Team Handball

The Team Handball Blog has Moved

2006-06-21T10:14:00.000+02:00

I am now posting blog entries at the Team Handball News website: www.teamhandballnews.com

My blog entries can be directly accessed at http://www.teamhandballnews.com/news.php?cat.8

This site will be kept online as an archive until old entries can be moved to the new site. Additionally, I will also use this blogger site if we have an extended outage with the teamhandballnews site.

USA Women’s National Team European Tour

2006-06-02T09:37:00.000+02:00

The USA Women’s Team is in the midst of their 3 week European tour. They will be playing club teams in France, Germany, and the Netherlands. I saw 2 of their 3 matches in a local tournament in Issy-le-Moulineaux, just outside of Paris. They defeated an England based team 24-22, lost to Israel, and lost to Paris Select team 25-21.

I've posted a short 4 minute interview that I had with Coach Christian Latulippe at the handballusa Yahoo Group: http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/handballusa/files/

More information is also available at the Women's Team's sites:
Press Release: http://www.usateamhandballwomen.com/News/May23_06.html
European Trip Blog: http://wnteuropetour2006.blogspot.com/

US Team Prepares for Men’s Pan American Championships

2006-06-02T09:35:00.001+02:00

Preparation for the Men’s Pan American Championships (MPAC) in Aracaju, Brazil is in full swing for the US Men’s National Team. They recently completed a week of training at the Lakeshore USOC Training Center in Birmingham, Alabama and are now traveling to Brazil for additional training and 2 friendly matches (2 June vs a Brazilian club team and 4 June vs Greenland)

I’ve had some email contact with Asst Coach Chris Cappelmann and he felt that they had had several good practices under the tutelage of new Head Coach Isidoro Martinez. Cap indicated that he felt that if the US can stay healthy and continue to gel as a team they should have a good chance to finish in the top 3 and earn a World Championship berth for Germany 2007. Cap also noted that he very much regretted having to resign from his Asst Coach position due to work commitments as a result of staffing shortages with the Atlanta Fire Department. Dennis Berkholz will be assisting Coach Martinez in Brazil.

The US Team opens pool play against Mexico on 6 June at 1800 Local, 1700 EST.

TEAM ROSTER

David Thompson- Condors

Gary Hines- Condors

Tom Fitzgerald- NYAC (Garden City)

Danny Caparelli- NYAC (Garden City)

Divine Jackson- NYAC (Garden City)

Milan Ciric- NYAC (Garden City)

Mike Hinson- Los Angeles THC

Ryan Hansell- Atlanta Team Handball

John Kelly- Atlanta Team Handball

Troy Steffen- Atlanta Team Handball

Jeff Goss- Atlanta Team Handball

Patrick Oliver- Atlanta Team Handball

Gill Bozeman- Atlanta Team Handball

Mark Ortega- Miami Sharks

Muris Lacarivic- Miami Sharks

Note: The following players were originally on the team, but aren’t making the trip for the reasons indicated

Matt Van Houten (Retired)

Bobby Dunn (Work Commitment)

Radji Mateen (Work Commitment)

Joe Lamour (Injury)

Levi Henderson (Work Commitment)

Guadalajara, Mexico to Host 2011 Pan American Games

2006-06-02T09:35:00.000+02:00

Guadalajara, Mexico, was unanimously selected by delegates of the Pan American Sports Organization (PASO) to host the 2011 Pan American Games. As the only city to officially bid, Guadalajara’s selection was virtually guaranteed. San Antonio, Texas, which bid in 2007 had considered bidding, but declined to do so for 2011. While the Pan Am Games is a minor event for many sports, it is a very important for Team Handball as the Gold Medal winner secures the one guaranteed Pan American slot for the Olympics. The 2007 Pan Am Games will be in Rio de Janeiro and this home court advantage, plus Brazil’s recent on-court performances suggest that both their Women’s and Men’s team will be strongly favored to win. Projecting out 5 years is tougher to predict, but suffice to say Mexico will be a more neutral location and taking the Gold in 2011 should be a more wide open competition.

Australia Secures Oceania Ticket for 2007 Men’s World Championships

2006-06-02T09:34:00.000+02:00

As expected, Australia has qualified for the 2007 Men’s World Championships by easily defeating both New Zealand (41-14) and the Cook Islands (63-5) in round robin competition in Dural, Australia (near Sidney). http://handballpacificcup.com/results.htm

Stay tuned. We hope to soon have a podcast interview with the Australian Handball Federation reviewing the results of the Pacific Cup and Australia’s prospects for the World Championships.

The Team Handball Blog Has Moved

2006-01-03T11:47:00.000+01:00

Website and Podcast in Development

2005-12-20T17:14:00.000+01:00

A short note to let everyone know that I am working with Bjoern Brembs and Bogdan Pasat to develop a new website for Team Handball information. The newest element to this website will be the addition of a podcast to interactively discuss different issues.

As you might expect, the current issues related to the new USA By-Laws (Constitution) and Board of Director’s vote to remove President Hurdle will be a prominent topic for the first podcast. Last night I had an interview with Matt Van Houten (the Athlete Advisory Council Board Member) and I look forward to having an interview with Mike Hurdle (the current or former President- take your pick) later this week.

Producing a podcast, however, is a challenging and time-consuming venture, especially the first time you do it. It will probably take us a week or two to sort everything out. Stay tuned.

Brazil's Performance at the World Championships (A Good News/Bad News Story for the US)

2005-12-20T16:57:00.000+01:00

Previously, I wrote that Brazil was one of the teams with an excellent chance to break out of the pack and advance to the Main Round. Well, they not only advanced out of the Preliminary Round, they finished Fourth in their pool and beat South Korea for 7th place. Along the way they nipped Ukraine 33-32, thrashed defending champion France 35-23 (I saw the match on TV and there was no question which team was better), and scared eventual 2nd place finisher Romania 33-35. Clearly, they've shown that they belong with the big dogs. For the US this is a good news, bad news story.

The Good News: Brazil has demonstrated that it's possible for a Western Hemisphere team to break out of the 2nd tier and move into the 1st tier of Handball nations. They've done it through a combination of internal development and the exporting of several top players to European leagues. The US should carefully review how Brazil accomplished this feat and apply some facets of their program to ours. Another positive aspect of Brazil's 8th place is that they have earned an additional qualifying spot for the PANAM nations. Barring a change in the qualification process, 4 teams, instead of 3, will qualify for the 2007 World Championships in France.

The Bad News: It was nice of Brazil to add a World Championship spot for the PANAM region, but it's not so good that they have further widened the gap between themselves and the rest of the teams in the region. 4 teams are guaranteed a spot for the World championships, but only 1 PANAM team is guaranteed a spot for the Olympics. It was nice when the teams in this hemisphere were all bunched together. Any nation could put together a decent team relatively quickly and have a shot at winning PANAMs and playing in the Olympics against the top nations. Unfortunately, Brazil is now a top nation. And to make matters worse the qualification for the 2008 Olympics will be the 2007 PANAM Games in Rio de Janerio, where it would be difficult for an evenly matched US team to win. This past Summer the US lost to Brazil 27-8 in Sao Paulo. As dramatically inferior our program is right now (December 2005) it is simply not realistic to think that in a little over a year in a half (July 2007) we will be in a position to win there.

How the US can develop the sport so that we can compete with the top teams, of course, has been the $64 Million question. Several models have been tried and the US has never had significant success at the highest level. I don’t think necessarily that we can apply the Brazil developmental model in a US context, but certainly we can learn from it.

World Championship Betting Lines

2005-12-06T21:07:00.000+01:00

Well, while I will chastise the IHF for officially sponsoring gambling that certainly doesn’t prohibit me from analyzing the more interesting betting lines that have been posted for the World Championship. In fact, other than playing the actual matches there is probably no better way to assess and compare how good the different National teams are.

From www.Nordicbet.com here are the odds that were posted to win the Championship prior to the tournament

Russia 2.80 to 1
Korea 4.80
Norway 5.80
Denmark 6.50
Romania 12.00
Hungary 14.00
Ukraine 25.00
Germany 35.00
France 60.00
Croatia 80.00
Slovenia 80.00
China 80.00
Austria 80.00
Fyro Macedonia 80.00
Poland 150.00
Netherlands 250.00
Japan 500.00
Angola 999.00
Brazil 999.00
Uruguay 999.00
Ivory Coast 999.00
Cameroon 999.00
Australia 999.00
Argentina 999.00

I think they put 999-1 up just because their system doesn’t go any higher. I would have thought Brazil would have been shown a little respect. A more realistic perspective of which teams are perceived to be improving can be seen with the odds posted for the final placement for each team. In particular, here are the odds for the lower seeded teams to simply advance out of group play and into the main round.

Australia 300-1
Cameroun 100-1
Ivory Coast 100-1
Uruguay 100-1
Argentina 50-1
Angola 50-1
Brazil 12-1
Austria 5-1
Japan 3.6-1
China 2.5-1
Slovenia 2.5-1
France 2.4-1

Strictly looking at the odds, these 12 teams were not predicted to advance out of group play. To advance out of group play a team needs to finish in 3rd place, or in all likelihood beat the weakest European Team (+ Korea) in their group. The best chances for this are for China or Japan to finish ahead of the Netherlands in Group A and for Brazil to beat Poland (which they’ve already done) and Austria in Group C.

There were also a few interesting proposition bets which focused directly on the gap between the Handball powers and the Handball minnows. These even money bets were:

32.5 goals: Over/Under for biggest margin of defeat in one match
45.5 goals: Over/Under for most goals scored by one team in one match
13.5 goals: Over/Under for fewest goals scored by one team in one match

It took approximately 2 hours for all of those bets to be resolved as Hungary pummelled Australia 57-9. 48 Goals better? 48 Goals! I guess the 25.5 point spread wasn’t very accurate. No word yet if there was some unusual betting activity in Sydney or Melbourne on Expekt.com. But kudos to the Aussies for bouncing back today and covering the 33.5 spread against Slovenia. I’m sure someone in Ljubljana is not happy.

IHF Marketing Policy on Gambling (An Open Letter to IHF President, Dr Hassan Moustafa

2005-12-05T20:33:00.000+01:00

Dear Dr Moustafa,

I am a big fan of Team Handball and I am concerned (no actually, I am amazed) at the close relationship that Team Handball has developed with Internet Gambling sites. The following is now proudly posted on the IHF webpage:

“The international online bookmaker Expekt.com is the new official title sponsor of the IHF XVII Women's World Championship taking place in St Petersburg, Russia from 5 to 18 December 2005.

