If Championship Boxing can have multiple titles for multiple fighters than why not Handball?

As reported earlier, the current or former (take your pick) President of the USATH, Mike Hurdle, has already announced a National Championship in Georgia to take place in May over Memorial Day weekend. The USOC has now announced that they will be hosting an Open Championship in Houston at the end of April. So this begs the question, which one is the real championship? But perhaps, the better question is, does it really matter?

After Mike Hurdle informed us of the USATH Championships, I started a running email dialogue on the topic with him. In particular, I questioned the format of the tournament (over 5 days), the timing (Memorial Day Weekend) and the location (Georgia). Basically, my points were that this was too significant of a time commitment over a major holiday and that the announcement’s flavour was a little too parochial in my book.

Mike’s response was that the intent was to move beyond the “Beer Hall Nationals” mentality and to have a higher quality, elite level tournament in which the teams will have an opportunity to rest. Additionally, he emphasized that the focus is on the Junior Divisions and he anticipates a lot of youth participation from the local area- hence the Georgian flavour of the announcement. Mike also pointed out that the Condors would probably even send a team to the “Beer Hall Nationals” that the USOC is subsidizing.

Well, my own personal perspective, is that it sounds like Mike Hurdle is setting up a nice tournament in Georgia and he should be strongly commended for the Junior Division focus. I also like the format over what has been traditionally done at US Nationals in the past. I would be hard pressed to make that kind of time commitment now, but if I was a younger, more dedicated athlete that’s the tournament I would go to if I thought it was going to be well attended. Which is the crux of the matter. The US, unfortunately, is probably not quite ready for a format like this. Maybe next year, but not this year as tumultuous as it has been. I expect that this USATH Tournament will be “National” in name only. Teams will have a choice on what to do. Some might even go to both, but I’d expect that most teams will vote for the smaller time commitment, smaller dollar expenditure and the traditional format.

So to answer my rhetorical questions… The real National Championship will be the one with the best National representation. And does it matter? No, not really.

Well, normally when I talk about March Madness it’s related to the USA’s NCAA Basketball Tournament. It’s always been my favourite sports time of year and there’s nothing quite like the magic of several games taking place at the same time with the inevitable buzzer beaters and upsets. Last Saturday, however, courtesy of the EHF, it was March Madness: Team Handball style.

First up was Kiel-Flensburg. Some prognosticators had predicted a dull game with the likelihood of Kiel beating Flensburg in Flensburg by 5 goals as highly unlikely. Those prognosticators were dead wrong, as the aggregate winner was in doubt until the very final seconds as Kiel almost pulled out a miracle. Due to a higher number of away goals, Kiel only required to win by 4 and with less than a minute to go they had closed the gap to 3. Some tough defense and a disoriented final attack/controversial non called foul sealed the deal for Flensburg and a trip to the semifinals. Flensburg fans, perhaps having feared a repeat of last year’s nightmare against Montpellier http://teamhandball.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_teamhandball_archive.html, can now breathe a sigh of relief.

The second match between Spanish rivals Barcelona and Portland San Antonio also was a see-saw affair with Portland-San Antonio and Ivan Balic holding on to win on aggregate. Living in France, I also had the opportunity to see my favourite team http://teamhandball.blogspot.com/2005/10/top-10-reasons-why-i-love-to-hate.html , Montpellier fall to Veszprem (Hungary). (Yes, I was watching 2 matches at the same time, just like a sports bar back home!) Montpellier kept it interesting until the final minutes, but the 2 goal aggregate lead simply wasn’t enough. Tunisian National Team player Wissem Hmam certainly has a gun of an arm, but he is perplexingly inconsistent. Montpellier clearly misses having Karabatic in the backcourt.

Side note: The good news about Montpellier losing is that it probably means the EHF will be able to show both semifinal matches live on the internet. Just a guess, but I would bet that Sports Plus would not allow games to be broadcast over the internet. When France played in the semifinals and finals at the European Championship Sports Plus offered to sell the broadcast rights to the over air French stations for 400,000 Euros. The over air stations balked at the price resulting in outrage from Handball fans that an Ireland-Wales rugby match was broadcast instead. Adding even more salt on the wounds was the first ever live over air broadcast of the American Football Super Bowl early the next morning. With 2 Spanish clubs, a German club, and a Hungarian Club internet broadcast is more likely. The first leg of the semifinals is 25-26 March and the second leg is 1-2 April, which is the same weekend as the final four NCAA tourney. Nothing like a double shot of March Madness!

You can read more about the matches at the EHF Champions League website:
http://championsleague.eurohandball.com/index.asp