Well, the USOC asked for sport development ideas and suggestions, so I took advantage of the opportunity. Here’s a summary of my suggestions:

– Establish an informal or formal partnership with the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, Ireland and India Handball Federations:
— Develop an English-language marketing strategy to make television available to those countries.
— Partner with the English speaking nations to develop a European based sports academy/club.
– Establish a new competition as a bridge between club and national team play:
– Create an All-American Collegiate Team:
– Sell DVD copies of US matches:

More detail is provided in the extended post

[b]Establish an informal or formal partnership with the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, Ireland and India Handball Federations[/b]: These nations have many common traits when it comes to Handball. Namely, they have developing programs that are not competitive and they speak English. Additionally, these nations and the US have demographics that present tremendous growth opportunities for Team Handball. Alone these nations may have difficulty in engaging with the EHF and IHF to further develop the sport in their country. Combined as one unified voice they could, however, have a greater impact. Areas that they should work together to commonly address:

– Develop an English-language marketing strategy to make television available to those countries. If video rights are waved for those nations and quality English language production can be made available at nominal cost, these markets would be ripe for increased exposure and growth. Such a strategy should be done in conjunction with the EHF and IHF and involve a concerted effort to get Handball on television. Additionally, someone with marketing expertise from one of the major US sports should be hired to effectively execute this strategy. The USOC alone could not do this, but the nations identified above, along with the EHF and IHF could.
– Partner with the English speaking nations to develop a European based sports academy/club. As the British Handball Association is already establishing a partnership with 2 Danish Sports Academies, I see no reason why such a partnership couldn’t be broadened to include athletes from all of the above nations. Subject to available funding, a limited number of athletes with significant potential should be sent to those Academies. The overall common costs could then be shared by the member nations pooling their resources together.

[b]Establish a new competition as a bridge between club and national team play: [/b] The gap in terms of the level of play between USA club competition and international competition is huge. To help bridge this gap a new competition, similar to the discontinued US Olympic Festival should be established. Club players with the potential to eventually play on the US National Team would be selected to play on regional teams. Teams would practice for one week and then play games for another week. This could be either strictly an American competition or structured as a combined Canadian/American competition, similar to what was developed by USA and Canadian Rugby with support from the International Rugby Board:
Official Site http://www.narugby.com/news.html
Wikipedia short descriptionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_America_4

[b]Create an All-American Collegiate Team: [/b] Similar to USA Rugby’s All-Americans a college all-star team could be established. This team would train together for a week to 10 days and then travel to Europe for 2 weeks of matches. Ideally, this would be fully funded, but if this is not feasible players would be notified that a portion of the trip would be self-funded. Such a team would provide a realistic goal for college handball athletes and serve as a stepping stone between club and national team play. http://www.usarugby.org/natteams/caa/index.html

[b]Sell DVD copies of US matches: [/b] While there is not a huge market for these DVDs, making these DVDs available for purchase will allow fans to feel more connected to the National Team programs. A simple way to set-up distribution would be to give the rights to sell to a youth program such as the CODP in Atlanta. They could then take responsibility for making copies of the DVD and shipping to interested parties. A nominal fee (perhaps $4) could be charged and proceeds could go to the youth program.

Within the past year there have been a number of lopsided scores in International Team Handball competitions. The English Men’s Junior team got pasted 67-3 https://teamhandballnews.com/news.php?item.71 by Sweden and the Canadian Men’s and Women’s Teams were blitzed by Brazil and Argentina just this past week at the PATHF Junior Championships. https://teamhandballnews.com/news.php?item.141
Such lopsided matches are nothing new and certainly are not restricted to Junior Teams. The Australian Senior Women’s and Men’s programs took a beating at the last World Championships (57-9: Women vs Hungary; 49-16: Men vs Sweden) And just to make sure that no one thinks that I’m neglecting to mention any US embarrassments I will point out a few scores from at the 2001 Men’s World Championships. (41-12 vs Croatia; 45-18 vs Spain) And on an even more personal note, when I played at the 1993 World Championships we played and lost all 6 of our matches by an average of 15 goals.