A World Championship is a high profile event, which covers a broad range of markets. In 2003 the Women's World Handball Championship produced 198 hours of global television coverage. An audience of over 40 million watched the coverage of the event.

Expekt.com has the exclusive championship naming status in all media channels and will receive exposure on site in St Petersburg as the Expekt.com logo is placed on court.

“This event allows Expekt.com to reach our target groups on an international level. We believe in communication through channels that attract our desired customers based on their own interest of the existing event,” says Jacob Lindorff, Global Sponsorship Manager Expekt.com.

Expekt.com offers a wide variety of opportunities for its customers. Sport is an important channel for Expekt.com to achieve these goals since it is closely related to the target group and their interest in betting on sport related events.

Expekt.com has closed the deal in close collaboration with their European sponsorship agency S&B and SPORTFIVE, the exclusive representative for marketing and media rights of the IHF XVII Women's World Championship.”
http://www.ihf.info/CDA/news_details,3522,0,newsid-15495,en.html
http://www.expekt.com/

As anyone who follows sports closely knows, nothing undermines a sport more than the possibility of match fixing. Does your marketing staff read the sports page? Just recently, German soccer had a scandal which resulted in a referee going to prison. http://msn.foxsports.com/soccer/story/5088730

In the US, scandals have affected several sports, but the most vulnerable sports have been collegiate sports where athletes are not paid to play. Are there any amateur athletes in St Petersburg this week, who after getting soundly beaten by a European team, might decide that if they are going to lose they might as well lose by more than the point spread and make a few dollars while there at it? Could one of the better teams decide that they don’t need to win by so much on a meaningless game? Might a ref decide to make a few well placed bets prior to a match?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that sports betting should be outlawed or ignored. In many respects organized and regulated gambling sites can actually safeguard the sport, by monitoring and detecting unusual betting patterns. Say for instance, an unusually large number of bets being placed in Montevideo on Russia beating Uruguay by more than 26.5 goals.

But it’s one thing to acknowledge that betting on sporting events takes place. It is entirely another thing to proudly display the Expekt.com logo on the playing court. What kind of message are you intending to send to the players, the referees, and the fans? We support and encourage gambling on Team Handball?

I certainly hope the next gambling scandal isn’t Team Handball related. If it is, don’t be surprised if the conflicted message the IHF currently has on gambling is part of the legal defence. I hope the IHF can see the light and adopt a policy prohibiting marketing relationships with gambling sites. In the mean time, at the very minimum, standards and penalties in regards to match fixing should be widely distributed to all participants in IHF events.

Sincerely,

John Ryan
Teamhandball.blogspot.com

EHF Champion’s League Highlights Video

2005-11-17T21:50:00.000+01:00

A decent video recapping some of the highlights from the Champion’s League Group Stage is available at this link.

http://www.dr.dk/Sporten/Haandbold/Liga_maend/2005/11/16/Champions+League+Magazine.htm

I read in a newspaper article recently that thousands of people are now regularly downloading Desperate Housewives and other shows. AOL has free downloads of many vintage television shows like Maverick and Welcome Back Kotter. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to ask the question, “Gee, if they can do that for crummy reruns, why is just a Handball highlight show available, why not an entire match in HDTV format?” Believe it or not, this blog regularly gets a hit from internet searches with the terms “download” "video" and “handball” in them. Well at least now they won't be disappointed as this is the best available video that I know of.

The good news is that it is only a matter of time before even more will be available. The big question is whether the major Team Handball entities (IHF, EHF) have the marketing sense to be early adopters of this technology. If they can make good content readily available it could be a marketing bonanza. They need, however, to view downloaded content as not just another revenue stream. They need to see it instead as an opportunity to grow the sport world-wide. Charging for content now = a few dollars. Charging for content later (after more people are hooked) = big dollars.

Practice with VfL Lichtenrade

2005-11-16T22:35:00.000+01:00

One of the “hardships” of my NATO assignment here in Paris is semi-frequent travel for meetings and conferences in Europe. Last week I travelled to Berlin and while there I took the opportunity to practice one night with Bjoern Brembs club, VfL Lichtenrade. VfL Lichenrade is a member of the German Berlin-Brandenburg Oberliga (4th Division) and is located Southwest of Berlin. Currently, they are 10th out of 13 teams and are in a battle to avoid being relegated to the 5th Division.

Now that I’m 40 years old and haven’t touched a handball since the 2004 US Championships, I knew that it might be interesting to see how well I could keep up. Fortunately, I’m in fairly decent shape due to frequent basketball play, but it was still a challenge to catch my breath at times and my throwing arm (never very strong in the first place) was definitely rusty.

Practice was very similar to National Team practices and club practices that the Condors used to have in California many years ago. The practice lasted about an hour and a half and the sequence was warm up Basketball/with a Handball, a little running, playing catch, goalie warmup, fastbreak drills, and 3 on 3 full court. As the team is nursing several injuries, a full court scrimmage was not very practical. The coach then briefed the team on their upcoming opponent and then brought out a crate of 20 half-liter bottles of beer. A very nice touch, I must say.

Riding back to Berlin, Bjoern filled me in on some more of the organization and structure of German Handball at this level. VfL Lichenrade practices 3 times a week and typically plays a match every Saturday. For their home matches they charge 5 Euros for admission and they average about 200 fans a match. The players receive only marginal compensation to include occasional beers and meals. They have 3 coaches, but only one is paid a small stipend. Some of the teams at the 4th Division level have larger budgets and do pay their players small fees and this partly shows up in the standings. Western Germany is also stronger economically than the East, so the 4th Division there is probably a little stronger.

Of course, as I practiced with the team, I performed my own internal assessment of just how this 4th Division team would match up with current and former clubs that I have played with in the US. I think it’s safe to say that they would have probably won the last US Nationals I attended in 2004. While not quite as athletically gifted as the Condors, they would have been more cohesive as a unit, due to the greater number of games and practice they have. Additionally, their roster is a lot younger and they are probably in better physical condition. The US National Team I played on back in 1993 (by no means an awesome National Team) would have had no problem beating them, but I’m not so sure how are current team would do. And I must agree with Bjoern that this comparative assessment says more about the weak state of US handball, then it does about the strength of German Handball.

Probably, the most interesting reflective point I have to make is simply the strikingly different organizational structures of US and European sports. In the US, most of are sports follow a natural progression from High School to College to Pro. This tiered structure means that the lower level sports are strongly tied to the age of the student athlete. If you are not good enough to play in College or Pro leagues you are essentially finished playing organized sports. Yes, there are city leagues and semi-professional leagues in the US, but they don’t even begin to compare to the European equivalent. In Europe there is a healthy middle ground, where the matches are more important and the players receive compensation. A 23-30 year old athlete who can’t play at the highest level still has an outlet. Whereas in the US, the difference between the NBA and the CBA or the NFL and semipro football is like jumping off a cliff. Hence the large number of middling US hoops stars continuing their career in Europe. Having observed both models, I would like to see the US further develop that middle ground. The reality, however, is that I don’t see this happening anytime soon as our current structure is too engrained in our culture.

Here’s the link to VfL Lichtenrade
http://www.vfl-lira.de/index.php

Constitution Crisis (Part 3)

2005-11-06T01:21:00.000+01:00

Constitution Crisis (Part 3)

Note: For those who are unfamiliar with USA Team Handball, you might be surprised to learn that a sports loving nation with a population of nearly 300 Million has approximately 500 members in it’s National Handball federation. As might be expected from a program that has had limited success and has such a small membership base a great degree of political infighting often occurs. Last year, an independent candidate, Mike Hurdle won a close election for the Presidency of USA Team Handball. The winners of several other board positions, however, were not part of the independent slate of candidates and this has led to a very divisive governing board for USA Team Handball. This divisiveness has come to a boiling point with the process for developing a new Constitution for US Team Handball. I highlight some of those issues in earlier postings:

http://teamhandball.blogspot.com/2005/05/constitutional-crisis.html
http://teamhandball.blogspot.com/2005/06/constitutional-crisis-part-2.html

Here is a brief update on what has happened during the past few months and why I think US members should vote in favour of the proposed constitution:

The Process (Pretty much everybody is guilty and here’s why)

Well, I’m not going to make a lot of friends here, but those who know me, know that being liked by everyone has never been high on my list. By pointing out fault here, I’m also by no means inferring that I wouldn’t have made some of the same mistakes myself if I hadn’t been put in the same place. It’s kind of like Hurricane Katrina—There’s plenty of blame to go around.

I have to give Mike kudos for relentlessly pushing the need to get a new Constitution for USA Team Handball. If he’s learned anything from his Presidency he’s learned that the way USATH conducts business is just not working very well. Jumping on the USOC mandate that Olympic Sports inject more independence in their governance he pushed the need for the constitution directly to the membership.

Where the Hurdle faction has faltered, however, is in their near blind zeal to disregard opinions that differ from theirs. As I pointed out in my previous postings, there is a great deal of logic to letting an elected Board of Directors play a prominent role in the development of a new Constitution. Mike portrayed this desire to participate as simple attempts by other board members to stonewall and hold on to their current positions. After several months of arguing and trying to prevent a Board Review from happening Mike finally relented and a very good transparent process to review the Constitution was put in place. The Membership and the Board of Directors provided comments to the Constitution on an open forum on the Internet. http://www.tonyfontenot.com/boards/

While there was by no means large scale participation there was thoughtful discussion. In particular, I would like to highlight the one significant change made to the Constitution. The new Constitution, believe it or not, had no provision for independent candidates to run for election to the Board. An alert reader to this blog highlighted that shortcoming in a comment to one of my earlier posts. I then highlighted this shortcoming on the Constitution Forum.

http://www.tonyfontenot.com/boards/comments.php?DiscussionID=5&page=1

After some discussion the Constitution Review Committee changed the Constitution to allow additional nominations to the 5 “non-independent” canddidates. In other words, if the membership wants to thumb their nost at the Nominating Committee, they can now do that by nominating and getting alternate candidates on the ballot. For those of you ready to line up and complain that the grievance and review was a waste of time, I would say this one change alone was worth it. In particular, I highly doubt that a resolution of all those in favor of eliminating independent candidates for future elections would have passed on a 76-3 vote. Especially when you consider that Mike Hurdle could never have gotten elected under that proposed constitution.

