. No analogy works 100%, but again Rugby has shown a path that hopefully USA Handball will one day follow. This example is 23 year old rugby star Takudzwa (Zee) Ngwenya. Originally from Zimbabwe, Ngwenya emigrated to the USA five years ago. In that five years he has gone from playing high school rugby in Plano, Texas, to amateur club rugby in Dallas, to the US National Team. And playing for the US National Team last year he was the bright spot of a 0-4 performance, with his try against South Africa being selected the “try (the rugby equivalent of a touchdown) of the year” by the International Rugby Board. This try, his overall performance, and his raw speed led to a contract to a professional contract with Biarritz in the French Top 14 League. And he’s not an afterthought at Biarritz, one of the top club teams in the world, where he is currently tied for first for most tries in the French League.

An equivalent trajectory in Handball terms would be Chavez HS in Houston, to the Houston Stars, to the US National Team, to HSV Hamburg in the German Bundesliga. The US has had a few Handball players play for European clubs, but usually for lower division clubs. Darrick Heath, who is arguably the most talented USA Handball player ever, followed a similar path to Ngwenya. He first started playing the sport in 1988 and 5 years later his strong performance on a winless USA Team at the 1993 World Championships led to a professional contract in Hungary.

But, while these paths were similar, the huge difference was that Darrick was 28 years old when he signed a contract and Zee today is only 23 years old with his best years still ahead of him. In fact, he’s still very much considered a work in progress as he is still learning the game and adjusting to competing on a weekly basis at the elite level. And the same was true with Darrick, but at the same time he was becoming a more experienced player he was also soon to start a long slow decline in physical athletic ability. I say long and slow, because even at age 43 he can still play– just ask the Canadians who played against him last year for PANAM Games qualification.

The big “what if?” that I’ve often pondered is what if Darrick had started playing Handball at age 17 instead of 23and then signed that first contract at age 22 instead of 28. How phenomenal of a player would he have been and what if the USA had had several other players also starting their professional careers at around age 22?

I’m not alone in this pondering. Some would even take it further to say that we need to find those talents at age 12 or even younger. It’s a tough sell, however, to get young kids excited to play a sport they’ve never seen when other sports with far more exposure and financial resources are also looking for athletes. But there are a few handball programs out there making inroads towards youth development. Houston, Chicago and Atlanta all have had decent youth programs. In fact Darrick Heath has been an integral part in the development of the Atlanta programs.

Starting these programs is clearly a challenge, but Rugby has clearly broken the code somewhat with several high school programs popping up in different parts of the country. A program, Play Rugby USA, has been established to encourage and provide support to schools interested in starting rugby. While USA Rugby still gets the bulk of their players from late starters (players often start playing in college) these youth programs have sprinkled in more seasoned players into those clubs. Instead of every Freshman starting from scratch a good number of them already understand the basics of the game.

While I don’t think we are ever going to see thousands of star athletes in the U.S. put down their basketballs and footballs for handballs when they are in the 12-18 age range, I do think it should be possible to expose thousands of youths to the sport. Maybe some spring time leagues with the carrot of participating on an under-19 Team USA will even draw in some really talented athletes taking a break from their primary sport. Then, if for whatever reason, their basketball, football or some other sport career doesn’t pan out like they thought it would they might immediately consider that Handball game they really excelled at. They’ll join a club and with the basics already down they might quickly develop into a good player.

To sum up, the path to national team success lies in finding the Handball Zee Ngwenya’s out there, exposing them to the sport and convincing them to make handball their chosen specialty. And to be really successful the finding, exposing and convincing will have to start as at young of age as possible.

