[color=#0000ff]Part V:[/color]

Afternoon delight.

FAATTHM (Friday afternoon after the town hall meeting) resumed.

All eyes were on the Elite matchups as Fridays have been known to make or break teams. Today wasn't any different.

But first the Women's Division saw Carolina held on for dear life against a very exhuberant Condor team and a fan favorite. On court 2, Rock surprised the Smurfs and walked away with a well deserved tie. Knight Air and the Condors joined both West Point teams in the winner's circle in the Mens D1.

In the Men's Elite Division, Utah fell to Chicago, in a very close game, and the Firehawks (0-2) followed suit against Carolina. A very powerful Miami Sharks team won convincingly against the Freeze (0-2). The Stars could not avoid their second consecutive 0 for Friday in as many years, falling to LATH in a game of missed opportunities. Two hours later Salt Lake (0-2) joined the Stars, Freeze and Firehawks in the losers bracket after losing their nightcap against NYAC.

The game of the day featured the Sharks and the Condors. Miami dominated the game from start to finish. In what can only be described as the most dominating performances by a goalie in recent Nationals history, Sharks' goalie Zael Chappotin shut out the Condors for the first 18 fminutes. Halftime score: 11-1 Miami, with the lone Condor goal coming while Zael was serving a tacky 2 minute suspension. Whatever works, righ?
Despite Darrick Heath's on court presence, the Condors [i]looked[/i] overmatched in the second half as well. Zaharia's men, led by the fearsome trio of Mark Ortega, Muris Lucarevic and the very [i]delightful[/i] Odael Marcos Puertas, kept on the pressure and were simply too much for the former champions. 21:11 final.

My attempt at getting creative with the final results and standings of the 2006 US Nationals got me in a bit of trouble. My memory DID NOT serve me well, hence whatever information I had initially posted was out of whack. The easiest way to rectify the situation was to post [link=/docs/Nat2006.xls]the official final stats and standings spreadsheet[/link] courtesy of Robert Sewell. I shall follow up with a few thoughts and podcasts from this past Houston weekend. Stay tuned.

In an interview with the Pennsylvania based Clarion News, USA Women’s National Team Member, Lauren Walters indicated that she felt that the team does not have the support of the town and community (Cortland) and that they are looking to move the Women’s program to a bigger city or an Olympic Training Center.

The text of the full interview is available here: http://www2.theclarionnews.com/Sports/52694.shtml

The USA Women’s National Team qualified for the Quebec League playoffs by defeating Laval twice last weekend. The full write-up is here: www.usateamhandballwomen.com

North East Team Handball Conference (NETHC) Club NJ-Adelphi is featured in this article on Team Handball.

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-2/114343829518140.xml&coll=1

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=https://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]

The latest Top 5 Poll results are in:

Key: Club; First place votes, overall record, conference record, Last poll
1. Atlanta Team Handball (2) 11-1-2 [7-0-1] -2nd
2. New York City (1) 10-0-3 [10-0-3] -3rd
3. Atlanta Metro Condors (1) 12-0-2 [6-0-2] -1st
4. Cal Heat 6-0-0 [6-0-0] -4th
5. NJ-Adelphi 10-0-2 [10-0-2] -Not Ranked

Dropped out: Garden City
Others Receiving Votes: LA Team Handball

The esteemed panel of voters consists of Andrew Washington, Christian Latulippe, Bogdan Pasat, and Karl Laundy.

The last 2 weekends saw the previous top 3 (Atlanta Metro Condors, Atlanta Team Handball, and New York City) all go down in defeat. Atlanta Team Handball’s victory over the Condors impressed the voters enough for them to move into first place, despite their upset loss to Benedict College. New York City moved up one spot to second and the Condors slipped to 3rd place. Undefeated Cal Heat moved up one notch to 4th place and NJ-Adelphi moved into the Top 5 for the first time.

Incidentally, it has been brought to our attention that NJ-Adelphi’s roster includes several players who will likely play for Garden City in other events like the Carolina Cup. For the purposes of the poll we have decided to consider each team based on the record that team has and the name that team decides to call itself. Not a perfect solution, but one that we will use for consistency sake.

This file contains the composite records of the teams that were considered.
[link=https://teamhandballnews.com/docs/USA_Club_Records_9 Feb_2006.xls]file[/link]
If you feel that this information is inaccurate, please let us know.

Cal Heat stayed undefeated in WTHC action, sweeping their 3 matches. LA THC, took 2 of 3 to move into 2nd place in the overall standings. Detailed results and statistics will be available soon on the official WTHC website: http://www.wthc.thsantaclarita.com/

Saturday, 4 February
Cal Heat – Santa Clarita 31 : 25
SLW – LATH 25 : 27
LATH – Santa Clarita 34 : 26
SLW – Cal Heat 22 : 27

Sunday, 5 February
LATH – Cal Heat 15 : 26
SLW – Santa Clarita 40 : 28

The big showdown last weekend saw #2 ranked Atlanta Team Handball (ATH) beat the #1 ranked Atlanta Metro Condors 38-31. ATH then promptly lost to upstart Benedict College 29-28 in a match decided by a penalty shoot-out. Going in to the final weekend the current standings are:.

Team Wins Loses Goal +/-
Atlanta Team Handball 7-1 +72
Benedict College 5-1 +56
Atlanta Metro Condors 6-2 +78
Georgia State 1-7 -103

Matt Van Houten, the Athlete’s Advisory Council Representative, has informed us that it was his understanding that only Matt, Jim Thome, Jan O'Shea and Theresa Eckstrom had submitted written replies to the complaint filed by the USOC. Additionally, he indicated that there is a telephonic hearing scheduled for 2:00 p.m. MST on Tuesday, 24 January, in connection with the decertification process. As of Friday afternoon, the only individuals who had notified the USOC that they were going to participate in the hearing were Matt, Jim Thome, Jan O'Shea, Theresa Eckstrom and Peter Siskind.

Furthermore, Matt indicated that he had stressed to the appropriate individuals at the USOC that USA Team Handball has several urgent issues that need immediate attention: specifically the Men’s PANAM Championships in Brazil (10-16 April), the Women’s National Team program, Club Nationals and College Nationals. The feedback that he has received it that the USOC’s first priority is making sure that the team handball athletes, both national team members and the general athlete population, do not miss out on the upcoming opportunities to compete.

He is hopeful that we will soon learn what the “plan” for Team Handball in 2006 is and that we he would give us an update following the meeting on Tuesday.

The first round of games for this new conference took place this past weekend in Fremont, California. Cal Heat dominated the competition, winning all 3 of their matches. The remaining teams, LA THC, Salt Lake Warriors, and Santa Clarita each posted 1 win and 2 losses. More detail on the matches will be available soon at the Offical WTHC website: http://www.wthc.thsantaclarita.com/

This short article is unique in that Team Handball is in the title. Previous news reports have only mentioned Team Handball after first discussing the USA Volleyball decertification complaint.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/summer/2006-01-09-handball_x.htm

Also, still no word as to whether any Board Member responded to the USOC Complaint.

A short Associated Press (AP) story briefly highlights the ongoing decertification process. As it is an AP wire it probably will be making its way into several newspapers.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OLY_USOC_VOLLEYBALL_COMPLAINT?SITE=WFSB&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Additionally, Mike Hurdle has informed us that he did not send a response to the USOC complaint. We have still not heard as to whether any other Board Member responded or not.