There were several other issues of discussion and you might be pleasantly surprised by the thoughtful discussion and debate if you take the time to review both the web forum and later on by the Constitution Review Committee notes. See: http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/handballusa/ (posted in the Files Section) To a certain extent this transparent review validates the Thome/O’Shea desire to have the Board actively participate in the review. I was very sceptical to the logic being applied that they were simply trying to stonewall and hold on to power. In particular, it is important to point out that their comments on the Constitution simply don’t support the notion that Thome/O’Shea and Company were simply trying to hold on to power.

There were a few points of contention, however and the Constitution Review Committee had a 3-2 vote on 2 issues. Well, you can’t always get everybody to agree on everything. Time to move on? End of Story?

Unfortunately, No. The Thome/O’Shea faction, disappointed with the outcome on those two points, decided to circumvent and violate the agreed to resolution process and asked the USOC to get involved again. At some point in the process you need to recognize that the time has come to move on. Rather than recognize this, they pulled the USOC card.

The USOC then recommended that they have their legal department review the Constitution and that another Board Meeting called. Faced with this USOC involvement, Mike’s chosen course of action was to threaten legal action against the USOC. (Say what?) I understand the frustration, but sometimes you just grin and take it when you’re opposition sidesteps the proccess, especially when its your principal source of funding now doing the talking. Despite this last minute wrangling, however a Constitution has now been mailed.

Forget the Politics, The Issue is Now the Constitution Itself

The membership will now have their say, yes or no. You can despise either faction or simply despise Handball politics in general. All you might really care about is playing the game and seeing USA Team Handball grow and gain some degree of respectability.

Well, I’m happy to say, I think this Constitution can help make that happen. The new Constituion has many important aspects, but I think the key features are a more business-like Board of Directors that will be more focused on top level oversight and the addition of Independent Directors that will not be overly tied to Handball. In fact, if we can truly find some good business people that can improve our ability to raise funds and market Team Handball effectively, the new constitution will be worth it for that alone.

There are many other aspects, but I’m not going to give a full scale review of the document, principally, because I’m pleased to say that except for 2 primary points of contention, both factions support this current draft. And in, my opinion, neither of these contentious points are significant enough to vote down the Constitution

The Points of Contention

So what is all the fuss about? Here is a short summary of the 2 issues in contention (Once, again you can join the yahoo handballusa group http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/handballusa/ and download the file from the files section to get the details)

1) The process for selecting the Nominating Committee (NC)

Proposed Constitution: The current President will select the first NC. The composition of this NC will then be reviewed by the USOC. Subsequent NCs will then be primarily selected by the outgoing NC
Thome/O’Shea Faction: The BoDs or an election should be used to select the NC. The rational being that one person shouldn’t have that much power and that letting NCs choose the next NCs will self-perpetuate a certain clique/coalition.

Why this is NOT worth fighting about:
- As I pointed out earlier, the membership can nominate additional candiates and if they meet the minimum criteria, those candidates will be placed on the ballot for 5 of the 9 Board of Director positions. The membership can, as it has in the past, simply thumb its nose at the NC’s picks
- For the 4 independent candidates, the membership will vote for 4 of 6 NC recommendations. No possibility of additional candidates, but since these are independent candidates, in theory, they should not have an agenda or clique that they are beholden too.
- Quite frankly, I prefer the Thome/O’Shea position. I just don’t see it as a make or break issue. Even if Mike Hurdle could orchestrate an NC that could pass USOC review and then willingly do his bidding to select an all Condor slate, a separate slate could run against it for 5 of the 9 positions and the qualifications for the 4 independent positions make it fairly tough to put forward hidden agenda candidates.

2) Governance in the transition period before the new BoDs takes charge

Proposed Constitution: The current President will be in charge, but will not make any significant decisions
Thome/O’Shea Faction: An alternative structure involving the Pres and VPs was proposed for the transition period.

Why this is NOT worth fighting about:
- I think the caveat that there be no significant decisions is enough. A number of different alternatives management structures including the Thome/O’Shea proposal would also be viable. Again it is simply not a make or break issue.

Other than these two points, there was consensus on the proposed Constitution. If you agree with me that these two points just aren’t worth arguing about, then vote yes for the Constitution. If, however, you disagree, vote no. It’s as simple as that and that’s democracy in action for you.

A Final Note

For those of you who are ready to see Mike Hurdle leave, you’ll be glad to know that you are in a no lose situation. Mike has said that if the Constituion fails to pass he is resigning. And, of course, if the Constitution passes, he would have to run again for one of the 5 Handball spots. I’m guessing he doesn’t have the energy left for that.

Top 10 Reasons Why I Love to Hate Montpellier Handball

2005-10-04T14:34:00.000+02:00

1) They are the New York Yankees of French Team Handball. They win way too often.

2) They hoard talent. How silly is it that the #1 and #2 French National Team goalies play on the same club team. Can’t some other French club fork over a few Euros to lure one of them away?

3) They can’t keep the good players home. Despite a competitive budget, they still couldn’t keep top French players like Karabatic and Dinart from leaving the country.

4) Thierry Omeyer. A Distinguished Graduate of the Bruno Martini school of facial expressions, by which a goalie is obliged to show his disgust after every scored goal. Last time I checked that happens 20-30 times a game in Team Handball. Please save it for your occasional truly bad missed saved opportunities

5) Mladen Bojinovich. Badly in need of a major haircut, this guy celebrates every goal as if it was a last second, game winning shot. He would fit right in with a high-fiving girl’s High School Volleyball team.

6) Wissem Hmam. See #5. At least he has a barber.

7) Interlude Music. Every opposing team penalty shot is subjected to the Mission Impossible theme. Another favourite is the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Could the Darth Vader theme be next?

8) Crowd Chants. The interlude music is annoying, but it’s a travesty that “Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue” has been turned into Mont-pell-ier, Mont-pell-ier, Mont-pell-ier…..

9) They are always on TV. Not as bad as previous years (thanks to an expanded TV contract), but still they are on TV way too often.

10) The Blue Fox Fan Club. As I am quite possibly the only native English speaker who watches Montpellier on a regular basis, I am compelled to ask why on Earth isn’t the fan club called the “le renard bleu.” Is it only for my benefit?

And OK, 1 Reason to Cheer for Montpellier Handball

1) Gregory Anquetil. He quietly and professionally gets the job done. And he saves celebration for the times that it’s truly worth it. I think his last second, 9 meter goal vs Flensburg was the first time I saw him truly excited.

European Team Handball 101

2005-09-12T21:13:00.000+02:00

Here is my attempt (with a little help from Bjoern Brembs) to explain how Team Handball is organized in Europe and how it is different from sports organized in the US. Europeans might be amused and think I’m stating the obvious, but trust me- its taken me 3 years living in Europe to figure all this out. And now I also know why Euros who have moved to the US are conversely just as confused. Here are the key points as I see it:

1) The season is long.

Typically the Handball season runs from September to May. The American concept of rotating seasons (with some overlap) between football, hockey, basketball, and baseball does not apply here. Just about every team sport follows the same yearly schedule. Practices start in August and clubs play friendly matches against other clubs. These friendly matches are either scrimmages or exhibition matches with no real consequence. Essentially, they are an opportunity to gauge the state of the team’s preparation and to see where further work is needed in order to start properly into the season. The season then starts in September and continues with breaks for Xmas and either the World Championships or European Championships in January. The season typically wraps up in May. In June, there usually are some qualifying National Team Games for World’s or European Championships as well. July is typically the vacation month.

2) Games are less frequent. (compared to US indoor sports)

Typically, club teams play 1 game almost every weekend. The exceptions are weekends that have been designated for National Team competition and the Xmas holidays. Teams will also occasionally play a game midweek. In most cases these games are makeup games caused by rescheduling for Champions League or National Cup games.

3) There are multiple opportunities to win a championship

In France, for example, they could have 3 separate champions for 3 different competitions. Each championship has no relation to the other and in many cases are taking place during an overlapping timeframe. Now one would think that it would be simpler and better to have one champion clearly crowned at the end of the season, but that is just my naive American perspective.

Here’s a summary of the French titles. Other countries are organized much the same way.

a) French League championship. Every team plays every other team twice (home and away) from September to May. Winning the Division 1 National League is the most prestigious French Championship.

b) Coup de France: This is a single elimination tournament for all clubs in France. Games for this tournament are schedule and played throughout the season. The early rounds are played between lower division clubs with the higher division clubs receiving byes until the last rounds. The lower ranked team usually gets to host the match, but the difference in talent usually results in the lower division teams getting beat. To my knowledge, no team lower than the second division has ever made it to the semifinals. Most countries also have a similar tournament for soccer, and occasionally a lower division club makes a spectacular run. Soccer, with the possibility of a lucky goal and packing it in on defense, however, is more prone to such miracles.

c) Coup de la Ligue: The top 7 teams and a host club, play a single elimination tourney over 4 days at the end of the season. This was added recently to the French slate.

4) There are Multiple Divisions (1st Division, 2nd Division, 3rd Division, etc)

When I first started playing Handball, I was always confused at the Euros who would typically state their credentials by saying, “I played in the Elbonian 2nd Division for 2 seasons.” Just what exactly does that mean anyway?

In general, the handball leagues in each nation are divided into divisions of increasing quality and professionalism. The structure is also like a pyramid. In France the Divisions are grouped like this

Division 1: 1 League with 14 Teams
Division 2: 1 League with 16 Teams
Division 3: (National Mens 1) 2 Leagues, each with 14 Teams
Division 4: (National Mens 2) 4 Leagues, each with 14 Teams
Division 5: (National Mens 3) 8 Leagues, each with 14 Teams
Division 6: Pre-National
Division 7: Department Excellence
Division 8: Department Honneur

Geography also plays an important role in this hierarchical structure. The top leagues cover the entire country while the lower leagues are increasingly more regional in nature.

5) Leagues are Well Organized at the Lower Levels

The lower leagues usually consist of teams from the same county, city or even neighborhood, depending on the abundance of teams. In this way, there is also a layering of financial investment: teams in lower leagues travel less, need to pay smaller fees for the referees, but also practice less and have less revenue from sponsors and paying spectators. This means that whatever the level a player can play at, he will usually be able to find a team that suits his talent and his willingness to dedicate time and effort.

Incidentally, from my experience the organization of the leagues at the lower levels far exceeds similar city leagues in the US. This is probably another source of confusion for Euros living in the US as they often can’t figure out why US Team Handball competition is so poorly organized. What they don’t realize is that even well established sports like basketball also have limited organization outside of college and high school competition. I’ve played a lot of basketball and the over-35 basketball league I currently play in is easily the most organized that any basketball league I’ve played in since High School.