Wikipedia Article on Takudzwa Ngwenya: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takudzwa_Ngwenya
Video of Ngwenya award winning try: http://rugbydump.blogspot.com/2007/10/takudzwa-ngwenya-smokes-bryan-habana.html
1993 Sports Illustrated profile of Darrick Heath: http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1138385/2/index.htm
Play Rugby USA article: http://www.americanrugbynews.com/artman/publish/Coaching_column/The_Play_Rugby_USA_model.shtml
Article on Wash DC youth Rugby club: http://www.washingtonrugbyclub.org/mainart/youth/hyde_school_rugby.htm
Play USA Rugby website: http://www.playrugbyusa.com/

At first glance it might seem to be a pretty big stretch to think Barack Obama’s recent election victory will have any impact on Team Handball in the United States. In all likelihood, President-Elect Obama probably doesn’t even know the sport exists. https://teamhandballnews.com/news.php?item.483

But a President Obama could play a major role in the single most important event upcoming for USA Team Handball in several years. This event is the IOC Congress next October in Copenhagen at which the 116 members of the IOC will vote to decide which city will host the 2016 Olympics. Should that city be Chicago, USA Team Handball will not only automatically qualify for the Olympics, it would also benefit from multiple marketing and fundraising opportunities.

And Barack Obama could very well be the X factor that puts Chicago over the top of Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Tokyo. Politics is not supposed to play a role in the selection of host city, but it would be foolish not to think that the United States ongoing war in Iraq along with George Bush’s lack of popularity around the world was at least some factor in New York’s non selection in 2005 for the 2012 games.

New York’s non-selection wasn’t a surprise, but London’s victory over Paris was. Many have attributed it to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s schmoozing with IOC members in the 48 hours preceding the vote. With only 116 people to engage with personality and political skills can be vital in swaying a few critical votes your way. Even simple gestures can have an impact. One such gesture was Vladamir Putin’s address in English to the IOC which helped get Sochi selected for the 2014 Winter Games.

No matter what your political leanings are you can’t help but walk away from a Barack Obama address without being impressed by his eloquence and ability to communicate. Nothing against the leaders of Brazil, Japan and Spain, but if Obama shows up in Copenhagen to push for Chicago’s candidacy it will not be a fair fight. The rest of the World is already celebrating his victory and I can already visualize the IOC members posing for pictures with the inspirational Obama.

A lot, of course, can happen in a year and there are other issues such as the USOC’s share of Olympic revenues that might prevent a Chicago Olympics. It’s never over till it’s over, but in my view it’s time to start drawing up the 8 year plan for USA Team Handball.

BBC Sport: “Chicago Olympic Hopes in the Balance”: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/mihirbose/2008/10/chicagos_olympic_hopes_in_the.html
BBC Sport: “London Beats Paris to 2012 Games”: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/front_page/4655555.stm

For the geographically challenged, Tórshavn is the capital of the Faroe Islands, an archipelago north of Scotland which is an independent nation in some respects and part of Denmark in others. In other words, the Faroe Islands (population: 48,000) are to the European Handball Federation what Greenland is to the Pan-American Handball Federation (PATHF). Except in this case the Faroes have little chance of rocking the boat in taking qualification spots for the World Championships from other nations in the much stronger EHF.

Geography aside, the news story here is the EHF’s dramatic change to its qualification format for the Euro 2010 Championship in Vienna. For prior competitions the EHF has used a two tiered format for qualification. On the top tier were the European sides that had qualified for the preceding World Championships and on the bottom tier were everybody else. While the top tier European teams were playing at the World Championships (the preceding January) the remaining teams in the bottom tier would play group round robins to whittle their number down.

For 2008 qualification, 26 nations played in 7 preliminary groups to shrink their number down to 12 teams. Those 12 teams were than combined with the bottom 6 European teams from the World Championship. That pool of 18 teams was then drawn into 9 pairings for 2 game aggregate playoffs. Those 9 winners joined the 5 best European teams from the World Championships, the defending champion and the host nation to fill out the 16 team field. Kind of complicated and much simpler for the top tier teams to qualify.

This time around the format is much simpler. The host (Austria) and the defending champion (Denmark) automatically qualify. Everybody else (36 nations) was drawn into 7 groups where they will play a home and away double round robin. The top 2 nations in each group head to Vienna, while the rest stay home. The games will be played over 10 designated match dates with the first 2 rounds taking place on October 29-30 and November 1-2 . In total there will be 10 rounds with the last matches taking place in the middle of June.

