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

A lot of opinions have been expressed recently on our website as to how well the new USA Handball Federation (aka USA Team Handball) is performing. As we’ve been without a Federation for a couple of years there clearly is a pent up demand for national support and expectations are high. I’ve been an advocate for more patience, but that doesn’t mean I’ll my expectations are being met. For example, I’d certainly like to see more features on their website and I thought the competition rulebook that was posted on the website wasn’t ready for “prime time.” (By the way, if you thought there were problems with the rulebook, I sure hope you took the time to send in your comments and suggestions.)

I’ve considered a missive about the current state of affairs, but instead I decided that it would be better to first lay out my expectations as to what tasks the Federation should be working on and what timelines are reasonable for completing those tasks. After all, it’s a little unfair to grade performance at the start of the semester, especially if you haven’t fully spelled out what’s expected.

So with that being said here’s what I’d like to see and when:

[b]1) A clear and organized plan for USA club competition. [/b] (Target date: December 1, 2008). Successfully completing this goal would be to have a revamped competition rulebook that has been vetted, by and large, by the USA Handball community. This won’t mean that everybody will like everything in the competition rulebook, but it should mean that all the major clubs in the USA find it acceptable. As a minimum, every club should have a clear understanding as to what they need to do in order to participate in the 2009 National Championship Tournament.

[b]2) Announcement of the 2009 National Championship Tournament (Dates and Location) [/b](Target Date: January 30, 2009). Sooner, of course, would be better, but this should allow enough time for teams to make airfare and lodging reservations.

[b]3) A well organized and successful National Championship Tournament. [/b] There are many elements that go into running a well organized and successful tournament, to include, facilities, the scheduling of games, fan attendance and convenience (lodging and gym location).

[b]4) An improved website with the following content:[/b]
[b]a) A club information page [/b](Target Date: September 19, 2008). This page would include links to websites and Point of Contact information for all clubs in the U.S. You might notice that this target date is only a week away. This, however, should only take a couple of hours and quite frankly it should have been done a month ago.
[b]b) Guidance documentation page[/b] (Target Date: September 19, 2008). Any overarching documentation (e.g. the by-laws submitted in the UTHF bid; competition rulebook) that highlights how the Federation conducts business should be posted on this page.
[b]c) Club Resources page [/b](Target Date: October 17, 2008). A “best practices” section of the website that provides information on how to best organize a new club is needed. This section would include Points of Contact for club development and information on how to request funding grants from either USA Team Handball or the USA Team Handball Foundation.
[b]d) An online store with discounts for members[/b] (Target Date: December 1, 2008). This service would be a welcome addition, especially for new clubs that need to purchase balls and goals.

[b]5) National Board of Directors Fully Identified[/b] (Target Date: November 1, 2008): Another hallmark of the new Federation organizational structure is 7 independent Board of Directors with business skills who would contribute $50,000 each to USA Team Handball. The website currently lists only 2 members, Dieter Esch and his business partner, Brad Krassner. Additionally, the new Federation should make clear how it will identify/select other members of the Board, who are not part of the $50,000 club.

[b]6) First National Board of Directors Meeting[/b] (Target Date: January 5, 2009).

[b]7) Senior Men’s National Team Program Plan [/b](Target Date: March 1, 2009). A well thought out plan on how the U.S. will organize and prepare the Men’s National Team needs to be clearly articulated. Such a plan should clearly identify strategies for player identification and development, training and competition schedules. A key element of this plan will also be a decision on whether to develop players in the U.S. or whether to foster opportunities for players to be placed on European club rosters.

[b]8) Senior Women’s National Team Program Plan[/b] (Target Date: March 1, 2009). As with the Men, a well defined plan is needed. Additionally, if the Women, participate in the PATHF Div 1 Championships later this year a near term interim plan should also be developed.

[b]9) Youth and Junior Team Program Plans [/b](Target Date: March 1, 2009). These plans will need to mesh with the Senior Team Plans. They will also require a substantial amount of thought as the U.S. has very few players in these age categories and limited resources to support their rapid development.