6) Promotion and Relegation is a key component of the structure

This is probably the most dramatic difference between European and American leagues. Typically in a European league the top 2 teams at the end of the year are promoted to the next higher division and 2-4 teams are relegated to the next lower division. There are many pros and cons to this system that I have observed and read about. Here are some:

Pro:
- Teams have something to play for besides a Championship title. Quite simply, it’s nice to be a champion, but it’s even better to move up to the bigger league with better competition, larger crowds and at the higher levels significant financial game. Conversely, moving down is something that everyone wants to avoid. The end of the season can also be quite interesting in the “drop zone” as teams try to eke out enough wins to stay in their league. I’ve personally experienced both sides of this system in my “over 35” basketball league in Paris. Trust me you don’t want to drop down a division and play a bunch of weak teams for a whole year- been there, done that. One more lousy win, would have avoided our team dropping down, but we couldn’t get the job done. Disappointing for sure, but the bright side is that our team wasn’t just going through the motions at the end of the season. We were playing games with real meaning to our team.
- Teams don’t have to petition to join the better league, they simply can play their way in. Conversely, the dead weight at the bottom of the standings can easily be removed. Imagine the impact this would have on Major League Baseball. See you later Montreal and Kansas City. Washington DC would simply have had to wait two or three seasons to ascend to the big leagues, rather than beg and bribe a bunch of owners to get a new franchise

Con:
- The instability of these leagues results in a case of haves and have nots. Sure you can move up a division, but staying there is going to be tough. Especially, if you don’t have the arena and fan base to compete dollar wise with the perennial top teams. Often what happens is that these “elevator teams” just bounce around back and forth between the two divisions. Instead of a stable environment where every team has a shot (the NFL, for example) relegation tends to create a permanent second class citizenship in the top leagues.

7) Clubs are Independent

In general, each club in Europe is an independent entity. In other words, the concept of “farm teams” owned by the parent club that exists in American Baseball does not apply. In principal, clubs in the higher divisions are seeking to win and get promoted, not to develop new talent for the 1st division. Of course, 1st division teams may “poach” talent from lower division team, but it’s not a simple phone club. Typically a player transfer will require compensation to the parent club depending on the contract the club has with the player.

Top Club programs often have their own youth division programs and strive to develop players in house. They also have 2nd teams, but they typically play in the lower division to give young players experience and to allow injured players to convalesce. There are however, special rules to limit the shuffling of players from the upper team to play in a lower team match in important games.

8) Leagues and National Federations are closely linked

In general, each nation has one tightly linked league structure which is administered by their National Federation. In other words, there are no independent minor leagues like the alphabet soup of American Basketball (USBL, ABA, CBA, NBDL). The lower divisions, are similar in some respects to US minor leagues, but the teams are independent and they can aspire to the top league through the promotion/relegation system. Often the top league has a significant degree of independence in terms of scheduling, administration, TV contracts, etc, but they still work closely with the National Federation. This administration and organisation is much different than the US when one considers the relatively small influence National Federations (USA Basketball, USA Hockey, etc) have in the organisation of major US sports.

9) National Team Competition is more important

Unlike many US professional sports, National Team competition is taken very seriously in Europe. Each sport typically has designated weekends for National Team competition that are coordinated with each nation’s Club competition schedules. In other words, if it’s time for the European Championship, the elite players start practicing with their National Team and everybody else takes it easy for a few weeks. Contrast this to the NBA’s difficulties in getting players to play even at the Olympics, let alone the World Championships or qualifying matches. Europeans, at least L’Equipe anyway, are totally bewildered by this lack of interest.

10) European Club Competitions

The European Handball Federation (EHF) conducts 4 tournaments throughout the season involving club teams from the different nations. Games for these tournaments are scheduled and played throughout the season. These 4 tournaments are:

- The Champion’s League: The highest level championship. This championship consists of each European nation’s regular season champion from the previous year. Additionally, the top nations also get to send their second place team and/or 3rd place team.
- The EHF Cup: This is the 2nd level championship and teams further down in the standings represent their nation
- The Cupwinner’s Cup: This is the 3rd level championship. Teams either send their National Cup winner or their next ranked team.
- The Challenge Cup: This is a developmental championship for the weaker national programs in Europe. (It would be interesting to put the North American Club champion up against this winner.

11) The Champion’s League

How countries are awarded bids: Based on how well each nation’s teams have done in previous years, the IHF assigned slots in each tournament. If the clubs from your nation do well, you get more entries in the Champion’s League. This is evident in that Spain and Germany are the only nations that get 3 spots in the Champion’s League. (Of course, if they really wanted to make it fair there would probably be 6 teams from each of those nations participating in the Champion’s League).

Champion’s League structure: Don’t be misled by the title- this league is really more tournament-like in its organisation. Because every country gets at least one entry the competition starts with 40 teams. The bottom 16 teams are paired off and play a two game playoff (see below for an explanation of this format) to eliminate 8 teams and narrow the field to 32. The teams are then drawn into 8 groups of 4 teams each. Each group then plays a double round robin with the top two teams from each group advancing to a round of 16. These games are played over 6 different weekends and are the only part of the competition that resemble a league. The top 2 teams in each of these groups then advance to a round of 16. This round of 16, and all subsequent rounds, use the ever popular, 2 game playoff format to determine the winner.

The 2 Game Playoff Format: Coming from the land of “best of 7” playoffs, the Super Bowl and the lose one and done NCAA Basketball Tournament, this format takes a little getting used to. Perhaps the simplest way to look at is to think of it as playing one, 120 minute game. Albeit with a week long halftime and a change of venue. If one team wins both games, they, of course, advance. If they split, the team with the better overall goal differential advances. If the goal differential is identical the team that scores more away goals advances. This format, while strange, does have an advantage in that there is no “garbage time” during the first game, because you never know what will happen in the second game. (Read my account of the Montpellier – Flensburg game to get an idea of what can happen; even 14 goals is not a safe victory; Link: http://teamhandball.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_teamhandball_archive.html )

Champion’s League shortcomings
- The teams participating are last year’s champions. It would be much better to somehow have a tournament with the current year’s champion. With player transfers, the team being rewarded sometimes bear little resemblance to the team won their National League the previous year
- As discussed above, it’s really more of a tournament then a true league.
- Too many weak teams with no real chance of winning are in the tournament. I would rather see more games between the top teams. Of course, it’s also fun to root for the underdog. The reality is, however, the two game format makes it pretty tough to overcome a big gap in talent.

A “Big Picture” Analogy

As one can see from the comparisons above there are a lot of differences between how American sports and European sports are organized. One big picture analogy that I like to use is to compare Team Handball in Europe to NCAA basketball. As most Americans are familiar with NCAA basketball let’s start with that structure and adapt it, as needed, to fit European Team Handball.

Currently there are 300+ NCAA Div 1 basketball schools, playing in 31 conferences. Let’s do away with the NBA and all other minor professional leagues in the US and turn NCAA basketball into a professional sport. (OK, I know some of you are saying it already is a professional sport.) Also, while we are at it, let’s pretend those 31 conferences are actually 31 separate nations, each with their own labor laws. In terms of scheduling, pre-conference games will now be considered exhibition with no meaning whatsoever. Conference games are the principal priority and there are no truncated schedules, everybody plays everybody twice, home and away. The bottom 2 teams in the conference each year are demoted to the local Division 2 conference and the top 2 teams from the Div 2 conference are promoted to the Division 1 conference. There is no longer a post season conference tournament, but a single elimination tournament with Division 1 and Division 2 schools in the local area has been added. These games are played sporadically throughout the season. There is also no March Madness, but the top teams from last year’s standings play in the Champion’s League against schools from the other conferences.

I think you get the idea. To carry this analogy further, one could consider Spain and Germany to be like the ACC and Big Ten conferences. France and Hungary would be “mid-majors” like the Atlantic 10 and Conference USA and Iceland and Slovakia would be the 1 bid conferences in the NCAA tournament. The analogy is far from perfect, but it’s the best I can think of.

If I were King for a Day

There are many things I like about the European system, but it has many shortcomings. The biggest by far is the fact that they have too many leagues and this fractures the growth of the sport. Taken as a whole, Europe economically and population wise is similar to the US. If instead of several rival leagues, one Super (NBA like) League was formed, Team Handball would have a much greater profile than it currently has. The level of play would be higher, attendance would be greater and TV coverage fees would increase substantially. Right now the two top leagues are Germany and Spain. Other countries also have some decent leagues and a couple of teams that can compete with the top German and Spanish teams. The reality is though, is that these leagues have difficulty keeping their top players from jumping ship to the German and Spanish leagues. This is even true for small countries with strong Handball traditions because they simply do not have the population base to support several teams within their own country at the same level as the German and Spanish leagues. They could, however, easily support 1 team on the same level as the top German and Spanish Level clubs.

As I envision it, a Super League would probably have 5 German, 5 Spanish teams, 2 French teams, and 1 each from Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Poland, Czech Republic. While the teams would likely have a preponderance of native players, there would be nothing to prohibit someone from playing on a team in a foreign country. Money talks, but cultural and language ties are also strong. The Oslo Vikings might not be able to pay their world class Norwegian goalie quite as much as the Kiel Sailors, but they would be able to pay a salary close enough to keep him home. As much as I like certain aspects of relegation and promotion, I also would be vary wary of it’s implementation for a Europe wide league. In some countries for instance, the economic reality is that only one city (usually the capital) would be capable of supporting a team at the Super League level. And since I am the King, I would also impose a salary cap and revenue sharing between the clubs. Finally, I would shorten the season and add some playoffs at the end of the season. Perhaps, best of 3 or best of 2 for the format. Additionally, I would schedule these playoffs for March outside of the other sports big championships in May.

Why it probably won’t work. While the US and Europe (taken as a whole) are similar, the simple fact is that Europe, is not a “whole.” One just has to look at some of the difficulties the NBA, MLB, and the NHL have had with simply working the economic differences between Canada and the US. And we are talking about two countries with a great deal in common. The different economies, tax structures and laws in Europe would present even greater challenges.

But there is one recent example of a multi-national league started from scratch: The Super 14 Rugby League (formally the Super 12). The Super 14 has teams in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa and is now generally recognized to be the top rugby league. And the primary reason for its creation was simply to give Rupert Murdoch’s TV empire something to show exclusively.

Rupert are you listening? Have I got a proposition for you.

I call it a Slingbox

2005-08-02T15:17:00.000+02:00

“Some Folks Call it a Kaiser Blade, I Call it a Sling Blade”- Billy Bob Thornton in the movie Sling Blade.