[b]Score one for the little guys[/b]

This change significantly increases the number of qualifying matches for the elite nations and gives smaller nations like the Faroe Islands multiple opportunities to host much larger nations in season long double round robin competition. Yes, Russia, Serbia, Switzerland, Bosnia and Italy will be making the journey to tiny Torshavn. So far, it’s been rough for the Faroes as they lost to Serbia 41-20 in and to Bosnia, 45 -28. Not good, but much better than the 42-11 shellacking Germany put on Bulgaria. Expect to see a lot of scores in that vein, but also expect to see some morale victories like tiny Luxembourg’s 30-21 loss against Olympic Champion’s France. Against a side entirely composed of amateurs, France only led 15-13 at halftime.

But, the key words here are “morale victory”, as the nature of Handball means that it’s virtually impossible for a hopelessly overmatched squad to put together the 60 minutes of Handball necessary to actually win. In soccer, however it’s a different story. The new handball qualification format is nearly identical to the European soccer qualification format and nations like Luxembourg and the Faroe Islands have beaten or tied larger nations. Readers to this website already know that I am not a fan of soccer, but even I can appreciate the novelty of a small nation like the Faroe Islands challenging a big nation. While I lived in France, the Faroes were drawn into a group with France and my curiosity was such that I made a special point of seeing the match. They hung with the French for a little bit by putting all 11 players in the box, but once 1 goal was scored the floodgates opened. With handball you can only put 1 guy in front of the goal, so no such similar strategy is possible.

[b]Why the new format? [/b]

It’s fairly obvious that the new format is attempting to copy the success of the very popular soccer qualification system that has been in place for many years in Europe for both the European and World Championships. These soccer matches are usually sell-outs as soccer is wildly popular and these matches have huge ramifications. Just ask England which failed to qualify for Euro 2008.
In a recent newsletter EHF President Tor Lian replied thusly to a question concerning the format:

“ There had been in depth discussions on this matter for some years and as is the case in any democracy, there were obviously differing opinions on the path we should take. Many countries were asking for more national team activities and top class international matches at home – the success of the national team is important for the growth of any sport. The nations wanted to give their fans a chance to see their national team in action more often, this system allows this. We also had reached a point where we wanted to take the development of the EURO product one step further.”

But, while this rational makes sense, it’s not clear whether the interest in Handball will support the new extended format. Additionally, the clubs at some point will surely speak more forcefully about the additional games and the additional risks to their players. The clubs aren’t entirely happy about major tournaments like the World Championships and the Olympics. How happy are they going to be if a top player has a season ending injury in Torshavn? Already, some of the National sides have sent less than 100% full strength sides due to players choosing to rest nagging injuries rather than risk aggravating injuries. Part of the reason, Luxembourg was able to hang with the French for awhile was that Karabatic and the Gille brothers didn’t play due to injuries. I’m guessing that if Kiel had been scheduled to play Hamburg on Thursday they all would have played.

Also unmentioned, is that this format seems to conflict with all the noise the EHF has made about the need to change the World Championships to a once every 4 year events. Really, if you’re complaining about too many games for elite players, adding an extended qualification format doesn’t make much a whole lot of sense.

For all of these reasons it remains to be seen if the new format will stick and the EHF has indeed emphasized that it as experiment. Based on input from all involved the EHF will assess whether this format will continue in the years to come.

Faroe Islands soccer team: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faroe_Islands_national_football_team
Summary of first and second scores are here: http://www.eurohandball.com/ech/men/2010/round/2/Qualification
EHF-euro website: “Small miracle in Luxembourg”: http://www.ehf-euro.com/aut2010/news/singe-news/article/small-miracle-in-luxembourg.html
Euro 2010 Newsletter with entire EHF President interview on the new format: http://cms.eurohandball.com/ResourceImage.aspx?raid=5773

If you’ve checked out the USA Team Handball website lately, www.usateamhandball.org you’ve undoubtedly noticed more activity of late. After a slow start the new federation is doing a much better job in terms in getting the word out and reporting on handball events in the U.S. I won’t repeat in detail all the news they’ve reported on in the past few weeks, but it includes several stories on new staff hires, the Chicago tournament and the Women’s team plans to participate in the Division 1 Pan American Team Handball Federation (PATHF) tournament in Mexico in November.

