(Carolina celebrates their victory over Treasure Coast: Link)
This past weekend the University of North Carolina (UNC) hosted it’s annual Carolina Blue Cup. The UNC alumni team, Carolina Blue, took the title with a 26-23 victory over Army’s 1st team, West Point- Black. Aaron Hamm had 8 goals for Carolina Blue and Owen Rodgers scored 6 for Army.
In the 3rd place match UNC’s 1st team, Carolina, defeated Army’s 2nd team, 26-23. The full results for the tournament are at the bottom of this post.
Treasure Coast Debut
But, perhaps the most interesting aspect of this annual tournament was the debut of a Men’s National Devolopment Team which was referred to as “Treasure Coast”. For the unitiated, the Treasure Coast is the regional name for the coastal area north of Ft Lauderdale, including the town of Fort Pierce, where Westwood Academy High School will serve as a training center for developing handball athletes. A handful of athletes are already currently training there and more may be identified at a tryout being held there this weekend. If you follow the USA Men’s National Handball Team social media pages (Instagram Facebook) you likely have seen some videos talking about the training taking place.
The team had a humbling debut against a field of 8 collegiate clubs and 4 at-large clubs. In Group play they narrowly defeated Air Force, 31-30 and easily defeated SUNY Cortland, 33-12, to win their Group. However in knockout play they lost to Carolina, 33-34 in the quarter finals and then tied a relatively new club team with just 9 players, Charlotte Flight, 32-32. Overall, they finished 7th in the field of 12 teams.
Video of the matches vs Air Force and Charlotte can be seen here:
Treasure Coast Roster (A Mix of Newcomers and Collegiate Veterans)
The Treasure Coast roster featured a lot of inexperienced newcomers to handball, but also included a core group that was actually more experienced than most of the teams participating in the tournament. In particular, I think the 3 West Point grads (Considine, Miller and Phillips) were each Collegiate National Championship MVPs. Pitt’s Greenstein spent the Fall semester in the Netherlands playing with a club team and Liden was on the Jr National Team. The rest of the roster included a few athletes with limited club handball experience and several who’ve only been playing a couple weeks. It’s a mixed group, but several have NCAA D1 experience in Football, Baseball or soccer.
Commentary: Closing the Gap to Collegiate Clubs and on to the National Team Level… not as Easy or Quick as one Might Think or Want it to be
Earlier this week, the Carolina Collegiate team buzzed me in the comments section of this post wondering why their upset over Treasure Coast didn’t merit a post. Here’s one such comment:
The Freshman in question is Nate Wolfe. He’s a lefty and has only been playing handball since September. Similarily, Jack Tierney, a junior at AF sliced and diced the Treasure Coast defense for 14 goals in their narrow defeat.
Without a doubt, it’s bad optics for a USA Team Handball National Development Team to lose or just narrowly defeat a collegiate club. This past week the USA Men’s National Team social media channels featured plenty of weight training posts… but, none on its debut in competition. Yeah, I’m guessing the social media channels would have looked a little different if Treasure Coast had won the tournament.
And, having seen the team’s participating and some of the team rosters on USA Team Handball’s Sport 80 platform before the tournament, I figured Treasure Coast had a good chance of taking the title. They had enough quality experienced players and were facing relatively low level clubs. It didn’t work out that way and I think the team’s lack of playing together was a significant factor. And, for sure, the newcomers, despite some strong athletic backgrounds still have a long way to go. Yes, college club athletes who have only been playing a year or two have a significant experience advantage even against D1 athletes. These newcomers will close the gap and eventually have no problem against lower level USA clubs, but, as was demonstrated this past weekend, it will take longer than one might think.
There are multiple reasons why it will take awhile.
- A raw talent gap… but not so wide: First, some of these collegiate teams have athletes that aren’t much of a step down in raw talent from their D1 counterparts. On average, solid collegiate clubs like West Point, Carolina and Air Force have at least 1 or 2 such athletes on their team.
- Experience: If the raw talent gap is manageable, handball experience will trump that superior raw talent
- Learning to play handball takes time. Even to learn the basics to play competently against lower level teams it takes a while. And, then to learn the fine points of the game it takes even longer. Finally, to master those fine points… we’re talking years.
And, if you are now thinking, “Hmmm, I wonder then how long it will take newcomers to close the gap with the athletes on our current Men’s National Team?” The best team we’ve had since the mid 1980s… Well, then you are asking the right question.
And, if you know the answer to that question it then leads you to a basic conclusion, which can best be summed up as… What in the hell does USA Team Handball think it’s doing in Fort Pierce, Florida?
Blue Cup Tournament Results
- Group A
- Carolina 29 – 13 Georgia
- Carolina 21 – 21 West Point Gold
- West Point Gold 40 – 10 Georgia
- Group B
- Treasure Coast 31 – 30 Air Force
- Treasure Coast 33 – 12 SUNY Cortland
- Air Force 31 -15 SUNY Cortland
- Group C
- Carolina Blue 33 – 13 Virginia
- Charlotte Flight 22 – 16 Virginia
- Carolina Blue – Charlotte Flight
- Group D
- West Point Black 32 – 12 Tar Heels
- West Point Black 23 – 22 NYAC
- NYAC 23 – 9 Tar Heels
- Quarterfinals
- Carolina Blue 27 – NYAC 26
- West Point Gold 32 – 29 Charlotte Flight
- Treasure Coast 33 – 34 Carolina
- West Point Black 41 – 29 Air Force
- Semifinals
- West Point Black 43 – 28 West Point Gold
- Carolina Blue 23 – 18 Carolina
- Finals
- 3rd: Carolina 26 – 23 West Point Gold
- 1st: Carolina Blue 24 – 23 West Point Black
- 9-12 Semifinals
- Tar Heels 23 – 22 SUNY Cortland
- Georgia 32 – 30 Virginia
- 9-12 Placing
- 11th: Virginia 28 – 24 SUNY Cortland
- 9th: Tar Heels 24 – 23 Georgia
- 5-8 Consolation
- NYAC 30 – 28 Air Force
- Treasure Coast 32 – 32 Charlotte Flight