“Some folks call “Slingbox” a poor non-user friendly gadget, I call it an early vision of our future Team Handball viewing future.”

What is a Slingbox?

Well in a nutshell, it’s a $250 gadget that you can plug into your cable, satellite or Digital Video Recorder at home, that will then “sling” the video over the internet to a remote location. Gee, I wonder how that could be used by a Team Handball fan living in the United States? Sounds pretty good doesn’t it. Here are some reviews on Slingbox:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/16/AR2005071600110.html?nav=rss_technology

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000827048885/

Now for the all important question: Could I get a buddy in Europe to send me live broadcasts of Team Handball?

The answer is yes, but it would be a somewhat clunky setup due the Slingbox only being currently available for the US TV format (NTSC). They plan to have a PAL version out later this year, but some clever folks have used a PAL-NTSC converter in the loop to get it working now. Here’s an interview with the CEO which talks about Europe issues at the bottom: http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000933050954/

So, theoretically, right now it could be done if the Europe connection has a slingbox, a PAL-NTSC converter, and a broadband connection. (And based on the reviews, I would also bet that the guy who sets it up in Europe would also have to be very patient and knowledgeable on this sort of thing.) All that would be needed on the US side is broadband. Nothing like bringing the team over Saturday afternoon for a live Handball Match from Europe.

And if live viewing isn’t critical and you have a Digital Video Recorder, you could always send the file of a game using Orb. http://www.orb.com/home/
With this setup, I think both sides of the Atlantic would need a DVR and broadband as well.

Of course, this is just a first look vision of what the future could be. Think back to what your first experience was on the internet in the early 90’s and compare it to your experience today.

I predict that sooner than you might think, you will have so many options for Handball viewing on Television that you’ll have a hard time deciding what to watch.

Time for an Anglophone Alliance

2005-07-30T15:11:00.000+02:00

Question: What do uncompetitive teams at the Olympics and World Championships often have in common?

Answer: In addition to the obvious traits of inexperience, lack of talent, etc., the language they are speaking is often English.

Now in a previous post I pointed out that Team Handball is not the World's second most popular sport. I'll go on record, however, to State that Team Handball is probably the World's most popular sport without any significant representation in the English speaking world. When you think about it, that's a fairly profound fact which has had a number of implications on the sport's world-wide growth.

That's not to say that English isn't spoken in Team Handball circles. I recently saw the live draw (via the web) for the Champions League. The only language spoken was English. Both the IHF and EHF websites are also principally in English as well. Now in terms of "why" the sport hasn't become more popular in the Anglophone world I think it's pretty much a result of the sport not being invented in an Anglophone country and the sports "plate" being too full for the addition of another sport. I certainly don't think there is something inherent with the Anglophone culture that inhibits the sport's growth.

The implications of this sport not having secured a foothold in theEnglish Speaking World are significant. First off, the Anglophone market is a large affluent market. Even if only a very small slice of that market could become interested in watching and playing Team Handball it would add significantly to the current market. The Outreach this market has is also much greater due to the exporting of all things English. Go into any hotel room in a major city world-wide and chances are BBC World and/or CNN are one of your options. But good luck finding a Handball highlight on either station's 30 minute daily World sports show. What the IHF and EHF should realize is that if they want to expand their sport from its core base in Europe it needs to have a greater level of awareness in the English speaking world.

In theory, the Olympics should be the jumpstart to take a program to the next level. Yet this hasn't panned out for the US or Australia. And with London being awarded the Olympics, yet another 3rd tier team (or minnow in UK English) will get to play and likely be clobbered by the World Handball Elites.

And what is the IHF doing to correct this imbalance? Practically nothing from what I can see. One telling anecdote is an exchange between a Wall Street Journal reporter and the French National Coach at the 2004 Olympics:

"At a postgame news conference the other day, to the amusement of the European reporters present, I asked why the U.S. isn't very good at handball. France's head coach, Claude Onesta, answered in perfect, dismissive French: "As far as I am concerned, there are a lot of games at which the United States does not excel.""
http://www.usateamhandball.org/news.html

Now granted the French National Coach and the amused European reporters do not represent the IHF, but this parochial, mocking perspective isn't growing the sport any. It's almost as if they are happy that Handball is a niche sport in their little corner of the world. It would have been nicer to hear a response like, "It is perplexing; this sport should be a natural for the US. I know that the IHF has ambitious plans for the sports growth. They're working closely with the US and other countries to get this sport broadcast to a world-wide audience."

I've seen words to the effect that the IHF is working to grow the sport. It's time to see more than words, though. It's time for action. Don't dribble a few development dollars to Federations that may or may not spend it wisely. Instead focus your resources to expand the media exposure of this sport in the Anglophone market. Specifically, the IHF and the EHF should make it a top priority to get Team Handball matches aired on TV in the US, UK, Australia and Canada. In the past getting Team Handball on TV was too difficult. Too few stations, too little air time dedicated to sports, and probably poor marketing pitches, prevented Handball from greater exposure and coverage.

Surely, the IHF and EHF have seen the NBA invade Europe successfully. Living in France, I have a dedicated 24 hrs/day NBA channel! Yes, they have basketball in Europe, but the NBA is recognized as the best league and people follow the teams there. Especially, when a native son like Tony Parker plays. The NBA has been extremely shrewd in this development. If the EHF had half a brain they would at least attempt to do the same thing on a smaller scale.

The 2004 Olympics with the expanded coverage in the US was the first sign of what could happen. More channels and broadband makes it even more feasible today for Handball to make it on the schedule. Today, good quality TV broadcasts of Team Handball are being shown regularly throughout Europe. All that's principally needed is quality English commentary and a decent marketing pitch. And maybe Eurosport 2 is doing the English already. The marketing pitch is where the IHF and EHF come in. They should develop a slick marketing package with an EHF game of the weekand then aggressively knock on doors in the US to get it shown on TV. Heck, even pay to have it broadcast the first couple of years if you have to. The Return on investment could eventually be huge-- ask the NBA.

So where does the Anglophone Alliance come in? Instead of one nation making this case to the IHF/EHF, get together and speak as one bloc. The US, UK, Canada and Australia together are small potatoes when it comes to Handball, but in terms of national markets they are huge. Heck, I would even consider putting India into the mix as Handball is more popular in this country then you might think. What the Anglophone Alliance should do is send a joint letter signed by all of their Federation Presidents to the IHF/EHF asking for their assistance indeveloping and marketing English language broadcasts of Team Handball in their nations. The letter could highlight the 2012 award to London and the need to expand the sports awareness. Then follow it up with phone calls and office visits.

This is a no-brainer win-win situation that just needs a push and some organisations with vision.

Just How Popular is Team Handball?

2005-07-21T21:13:00.000+02:00

I am frequently amused, and also sympathetic, to various rants I have seen or heard related to lack of Team Handball broadcasts on TV. Usually, these rants are along the lines of “If I see one more showing of (insert obscure sport here) I’m going to flip out. Don’t they know that the rest of the world loves Handball?

Well, while I concur that Curling is not a sport and the World’s Strongest Man is a silly, albeit strangely compelling competition, the sad fact is, is that those sports have a greater following in the United States. In fact, depending on how you want to define a sport’s popularity, Team Handball is down in the pecking order in the rest of the world as well. An oft-quoted comment is that Team Handball is the world’s second most popular sport after, of course, soccer. I’m not the first person to see that quote and think, “Oh really.” The folks at this website
http://www.johann-sandra.com/popular.htm
even tried to quantify sport popularity. Of course, as they discovered, this is not a simple task and it depends on what metrics you use.

The IOC even spent more time and energy to produce the following report:
http://www.olympic.org/uk/news/media_centre/full_story_uk.asp?release=1349
Based on the metrics used in the report, which while not perfect, are quantifiable, it’s hard to make a case for a very high number for handball on simply the Olympics Sports Program. Team Handball did survive the axe, so at least we know 150 IOC delegates think it’s better than Baseball and Softball.

My own perspective is that there are a few countries in the world, mostly in Europe, where Team Handball has a significant level of popularity. But even this popularity in Europe has to be viewed in the context of a comparatively speaking, more diverse sports scene. I will not try to measure the sport's popularity on an entire continent, but I do feel that I can speak with some authority on France, now that I’ve lived here 3 years.

Handball in France certainly has a significant level of popularity here and the National Teams have enjoyed success in the past few years including both men’s and women’s World Championships. That being said, it’s clear to me that Handball is behind Soccer, Rugby, and Basketball in terms of popularity. And just a notch above volleyball. This is based on newspaper coverage, television coverage, match attendance, and participation. And I’m not even considering sports such as Tennis, Formula 1, motorcycle racing, rally racing, bicycling and petanque. When you put into context that France has the 3rd most developed Professional League, after Germany and Spain, and consistently top notch National Teams what does that say about a sports overall popularity?

Well, I think it can be safely said that it’s not the world’s 2nd most popular sport. What would be more accurate is to say that Team Handball is a dynamic sport with a significant hard core dedicated fan base in many European and North African countries. Which, when you think about it, that really isn’t too bad of a thing to say. Now if we could just expand that to include North America we could get a little more TV coverage. Or does the TV coverage have to come first?

Congratulations British Handball

2005-07-10T22:06:00.000+02:00

Well with London's surprise victory a couple of days ago, the UK has qualified for the 2012 Olympics. Out of curiousity, I decided to do an internet search on Handball in the UK. My only knowledge prior to this search was playing against a Scottish club team at West Point a few years ago. Talking to some of their players afterwards, I was under the impression that the sport's popularity in the UK was similar to the US.

http://www.scottishhandball.com/index.html

http://englandhandball.com

Here are a few interesting factoids on UK Handball

- Both Scotland and England have their own federation. In fact, depending on the sport England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland either have their own National team or play together under the UK or British banner. It looks like they will be combining teams for the Olympics as there is a letter on London 2012 that is signed out by the British Handball Association, vice England Handball. Since it's Britain instead of the UK, I would guess that means you're out of luck if you're from Northern Ireland.

- The sport is a little more developed there than I thought. If you look at their websites you'll see they have fairly organized leagues. More than what we have in the US.

- They sent a youth team to a tournament in Malta and ended up playing the US twice. The write-up talks about the US-UK games. (Heck, I didn't even know that a US team had gone to Malta for a tournament. How come that wasn't put on the USA Website?) The writeup mentions that US coach, Darrick Heath was outcoached in the semifinal showdown that theUS lost, 21-10. They did give Darrick kudos as the most successful US player, though. (The document can be read on the England website under documents- EnglandreportMalta)

It should be interesting to see the path they take in terms of development over the next 7 years. Here's hoping that we can join them in London as the PanAmerican Representative.