The best product to date was the recent first issue of the USA Team Handball Newsletter. The 6 page full color newsletter includes news, photos and a handball tips section. The newsletter can be viewed online at http://usateamhandball.org/tracker/?e=dchandball%40yahoo.com&u=573&s=3&t=url&d=http%3A%2F%2Fusateamhandball.org.ismmedia.com%2FISM3%2Fstd-content/repos/Top/usateamhandballnews1.pdf or you can sign up for email delivery at http://usateamhandball.org/registration/.

The terms “professional athlete” or “professional contract” appear from time to time on this website as well as national federation sites. To the uninitiated, particularly young Americans, being a professional athlete might conjure an image of playing in packed arenas with adoring fans and lucrative contracts. One needs, however, to take a closer look at the definition of professional before jumping to that conclusion.

According to Merriam-Webster a professional is defined as someone who “Participates for gain or livelihood in an activity or field of endeavor often engaged in by amateurs.”

And if you break down this definition, you’ll see that “gain or livelihood” is not quantified. In other words, if someone pays you 1 dollar or buys you lunch to play Handball for them, then by definition you are a professional Handball athlete. In fact, using this definition, almost everyone who has ever played for the USA National team was a professional. Albeit a poorly paid one, but a professional. The same is true, as well, for the British Handball athletes currently training in Denmark. For that matter, every collegiate athlete on scholarship in the U.S. is a professional using the strict definition. Their compensation for playing is the tuition and the room/board provided by the scholarship. The NCAA may claim amateur status, but for the major collegiate sports, in particular, the athletes are really amateur in name only.

A “professional contract” changes the definition and context somewhat. With a contract, a player is clearly getting monetary compensation from a private club and there is no collegiate or national team aspect so the allusion of amateur status is gone entirely. But again being a professional is simply a matter of some compensation being provided, whether it be $1 or $1,000,000. Or in an American context, a minor league class A and a Major League Baseball player are both “professionals” they just have dramatically different salaries.

The same is also true in European Handball Leagues, in that there is different compensation for different levels. But signing a contract for a single A baseball team and a low level handball club are two dramatically different things. Primarily, this is because European sports are not organized differently. First off, the overall structure is more graduated with more divisions (sometimes as many as 7 levels) between the lowest amateur teams and the highest professional teams. Secondly, the European norm is to provide compensation to players at a much lower level of play than one could expect with an American club.

This is one of the reasons why you’ll see many former NCAA basketball players with no real prospect of ever playing in the NBA playing at all levels in Europe. Some are drawing great salaries at the higher levels, decent salaries at middle levels and next to nothing at the lowest levels. And Handball in Europe doesn’t have the cachet that Basketball does, so those salaries/compensation would be even lower by comparison.

I’ve tried to extrapolate the salaries in Europe https://teamhandballnews.com/news333.html
before, but it’s a lot of guesswork due to the lack of information provided. My educated guess is that you don’t have to go very far down in the league structures in the various nations to see levels of compensation drop significantly below the median income for the nation in question. And a little farther down the pecking order, calling yourself a professional athlete, is a real stretch from an American point of view.

But, the point of this diatribe was not to belittle the fact that someone has or is playing professionally in Europe. The fact that some club values a player enough to compensate them in some fashion is a significant statement of that player’s capabilities. The point that I wanted to make instead is that being a professional athlete in Europe is not the same as being a professional athlete in the U.S. Just something to take into context when somebody says they were a professional handball player in the Elbonian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbonia League for 8 years.

HSV Hamburg demolished Red Star Belgrade, 38-22 on Wednesday, but if you were to have walked into the gym in Belgrade at any point during the match, you probably would have thought it was a tight contest. Why? The crowd of 2,200 was singing and chanting non-stop throughout the match.

Hey, normally a coach will tell his team let’s take control of the game early and take the crowd out of the contest. I guess in Belgrade you can take control of the game, but you can never take control of the fans.

