Not the Usual “Look at Us. We’re Growing Handball” Exaggeration

I have a daily Google search feed for “handball” that shows up in my inbox every day and it’s often an eclectic mix of stories. One type of article that regularly shows up is the “Look at us. We’re growing handball in a far flung region of the world.” I generally, read these stories with a few shakers of salt as typically they are about some IHF project that shows up for a couple of days, hands out some balls, runs a clinic and takes a few photos for social media. These are not bad initiatives… It’s just that they are typically trumped up for accomplishing a lot more than they really are.

The past few days there have been several articles from the Cook Islands about a beach handball competition there including an article about two IHF referees and an officiating clinic, the Prime Minister playing and record participation. The usual, “Look at us. We’re growing handball,” articles… except my curiousity was piqued, so I dug a little bit more… and went way down a rabbit hole.

The Cook Islands: Per Capita, Beach Handball’s #1 Nation

What initially triggered my interest was the article on record participation which stated that participation for this year’s event had more than doubled to 444 participants. In case you were wondering… that’s quite a few participants. I’ve been to the largest U.S. Beach Handball competition, the Southern California Beach Handball Championships twice and that seemed like a bigger number. Turns out the Cook Islands competition is, indeed, a little over twice the size of this year’s U.S. competition. The U.S. competition had 18 total teams (12 Men and 6 Women). While the Cook Islands competition had 37 total teams (10 Men, 9 Women, 6 Youth Men, 6 Youth Women, and 6 Masters) Source: Cook Islands Handball FB Page

And, get this: The current estimated population of the Cook Islands is 13,594 so 3.3% of their population has been playing beach handball the past few days. That is a ridiculously high percentage. And, here you thought that the Faroe Islands having 10% of their population in the stands at the European Championships was impressive.

What Exactly is Going on in the South Pacific?

Well, it would appear that some real growth is indeed actually taking place. If you scroll the Cook Islands Handball Facebook page you can get a sense of the competition by checking out the photos and videos. The Cook Islands Games is a multi sport competition which appears to be simlar to state based games in the U.S., but on a much smaller scale because the Cook Islands is a pretty small country. If one looks at the team names they mostly match the different small islands that make up the Cook Islands. Some of these islands have just a few hundred inhabitants so it’s a lot more feasible to field a beach handball team than a regular indoor handball team. And, in Polynesia I’m sure finding a beach to play on is way simpler than a 40×20 Meter indoor court.

Future World Championship Qualification?

Based on a few video clips the competition was spirited, but not at an elite level. That said… if you have that many people playing, some cream is going to rise to the top. And, they had 12 youth teams (6 men and 6 women) participating. Take the best players from each of those teams, give them a little training and there’s surely some potential there for a solid national team. One that could challenge for an Oceania Championship title and qualficiation for the World Championships. In fact, according to this report on 2023 Oceania qualification they did play Australia and New Zealand close last time around.

While a total population of around 14,000 people is not a lot to work with against those two much larger nations the Cook Islands could well be on a path to a Beach Handball World Championship.