Constitutional Crisis (Part 2)

2005-06-19T22:10:00.000+02:00

Since my last post I have followed with a mixture of nausea and amusement continued email bickering on whether the vote at the annual meeting and the subsequent grievances followed procedural rules correctly. Nausea, because it appears to me that both sides are interpreting the constitution selectively to support their side. Amusement, because both bickering sides are wasting valuable time and energy arguing about a constitution they both want to get rid of.

In the interest of being “selective” myself, I will highlight a few significant points I’ve seen in the email traffic.

Here is the resolution that was proposed in the grievance that was ultimately submitted:

“1) Removal of all Constitutional amendment information currently on the USATH website, which was published as a result of Mr. Siskind’s motion.

2) Publishing of an announcement on USATH the web site that after further analysis, the motion and the vote at the annual meeting violated the USATH Constitution, and that USATH is revisiting the process with guidance from the USOC.

3) Formation a committee (four to six people) from the Board to review the work done by the Constitutional Review Committee and where needed, modify the Constitution presented. This committee shall get conceptual approval from the USOC on the new Constitution and then present it to the Board for final approval.

4) Presentation of the new Constitution to the USATH membership for approval in full compliance with the current USATH Constitution.”

And here is a nutshell summary response to this compromise from the President of USA Team Handball, Mike Hurdle:

“So what do I gain out of the compromise? Board involvement in the
writing of the new constitution! And this is what this is all about.”

There are a lot of tangential procedural and philosophical points that have also been made, but I’m going to focus on the compromise as I think, while flawed, it is a step in the right direction.

First the flaws in the compromise:

1) There is no need to remove the Constitution from the website. It’s already been on there for 3 weeks. And what a great opportunity to collect valuable feedback from the membership. I know that I appreciated the opportunity to send in my comments. Surely, if Board Members have had the time for long winded emails concerning conflicting procedural issues, they’ve also had the time to review the document and send in their comments as well. We should continue to collect suggestions and use them to help build a new draft of the document.

2) Let’s avoid a declaration that the vote was in violation of the constitution. And instead of “revisiting the process” let’s publish exactly what the process and timeline for developing the new constitution will be. This timeline should also be aggressive to meet USOC governance directives. No stonewalling of this effort should be allowed.

3) As a part of that new process, I could support a Board of Director review of the next draft of the Constitution. Of course, there’s nothing that requires this, but if it is done quickly and openly, I see more benefit then harm. In particular, it would be much more enlightening to see spirited Board discussion on actual elements of the new constitution. This discussion should be transparent and on the website or on an email list. Also, while this extra review by the $3,000 club should carry significant weight, it should not be directive to the Constitutional Review Committee. In other words, the adjudicating body that decides what goes into the final draft is the Constitutional Review Committee, not the Board of Directors.

As far as Mike’s point that the real issue is “Board involvement in the Constitution,” I think he’s absolutely correct. While both sides have maneuvered around procedural issues, this in reality is the real issue. Some elements of the Board feel that this Constitution is being rammed down their throats and Mike & Company don’t want to allow the Board to prevent needed change either through delaying tactics and/or significant modifications to the Constitution.

Well, I say both sides are right to a point. And both sides may very well have enough strength to mobilize a no vote on a final constitution they don’t like. Both sides need to recognize this and compromise so that we can move on to debates on issues like:

- $3,000 requirement for Board members
- Whether 4 “Independent” Board Members are sufficient
- Whether procedures for independent nominations for Presidency should be added
- Whether the CEO should be selected by a vote of the membership or the nine newly elected board members.

Constitutional Crisis

2005-05-28T11:19:00.000+02:00

Well, since the French are all worked up about the EU Constitution, I thought I'd weigh in on the US Handball constitutional crisis.

Before, I do so here are a few caveats that you should take into consideration:

1) I've been friends with and a team-mate of Mike Hurdle, since 1987, when he was just an outspoken, aggressive 17 year old kid that was a little rough around the edges. (I guess he's a little older now.)

2) I'm an active duty Air Force Officer, and I have a great deal of respect for a retired Army Colonel (JimThome) that was instrumental in starting the WestPoint program.

3) I voted for both Mike and Jim in the last election. So, I'd like to think that my bias is probably a little more neutral on this topic then most of themembership. If you do the math on the election results, however, this was a split ticket from more of the membership than you might think.

4) I'm not a lawyer, I wasn't at the infamous meeting and I haven't spoken to anybody, so all of the information I've received is from email traffic andweb postings.

That being said here's what I think in a nutshell.

1) Are we doing the right thing procedurally?

Well, I guess a group of lawyers could decide for certain if the infamous vote was legal or not. In my opinion, the text in the current constitution forgetting a new constitution certainly hasn't beenfollowed. And if you can't waive that text with a vote then the process hasn't been followed correctly. Legal aspects aside, it also has all the "appearances" of a segment of the board sneaking something past the rest. The key word here is "appearance". Justbecause something looks that way, doesn't necessarily mean that it's true. Regardless, appearances can be just as damaging as reality and Board Membersshouldn't be surprised like that.

2) What will arguing about the procedures accomplish?

The only thing following a strict interpretation of the process will accomplish, will be to delay the process. If it doesn't matter how long it takes for us to develop a new constitution then a delay shouldn't concern us too much. I think the President's letter presents a pretty good case, however, for USA Handball to be proactive and I just don't see any real harm with moving forward. Everybody still gets a chance to review the document and make suggestions so why not waive the 21 day requirement? It's been highlighted by some that the Board and the Executive Committee should see it first. I don't think our current constitution requires that, but if the $3,000 Club (i.e., the Board of Directors) wanted to add a short window for their review, I don't think it would hurt anything as long as it was done quickly. That USOC letter gets my attention though, so let's don't waste too much time.

3) Is the new constitution a good thing?

I saw some hint in the email traffic that this was a power grab by the current President. Well, the constitution is now on the website, so opinions can now be substantiated. When I compare it to the letter from the USOC to the constitution, it appears to do a pretty good job of following the USOC's instructions. I won't go through all the details, but I will highlight one remarkable aspect. It calls for an immediate Board of Director's election after approval of the Constitution. In other words, the current President, who under the current constitution is in a safe seat for four years is now open to immediate ouster. I would not call that a power grab!

In fact, one could argue based on the results of the run-off election for VP, that the President will be out of a job shortly. The logic being that many people didn't bother to vote in the first election and were shocked at Mike's election to President. The membership then got energized and made sure that their vote in the VP run-off counted. Theoretically, this membership segment will come out and vote again and take back their federation.

Bottom Line: Let's move on, provide our comments to the new constitution, approve it, and then vote for who we think can best lead USA Team Handball in the years to come.

"What? No Lobster and Filet Mignon?"

2005-05-22T15:20:00.000+02:00

From the USA Team Handball Website:

May 16, 2005: History is Made - At the Board of Directors meeting on Thursday, April 28th, in Houston, the Board of Directors unanimously approved a “Give, Get, or Get Out” proposal.
It was originally proposed by the Chair of Resource Development to raise much needed income. The Board, after lengthy discussion, agreed to allow expenses to be used against the total. Normally, Board members receive their airfare, hotel, and sometimes a per diem to attend meetings. The adopted proposal has each Board member “pay their own way” and deduct it against their $3,000 per year obligation.
The end result is that the organization is getting and/or saving a total of $3,000 per Board member each year. This is historic. No other Board in the history of handball in this country has had the courage to step up personally and become financially responsible to this degree.
The new administration, under President Mike Hurdle, has stressed the need to be more business-like in its approach. And this certainly shows us his leadership is in the right direction.
Special thanks to Dawn Lewis and Mike Thornberry who took Peter Siskind’s proposal and got consensus from the Board.
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Analysis:

Say what you want about the current board and the somewhat divided leadership it is currently providing, this is truly historic and somewhat amazing.

A little background for the uninitated. The title of of my blog entry refers to unsubstantiated rumors that when previous Boards used to meet in the 80’s and 90’s, they would go out to dinner at fancy restaurants and charge it to the Federation. I don’t know if this is true or not, but the mere fact that it was rumored, tainted the commitment of those who served on the Board.

The membership might disagree with some of the steps currently being taken by some members of the Board, but no one in the membership can claim that this Board isn’t showing a lack of personal commitment. What other Board can claim this level of support? My guess is that this might even ruffle some feathers with the other minor sports if the USOC points out Team Handball as an example to other NGBs.

A New Format for Nationals (Part 2)

2005-05-14T22:20:00.000+02:00

Further to my earlier post, here is how the 2005 Nationals results would have alloted extra bids for the 2006 Nationals:

1) Garden City (Defending Champion- Automatic Qualification)
2) Southeast Region (Condors)
3) Northeast Region (NYC)
4) West Region (LA THC)
5) Southeast Region (Atlanta THC)

Breakout
Northeast (2 Bids + Defending Champion)
Southeast (3 Bids)
West (2 Bids)

Taking into account geography here's how I would initially assign the regions for the 2006 Nationals. I only used the 12 elite teams and the top 8 from Div I here is the breakout. There may be some other teams that want to participate.

Northeast (2 Bids + Defending Champion)
1) Garden City (Defending Champion- Automatic Qualified)
2) New York City
3) New England
4) Cleveland Vipers
5) USA Deaf (assumes Wash DC- Galluadet Univ)
6) West Point

Southeast (3 Bids)
1) Condors
2) Atlanta
3) Carolina THC
4) Carolina Blue
5) FIU
6) Houston Stars
7) Houston Firehawks

West (2 Bids)
1) LA THC
2) Cal Heat
3) Santa Clarita
4) Utah
5) Kansas City
6) USAFA
7) CSU

Analysis

Northeast: Garden City has automatically qualified and NYC is a strong favorite to qualify. New England, Cleveland (Div 1 Runner-up), USA Deaf, and West Point fight for the remaining bid.

Southeast: The Condors and Atlanta are strong favorites to qualify. The 3rd bid is a dogfight between the other 5 clubs.

West: The California teams (LA, Cal Heat, and Santa Clarita) will duke it out with the Div 1 Champ Utah for their 2 bids.