EHF Article on Match: http://www.eurohandball.com/article/11842
EHF match video: (Match was played on October 15th): http://www.ehftv.com/

The French Coupe de la Ligue final four will be staged at the American Airlines Arena in Miami from 10-12 April. Outside of the Olympics in 1984 and 1996 this is without question the biggest Handball event to ever take place in the United States. With the exception of the 1997 Men’s World Championships in Japan, it is probably the biggest event ever to take place in a country without a significant Handball fan base. Without question it is the biggest professional club event to take place outside of a club’s home country. I guess what I’m saying with all this hyperbole is that this tournament is a really big deal and the French League and Cristian Zaharia should be commended for the vision and follow through to make it a reality.

But looming on the horizon for American handball fans could be some tough financial choices next spring. Namely, fans will have to ask themselves how many plane tickets and hotel stays can I afford to support my handball hobby? Or in simpler terms, many will have to choose between attending the National Championship Tournament or attending the first professional handball matches every played on U.S. soil. Of course, individuals could choose to do both, but with the stock market dropping like a rock and Miami being on the far Southeastern tip of the USA the cost of doing so will likely be prohibitive for many.

But, there is a simple solution to this dilemma. Namely, the National Championships should be placed in Miami the same weekend. Which Championship though? Collegiate or Club you ask? I say both and heck, why not throw in an invitation for Canadian Clubs to come down south while we’re at it. Let’s not stop there, get the Caribbean nations there and especially the French outposts of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Yes, why don’t we turn 8-12 April, 2009 into the biggest handball festival North America has ever seen.

OK, maybe the festival is asking too much. The USA Federation has also already put a marker out for the club championships to take place on a different weekend (1-3 May). But let’s at least look at putting the collegiate nationals there the same weekend. And let’s also consider staging an elite club tournament the same weekend as a National Championship tuneup. Perhaps, 4 top USA Clubs, 2 Canadian Clubs, and the Guadeloupe and Martinique club champions. Maybe we could have a Canada-USA friendly and play it also at the American Airlines Arena.

Bottom Line: Something should be done to supplement the French Club Final Four—It just makes too much sense.

The EHF has added a weekly show featuring highlights of the past week’s games and interviews. The first edition showed highlights of 8 matches and summarized the results for each group. With English language commentary and at about 20 minutes long it’s a nice lunch time break to catch up on the Champions League.

The featured interview in the first show was with new Kiel head coach, Alfred Gislason. Gislason, an Icelander, formerly coached his country’s National Team and at Gummersbach in the Bundesliga. A little bit of backstory is warranted as the feature pretty much ignored most of the controversy surrounding his hiring.

Some of the things left unsaid include is why would Kiel replace their tremendously successful coach, Noka Serdarusic, in the first place. In 2006-07, Kiel became the first German team to complete a “triple” by winning the EHF Champions League, the Bundesliga Title, and the German Cup. In 2007-08, they had to settle for a double, losing to Ciudad Real in the Final of the Champions League. A disappointment for sure, but hardly justification for a change in leadership. According to reports in Handball-World, the change was made due to personality conflicts between Serdarusic and Kiel General Manager, Uwe Schwenker. When the private conflict between Serdarusic and Schwenker could no longer be covered up, the board of shareholders at Kiel decided unanimously to quit with Serdarusic and keep Schwenker. And on top of the 700,000 Euro transfer fee paid to Gummersbach, Kiel is also still paying Serdarusic’s salary through 2009.

Another point worth mentioning is the relationship between Serdarusic and star player, Nikola Karabatic. Karabatic’s father and Serdarusic are long time friends and Karabatic’s move to Kiel from his native France was largely facilitated by this relationship. Karabatic has obviously adjusted well to the HBL, and willingly signed a long term contract with Kiel through the 2011 season. I wonder, though, if he would have signed the same contract after Serdarusic was unceremoniously let go.

It remains to be seen if Kiel’s coaching change will have an impact on the team. So far, the results look good. Kiel is 7-0-1 and on top of the standings in the HBL and are 2-0-0 in Champions League play.