So, the question that is often asked is, “What’s the point of these massacres?” And the summary judgment is usually along the lines of, “These pathetic teams have no business even being on the same floor as the best in the world.” Or “Too bad, I’m not an American. If I were I could be playing in the World Championships.” Beyond the negative rhetoric, here’s the standard for and against arguments that I have heard:

Arguments against playing these matches:
– The inexperienced team is going to injure the experienced players with some risky play
– The games are not entertaining for spectators
– The difference in skill level is so great that the inexperienced team is going to learn nothing from these encounters

Arguments for playing these matches:
– The inexperienced team is going to learn how to better play the game (i.e. seeing somebody execute a perfect swim move and drop-off pass to the circle is one thing, having it done 1 on 1 against you at full speed is another thing entirely)
– The inexperienced team is going to find out exactly how far behind the more skilled teams they are by virtue of the final score. And they are going to see if they are improving or getting worse from year to year.
– These matches are inclusive in that they make a World Championship something more than a European Championship (with a few extras, like South Korea and Tunisia)

Well, as you can probably tell by how I’ve framed these arguments, I am definitely in the “For Playing” camp. In particular, I think I can build a case against each of the “Against playing” arguments. While they are legitimate arguments they can and are being mitigated.
– Inexperience play leading to injury: A definite concern but this can easily be rectified by a minimal amount of coaching to teach players that they can’t do dangerous things like grabbing a shooting arm from behind. Good players will still risk injury, but every time a player steps on the court they risk injury. Additionally, a game against a weak opponent is often one that won’t count in the standings and allows some top players to not play or see only limited action.
– Games not entertaining: There’s no way around this fact. I know I prefer to see two evenly matched top caliber teams. However, the IHF has done a good job of scheduling and seeding World Championship matches. Yes, there will be some non-entertaining matches, but usually those matches are paired with a good match in a double-header format.
– Difference in skill level is too great: When I played at the World Championships, we took a beating in almost every match. There were, however, stretches when we held our own against the top teams, including only being down by 4 at halftime against Sweden in front of their home crowd. The difference was huge, but we were close enough athletic wise to learn a lot from the experience. But what about teams that are getting blitzed by 40, 50, even 60 goals? Can those players really learn anything from that sort of experience? The answer is still yes, but I would agree that there are diminishing returns as the difference in the teams becomes more pronounced. Still, despite total annihilation, you can’t help but learn something and I bet if you were to ask almost any player who has experienced such a defeat whether they gained anything you are going to get a positive response.

In fact, if the raw athletic ability is there it’s only a matter of time and experience until those teams can close the gap. A case in point is the Swedish women’s hockey team upset of the highly favored USA Women’s team at the Torino Olympics. https://teamhandballnews.com/news.php?extend.32 The Swedish players and coaches made the point repeatedly that they never would have been able to improve without the Canadians and Americans being willing to play them when they were not a competitive team. If some of the less experienced teams can keep their teams together long enough (and add some European club experiences for their top players) you’ll eventually see the same thing happen in Handball. Of course, one could argue that it’s already happened in the case of the Tunisia Men and Brazilian Women. The jury is still out and we will see what happens in 2007

The USA is not participating in any of the four ongoing PATHF Junior and Youth competitions. The rhetorical question is, “Why not?”

Well, with the USOC‘s decertification of USA Team Handball, there isn’t a functioning National Governing Body (NGB) to organize and send teams to this competition. The USOC could theoretically field teams, but this would be extremely challenging with the current state of affairs. I know that the US has sent teams to Junior competitions in the past and hopefully they will be able to participate in future events.

Participating in these age based championships, however, is challenging for the US for a number of reasons.

The most glaring reason, of course, is the relatively late age that players have traditionally picked up the sport in the US. For many, myself included, the first exposure to the sport was in college after their career playing one or more of the traditional American sports has ended. If an athlete is only beginning the sport at age 19 it is unrealistic to expect that he will be competitive against athletes that have been playing the sport for years. There are and have been some youth programs in the United States, (notably the Rock Handball program http://www.rockteamhandball.org/ and the Community Olympic Development Program in Atlanta http://www.communityteamhandball.com/ ) but this is still a pretty thin talent pool to work with.

Another challenge for US teams is the scheduling of the Pan Am Championships. Often this tournament has taken place while schools are in session. As the tournaments are currently ongoing it might not have interfered with some school schedules, but it would have interfered with classes at West Point and the Air Force Academy- two programs that have contributed several players to previous championships.

Finally, there is the issue of cost. Funding a trip down to South America isn’t cheap. With limited resources sometimes choices have to be made concerning which tournaments and programs will be supported. It would be nice if there was enough money to fund everything, but unfortunately that is not the current state of affairs.

Participating in Youth and Junior competitions should become an integral part of the US program as these players could then become the core of the Senior Programs. Additionally, if talented athletes were to participate in these World Championships they could also parlay strong individual performances into contracts with European Clubs. The American athletes playing overseas could then become the stars that US teams could be built around (like Bruno Souza for Brazil and Eric Gull for Argentina).