Potential Formats:

Northeast: The first question the Northeast teams will need to consider is whether Garden City participates in their regional competition. If Garden City does participate, they will need to factor that in to their format. (i.e. they need to make sure that the 3rd place team and likely final bid goes to the third best team, not just the team that had fortunate bracketing. With the exception of West Point, none of these teams, to my knowledge, have organised any significant tournaments. Hopefully the need for regional qualifers will change that. With only 6 teams, it would be possible to have a simple round robin competition over one weekend to determine the seeding. A tournament in New York would be within driving distance of all the teams. Maybe the Deaf Team could host it at Gallaudet? They certainly have the facilities there. Only New England would have to buy some plane tickets.

Southeast: While several clubs have demonstrated the ability to host competition, geographically, this area is a little more challenging. The Houston and FIU teams are pretty much out of driving range. It's also quite possible that this region is larger than 7 teams. Perhaps teams could be grouped together into 3 groups of 3. For example, (3 Houston teams), (3 Atlanta teams), (2 NC, and FIU). The Houston teams could travel to NC and play the 2NC and FIU teams. The 2NC and FIU teams could travel to Atlanta and play the Atlanta teams. And the Atlanta teams could travel to Houston to play the Houston teams. This would result in a 9 team round robin while requiring every team (with the exception of FIU) to travel only once. (Sorry, FIU, but Miami is a long drive from anywhere)

West: This region could use the format that I described in the previous post.

Is this format workable? I say YES. With all of the tournaments now being played it should be simple to substitute a portion of that tournament slate into some regional qualifiers. And while its nice to get a California Gold Cup T-shirt or a Carolina Blue Cup trophy, I think it would be better to play for a ticket to the big dance at Nationals. While there's bound to be disagreements that will arise in getting organized, I think just about everyone prefers to decide seeding and qualification on the court rather than by a committee.

A Regional Qualification Format for the USA Team Handball National Championships

2005-04-24T15:45:00.000+02:00

I participated in my first US National Championships in 1987 and most recently last year in Houston. I have been frustrated from time to time with the bracketing of these tournaments. Recently, I was placed on a committee to look at how our championships are set up. As a part of this committee, I also was involved in determining the teams that would play in the Elite Division and group seeding for this year’s tournament. My purpose here is not to go into the details of the committee process, but I will give you my opinion of the committee process: It is a bad way to select teams.

USA Team Handball is currently exploring new formats for the National Championship. Formal plans will be briefed in the near future. Here’s what I’m proposing:

A Regional Qualification Format for the USA Team Handball National Championships

Key Features
- The clubs in each region will take on most of the responsibility for determining who qualifies from their region for Nationals
- Results from the previous year's Nationals will be used to allocate bids to each region. Only the Nat’l champion, and possibly the host club, will get a free ticket to next year's nationals.

Proposed Regional Groupings.
- I think that right now there are two regions that are fairly well defined in that most of the clubs are within reasonable driving distance of each other. Those regions are Southeast (ATH, Condors, FIU, North Carolina, Tar Heel) and Northeast (NYC, Garden City, New England). Also, I'm pretty sure there are other Division 1 teams in those areas which would also logically fit)
- Other parts of the country are however, more geographically separated. California, with 3 clubs creates a mini-region as does Houston, with 2 clubs. My initial thought is that a large Western region should be created containing the California, Houston and other assorted clubs West of the Mississippi. Travel is of course a problem, but I don't see anyway around it. Most of those clubs are used to traveling anyway, so it shouldn't be that drastic of a change. Attending a qualifier might also be more incentive then a Salt Lake City or Falcon Cup trophy. Houston also might prefer to be grouped with the Atlanta clubs and that is also feasible.
- Non-geographic teams (e.g. Knight Air, the Deaf Team) would also have to be placed in a region. This would be done with their consultation.

Regional Format Determination
- Working by consensus (i.e. all clubs must agree) each region would set up its own parameters for qualification. This could work much like how the different continents today decide their own process for World Championship qualification. Pan America has two regional tourneys and one final tourney to identify 3 entrants. Europe uses a combination of the European Championship Results, pool play over several weeks, and a 2 team home and away competition to determine their several spots. An ambitious region could set up pool play over the course of 3 months between interested teams. Another region could set up 2 subregionals with 4 teams. Another region could utilize an already existing club tournament and set up one of the initial pools with regional teams seeking to get qualified. The other pool could have clubs from outside the region and the defending National Champion. There are a lot of ways it could be done-- let those clubs decide how to do it.
- If, however, teams can not reach consensus agreement on a format for qualification the Competition and Organization Committee will select the representation from that region. This will be the “Nuclear Option” and if this isn't an incentive for the regions to get their act together, I don't know what is! I would also recommend the that the fall back criteria for the Committee's selection be clearly defined. In particular, I think it should be limited to performance in the current calendar year, only. The Committee would also probably focus on head to head regional competition. For instance, let's say that one team refused to cooperate on a format with 7 other teams in a region and those 7 teams held a tournament. While no longer set up by consensus, the committee would probably think the results of that tournament would be a pretty good indicator for selection.

Regional Allotment of Spots at Nationals
- For Nationals, regions would be allocated bids based on the performance of that region's clubs at the previous year's Nationals. (i.e. If one power house region captured spots 1-4, they would be allocated 5 spots for qualification at the next year's Nationals) While not as good of reward as automatic qualification, this still provides incentive for doing well, as you will improve your chances for qualification next year.

8 spots for the 2006 Nationals
1 allocation - For the host club (if there is no host club, the region with the next ranked team gets a spot.)
1 allocation - For the champion, if returning
3 allocations - 1 automatic bid for each region
3 allocations - based on region performance at the 2005 nationals (places 2nd to 4th)

Roster Control
- Prior to the start of the qualification period, players may freely affiliate with the club of their choice. The decision on which club to affiliate with is the sole choice of the player. Players, however, may not change their club affiliation until after the National Championships.
- Players may only affiliate with one club for the purpose of qualification. Players could, however play for other teams in non-qualification related contests and tournaments.
- Clubs may only attempt to qualify one team for the Elite Division. A club could draw from any player on its club roster for qualification matches and the National Championships. The National Championships will, however, likely limit the number of players and Regions may set limits on rosters as well for qualification matches.
- At Nationals players may freely transfer from teams in the Elite Division to teams in the lower divisions. Players may not transfer, however, to other Elite Division teams.

Implementation Plan

2005 Nationals
- Inform clubs of plans for future Nationals. Brief them on proposed plans for qualification
- Brief teams on 3 tentative proposed regions (West, Northeast and Southeast)
- Use the results of the 2005 Nationals for determining the number of bids allocated to each region for qualification for the 2006 Nationals
- Get a list of teams that tentatively plan to participate in regional qualification

Summer/Fall 2005
- Formalize qualification procedures for the 2006 Nationals
- Receive feedback from clubs on proposed regional assignments
- Use iterative approach on website and solicit member input

1 November 2005
- Go final with Regional groupings of teams

1 December 2005
- Due date for teams to submit their formal “Intent to Participate”

30 January 2006
- Regions submit qualification plan for Nationals. Note, these plans aren’t approved by USA Team Handball they are just provided in case a team later on files a protest in regards to the format not being properly followed or some other issue.

15 Feb - Apr 2006
- Designated qualification period for 2006 Nationals
- Player/club affiliation finalized (Note this will require the General Membership to get their $35 in sooner than many are used to. This is something that will need to be widely publicized.)

22 Apr 2006
- Seed teams 1-8 based on established written criteria. I would recommend the using the regional placement from the previous year’s nationals and performance during the qualification period.

Example Regional Setup

Western Region (3 bids)
The California clubs (Cal Heat, LA, and Santa Clarita) and the Mountain Clubs (AF, Utah and CSU) agreed to play a single round-robin among the 6 clubs. This was done over 3 weekends
Weekend 1: Cal Heat hosted LA and Santa Clarita. Each team played each other: 3 total matches and 2 matches for each team over the course of a Saturday morning and afternoon
Weekend 2: CSU hosted AF and Utah. The same format from California was used.
Weekend 3: The California teams flew out to Colo Spgs for a West Coast/Mountain States Showdown. Each California team played the 3 Mountain State teams for a total of 9 games and 3 matches for each team. The top 3 teams in the pool were awarded bids for Nationals

Potential concerns with this format and my response

- What about the performance of teams at the previous Nationals, shouldn’t the top teams be automatically included in the next year’s Nationals?
ANSWER: The problem with rewarding teams from last year, is that this year’s team can be radically different from the current year’s team. Players age and rosters change dramatically. Recent performance is a much better indicator of team strength.

- What about traditional tournaments like the Carolina Blue Cup and West Point? We can only play so many games a year. If we add regional competition these tournaments will be impacted
ANSWER: This could very well be true. The regions should try to work with these tournaments to minimize the impact of regional competition. It might also be possible to use a portion of these tournaments for regional competition. Regardless, the potential impact is more than offset by the benefit of structured competition with a clear goal (qualification for Nationals). I think that would be more rewarding than a Blue Cup trophy and I think most players would agree with that.

- Won’t some clubs be unhappy with the region they are placed in or won’t some teams not want a particular team in their region?
ANSWER: Yes, some teams will be difficult to please. I think, however with a reasonable amount of dialogue a 90% solution could be achieved. The bottom line is that I would rather have teams whine about the region they are in, then the Division they are placed in at Nationals.

- Our club doesn’t want to play in any regional. The National Championship is enough for us.
ANSWER: If you can’t or don’t want to play in regional competition, Division 1 will still be there for your team.

- The one team per club rule will really limit our club. We’ve sent two teams to Nationals before and they were both competitive teams. We have a lot of club members who have no desire to join or start a new club. And we have new players that we would like to develop and experience competition at the elite level. What’s the point of this rule anyway?
ANSWER: Anytime you have duplicate affiliations the potential for conflict will be there. Could a situation arise where club team 1 (which has already qualified) loses on purpose to their other club team to improve their chances at qualifying? It sure could. This problem could be mitigated by potentially with strict roster control of the teams, but it would necessitate eliminating the National Champion or host team automatically qualifying, since a creative team could simply stock their team trying to qualify with their good players. I’m sure there are other creative tricks that could be done that I haven’t thought of. The simple rule of 1 club, 1 team will eliminate that and it will foster the growth of the sport, by eliminating clubs from over stockpiling with talent.

- With player affiliation being open what’s to prevent other teams from raiding our team for players?
ANSWER: Players will have a choice on whether to switch allegiances. If teams are interesting in keeping players they will need to be straightforward with their commitments to players. In particular, teams laden with talent will be very vulnerable. Rising stars might be wise to reconsider their affiliation if the club won’t internally commit a roster spot at Nationals, because Hans is flying in from Germany.