Handball-World: “The New One: Alfred Gislason will be coaching THW Kiel” http://www.handball-world.com/news-index.php?auswahl=15431&GID=1
EHFTV: www.ehftv.com (The 1st Champions League show is listed under 6 Oct)

Just a short note to indicate that I won’t be duplicating the fine work that the EHF is doing with their new EHFTV.com www.ehftv.com platform for web streaming. This site has all the information you need in regards to games that will be web streamed live. Additionally, the latest press release from the EHF indicates that all the games will now be available on tape delay.

The EHF is to be commended for developing this platform and I particularly appreciate that they are also not posting the final score for time shifters. My only remaining gripe is that they are not offering the matches with a higher bit rate comparable to the German Bundesliga matches available at HBL.TV www.hbl.tv. The video quality of HBL.TV is an order of magnitude better, but then again the HBL.TV stream is not free either.

[b]Note to EHF Marketing: If you were to offer a premium service with a 1,500 kbs (as opposed to the currrent 600 kbs) I will immediately reach for my wallet. And more importantly, I don’t think that I’d be alone![/b]

EHF Press Release: http://www.eurohandball.com/article/11824

The Champions League started yesterday with Portland San Antonio easily taking care of Steaua MFA Bucharest, 38-32, at home in Pamplona, Spain. Portland? San Antonio? Pamplona? Huh? Did the NBA actually create a Handball all-star team out of the Trailblazers and Spurs rosters?

This is probably one of the more common questions an American Handball Fan has as he is introduced to the European club game. I know it’s one that I had. For the record, according to Miguel Garcia, a frequent poster in our forum, the name derives from a school named San Antonio in Pamplona that the original founders of the club attended. Portland is the name of their sponsor, a cement mixing firm, Cementos Portland.

Of course this begs the question, what the heck is a Steaua MFA?

This question and others like the ones below need to be answered:
Is Danish side GOG Svendborg named after the Biblical creature?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gog
Did Pick Szeged get it’s name from their mastery of the “pick and roll” in the early 50’s? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_and_roll
Is Chekovskie Medvedi named after the SS Enterprise Helmsman?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Chekov
Is FCK Handbold A/S missing a vowel and, if so, why are they so angry about Handball?

So, it’s time to go to work Handball Fans. Yes, I’ve created a new Wiki to explain what these club names mean. If you have a clue please fill us in. Simply go to this link, click on “Edit this Page” and start typing. When finished, we’ll add it to the FAQ.

Handball Club Names Wiki: http://teamhandball.wikispaces.com/Club+Names

The Olympic Games have a global reach to the far corners of the globe. As proof of that reach, a recent article from the Otago Daily Times highlights the sport's recent growth in New Zealand: http://www.odt.co.nz/sport/other-sport/24605/handball-sport-starting-gain-handhold

And for those who may wonder if national infighting over Handball development is a peculiar oddity limited to the USA will be amused to know that tiny New Zealand has competing federations. The official Federation recognized by the IHF is Handball New Zealand while the New Zealand Handball Federation also seeks to develop the sport.

Handball New Zealand: http://handballnewzealand.com/
New Zealand Handball Federation: http://www.handball.net.nz/cms/

Well, I’ve read where Hakeem Olajuwon has credited Handball and Soccer http://sports.jrank.org/pages/3499/Olajuwon-Hakeem-From-Handball-Basketball.html with improving his basketball skills, but never have I seen credit going the other way. An article on Coventry City soccer club player and Icelandic native Aron Gunnarsson, however, highlights the benefits for throw-ins.

Handball is the reason for the long throws, says Aron Gunnarsson: http://www.coventrycitybanter.co.uk/2008/09/handball-is-the-reason-for-the.html

No mention as to whether he is related to Robert Gunnarsson who plays on their National Handball team and for Gummersbach in Germany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B3bert_Gunnarsson He’s also not the first Icelandic native to shun Handball for another sport. In case you didn’t know, Iceland’s only native son to ever sign an NBA contract, Jon Steffansson, is the little brother of Handball great Olafur Stefansson. Perhaps if Jon had followed older brother Olafur, Iceland would have a little more depth at backcourt.

Jon Steffansson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3n_Arn%C3%B3r_Stef%C3%A1nsson
Olafur Steffanson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olafur_Stefansson