[b]10) Fully Staffed Regions[/b] (Target Date: January 5, 2009). A hallmark of the new Federation organizational structure is their plan to have a dedicated Regional Director and Coach for each of the 5 regions. I would expect that personnel will actually start to be hired and identified in the near future. And I would expect the regional staffs to have a very active and hands on role in helping new clubs to get on their feet and in organizing regional competition.

[b]11) Regional Board or Directors Fully Identified [/b](Target Date: September 1, 2009). As with the National Boards, I would expect Directors to be identified in the coming months. As the Regional staffs have not been identified yet, however, this will take some time. Additionally, it may be challenging to come up with Regional Board Members due to the financial requirements.

[b]12) Interim Over Arching Guidance Documentation [/b](Target Date: September 19, 2008). To the casual observer, the new Federation appears to be currently operating with no formal written by-laws. By-laws were submitted during the certification process, but I suspect that these by-laws are not being followed to the letter. It should be clear to the USA Handball Community what “rules of the road” are being used to guide the new Federation. Simply posting the UTHF Bid by-laws would be a start, along with a general statement of accountability. Right now my assumption (in the absence of a Board of Directors) is that Dieter Esch is calling the shots, but that GM Steve Pastorino has been given a significant amount of latitude to do what he thinks best. This is to be expected in a start-up situation, but that construct should transition as soon as possible to a more formalized structure.

[b]13) Finalized Over Arching Guidance [/b](Target Date: February 2, 2009). Step 1 for the new board should be to approve new bylaws for the Federation. It should be clear to everyone what the roles and responsibilities are for Board Directors, Committee Members and Staff. Additionally, members at all levels should understand how they can influence and participate in the process.

[b]14) Strategic Plan [/b](Target Date: March 20, 2009). The strategic plan would be a top to bottom plan that identifies the goals for USA Team Handball and how it plans to achieves those goals. This is something that should be developed with at large membership input, but may very well also require outside the box thinking.

[b]15) Marketing Plan[/b] (Target Date: January 5, 2008). The new Federation has indicated that they will expend significant resources in this area. I don’t expect for them to provide the members at large a detailed copy of their marketing strategy, but I would like to see regular reports highlighting current ongoing efforts in this area. My metric for success in this area will be successfully getting Handball on TV in the U.S.

[b]16) Fundraising.[/b] This is without a doubt the big kahuna, in that sustained success hinges on creating sufficient income to meet expenses. With the dramatic increase in paid staff (when compared to the previous Federation), as well as plans to field youth and junior teams there’s simply no way for the numbers to add up without significant new funding streams being developed. The metric for success in this area will be an Income side of the balance sheet showing significantly more $ than that of the $300,000 – 500,000 budgets common in the waning years of the previous Federation. I won’t expect the Federation to provide detailed information, but as a non-profit, top level budget numbers should be available for public review. Additionally, it will become readily apparent that there is a cash flow problem if there are staff cutbacks and/or the USA fails to send teams to International competitions.

So, that’s it in a nutshell. Of course, the folks in Salt Lake City don’t take orders from me, so I’m not expecting them to jump all over my metrics. But hey, as soon as I send my $60 in for membership, there’s got to be some degree of accountability. And if my patience wears thin 6 months from now, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

Add NBA basketball star Carmelo Anthony to the growing list of Handball aficionados. In an interview with the Rocky Mountain News, Anthony, a member of the USA Gold medal basketball team, was asked if there was another sport that he thought he could play? Anthony responded:

"I wanna play handball, man. The U.S. needs to get a handball team. I'm pretty sure we can get some guys to go out there and play handball.”

We’ll see if he follows through for 2012. I have my doubts as to whether top of the line basketball players will ever get near a basketball court. https://teamhandballnews.com/news.php?item.557 But, I think Anthony’s new found love for a sport he had never seen before is further proof to my argument that if Handball is shown on TV to new audiences people will watch. https://teamhandballnews.com/news372.html
Rocky Mountain News: 7 Questions for Carmelo Anthony: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/sep/02/melo-now-focused-making-nuggets-golden-too/