The “Marco Polo’s from Canada

2005-04-21T15:40:00.000+02:00

From the February 2005 French HandAction Magazine (I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies in this translation.)

The “Marco Polo’s from Canada

The Canadians rowed, rowed… before reaching the promised land: Tunisia, where they had a rude welcome, but also one rich in learning. They are admirable pioneers that will come back stronger the next time…

Vincent Levesque, Marcellin Pelletier, Luc Pellerin… The players have names that sound French, but they speak the language a little differently when it comes to Handball. “pointage” for “nombre of buts” (number of goals), “lancer de penaltie” for “penaltie” (penalty shot), or “echappees” for “montees de balle” (turn-over). They play for Champlain, for Chaudieres in Quebec or for Celtique in Montreal, and they played in the World Championships for the first time since 1978. The result of having won the Bronze medal at the Pan-American Championships and having put some distance between themselves and Greenland and United States, the North American representatives in 2001 and 2003.

Lilliputians of Handball, but they are “armed with determination and a new pair of shoes,” as they noted with humor on the official site of their Federation, which is practically the only source of information on their Handball adventure, since only two local reporters from Champlain traveled with them! This lack of coverage is mainly the result of being drowned out by Hockey.

The 14 Quebecois and 2 Albertans (the only Anglophones) had to make sacrifices for their passion and to be a member of the team which traveled to Tunisia. Each player had to pay 3,000 Canadian Dollars for gym time, heating, equipment, and especially two warm up tournaments prior to Tunisia (around 10 matches). Fortunately, equipment was given to them at the last moment, but still to play at the World Championships is a luxury for the young players (23 is the average age), a majority of whom are students.

Like Geoffroy Bessette-Cosette, the little left wing, and hero of the Angola game with 6/8 shooting. A good pioneer, Geoffroy went to get a little French culture for one season at Montelimar, Ligue Nationale 1 (which is the French 3rd Division) in 2003-2004. This season, Charles Barriteau plays for Lille/Villeneuve d’Ascq (2nd Division) and averages 1 goal/game while Alexis Bertand is an essential part of the Ivry reserve team (3rd Division). “By going to France we not only improve our Handball knowledge, but also learn the defects of our own program. The National selection started again 3 years ago, and we had 9 clubs in our elite division and a second division. Some teams are comparatively similar to the French 3rd Division, but there are only a few good match ups in our league.”

To define a little better what Canadian Handball is, one should know that the record attendance at the National Championship Final is 1000 spectators, but usually crowds are closer to 50 or 100 people. In effect, it is difficult to fill the stands when the matches are on Sunday morning. “It’s the gym time that we are given.”

Under the influence of Handball demons (8 hours of practice/week for these amateurs) and of their sorcerer, Mohamed Benkreira, (who coached at Villeneuve d’Ascq from 1995-97 and then was the National Team Coach for Qatar for 3 years), Canada failed to beat Angola, the 3rd African representative, losing 26-27 in their final match. And this was after the rude beating by Denmark (18-52) and France (16-44), 31 years after the last Franco-Canadian duel, where France had some difficultly, winning 22-15.

“France is our Handball reference,” explains Mohamad Benkreira, the coach. “Before the World Championships, I sent 6 or 7 players to the Paris metro area, for them to meet with Constanti (French Federation National Team Director) in his office, at the Federation. Then I overwhelmed them with tapes of France’s most recent matches.” Mohammed doesn’t count his time, nor his money for this team. Paid 8,000 dollars/year, this Algerian is also an adjunct professor at the University of Montreal. His first goal is to get more international matches, because he knows that Canada has to quit playing Handball in the Americas, and travel the globe to seek matches without worrying about negative results.

“One has to absorb, absorb all information,” underlines Geoffroy, a fan of Michael Guigou (French Nat’l Team Left Wing). “And we will talk of our experience upon our return to convince our sponsors.” Geoffroy doesn’t forget that it is him and his teammates that will go door-to-door when they return, with tapes from the World Championships.

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My thoughts on this article and the US prospects for 2007:

It doesn’t take a genius to see that if the US is going to qualify for the 2007 World Championships, we will need to beat the Canadians. (It is unrealistic to consider beating Argentina and Brazil—That gap is way to wide) And one might argue that the gap between the US and Canada has widened substantially. Despite the plastering the Canadians got at the World Championships, that experience and the preparation that went with it, is invaluable. If they keep their team intact for 2 years (they’re young so it might be feasible) and they keep sending players to get experience in France they will continue to improve.

Meanwhile, the US program is at best, standing in place. How can we close this gap by Summer 2006? Well, without a combination of better players and some decent preparatory team training prior to PANAM championships I don’t see it happening. Maybe there’s some American Passport holders out there that can help us throw a “Hail Mary.” The mid-term solution to a better program is to send some promising players overseas like the Canadians, Brazilians and Argentines. Or start up a full time National Team training program—assuming of course funding appears out of nowhere for this. In the long term, there are a multitude of possible steps that could be taken based on the overall development path that is chosen.

Moins Treize! Montpelier Pulls Off a Miracle

2005-03-14T23:00:00.000+01:00

Well, I have probably watched the most compelling game that I have ever seen yesterday afternoon as Montpelier hung on to lose by 13 versus Flensburg. Having won by 14 last week, they needed to lose by 13 or fewer to advance. Flensburg, pecked away at the overall lead until they finally went +14 with 1:00 left in the game. Montpelier failed to score right away, but got got the ball back yet again with 10 seconds left, but they failed to score on a controversial non-call as time expires. (probably, should have been a penalty throw, in my opinion) Game over, Flensburg had just pulled off probably the most dramatic comeback in Champions League history.

But wait. There’s still a nine meter throw left. Of course it’s only a couple of meters from the sideline, so it’s a mere formality- Right? Mais, non! Every player on the French team turns and fires as is often done on a no time remaining 9 meter and Greg Anquetl, the veteran right wing who just retired from the French National Team turns toward the center and puts it right between the goalie’s legs. Moins Treize (-13) Unbelievable! You could have heard a pin drop in Flensburg.

World Championships 2005 News and Notes

2005-02-01T21:31:00.000+01:00

Biggest Surprise: Tie- Greece and Tunisia: Greece’s upset of France and Tunisia’s upset of Denmark were huge surprises. I missed the broadcast of the Greek upset, but saw Tunisia’s defeat of Denmark as well as their draw versus France. The atmosphere for the Denmark match in particular was sensational, as the home town crowd clearly was a factor in the emotional play of the Tunisians. For a 15 minute stretch in the 2nd half their Goalie stopped everything and Hmam Wissem (look for him to play in Germany or Spain soon) nailed some 10 meter standing start jump shots.

Biggest Disappointment: Denmark. One of the 3 favorites is catching an early flight home. Here they were cruising along with 3 straight victories, probably not overlooking Tunisia, but thinking that they would be able to beat them. 48 hours later they are on the plane heading home like the Canadians and Angolans. I hope they bought non-restricted tickets.
PANAM Report: Disappointing overall. Argentina and Brazil both managed a victory a piece and at times played the Europeans close. I saw Argentina against Sweden and they hung around for awhile. They have a good team, they just need a couple more players to be truly competitive. Their big scorer, Gull, was marked most of the game and that seemed to put them out of synch. Losing to Japan, was also a disappointment for them. If they had won that match, they would have played Spain with an opportunity to make the main round. As for the Canadians, their match against France was not pretty. They are probably pretty happy, though, to almost beat Angola.

Africa Rising: Maybe, we need to get the World Championships in the Americas. The African Nations, did pretty well on home turf as Egypt almost joined Tunisia in the main round. If Tunisia can finish in at least 9th place, Africa will take one of allotted performance positions for the next Championships. This means 4 teams as opposed to 3 will qualify from Africa.

Advertising: Unlike most American sports, advertising is often on the playing surfaces and player uniforms. While we are seeing more of this in the USA, I strongly doubt that we will ever see an advertisement for BetandWin.com prominently displayed on the center circle and on player uniforms. I must say it is very progressive for Handball to recognize the natural symbiotic relationship between sports and betting, but I doubt that NBA Commissioner Stern would agree.

Dollars and Cents: According to L’Equipe (The French Sports Daily):
France will pay each player 25,000 Euros for a 1st place finish, 20,000 for 2nd, and 17,000 for 3rd place. Each Canadian player had to pay 1,500 Euros to handle travel costs.

Predictions: Order will be returned to the Handball World this week. Russia and France will advance from Group 1 and Croatia and Spain will advance from Group 2.

Team Handball Betting on the Web

2005-01-10T21:20:00.000+01:00

There are several websites on the web that offer betting on Team Handball. It's possible to bet on anything from Danish Women's League matches to the upcoming World Championships in Tunisia. No, there are no lines (yet) for the SETHC or the NETHC.

Some websites that offer handball betting include:

Nordicbet.com
Centrebet.com
Betandwin.com

Perhaps the most interesting thing about these websites is that it is a pretty good way to assess the relative strength of International Teams. Why is a good way? Because quite simply money talks. If you think these odds are inaccurate, open an account and make a mint.

For instance take a look at the odds for the Pan-American sides in the upcoming World Championships. At Nordic Bet, Argentina is currently listed at 300-1 to win it all; Brazil at 500-1, and Canada at 1,000-1. Centrebet gives a little better return for your money with Argentina and Brazil both at 500-1 and Canada at 2,500-1. As a reference point, the 3 co-favorites, France, Denmark, and Croatia are listed at around 4-1. Maybe, someday a team from the America's will make it down below 100-1. In fact, I'm a little surprised Argentian isn't shown a little more respect.

Or, as another reference point, take a look at the odds for the first round games. If you want to bet on the Quebcois (er.. Canadians) to pull "a miracle on teraflex" against France you will get 11 to 1 odds. This, however is a total rip-off since the reverse bet on France is at 1 to 100 (i.e., you have to bet $1,000 to make $10). While practically a sure thing, that's a pretty steep risk for a small payoff. Argentina and Brazil are provided a little more respect with their first round match-ups, probably because of their performance in Portugal, two years ago. It will be interesting to see, if the individual game match-up odds will show a little more respect as more tournament games are played.

First Round Game odds (Betandwin.com)

Croatia vs Argentina Croatia (1-33); Tie (15-1); Argentina (8.5-1)
Norway vs Brazil Norway (1-5); Tie 13-1; Brazil (3.5-1)
France vs Canada France (1-999); Tie (16-1); Canada (11-1)

To Win World Championship Odds (Centrebet.com)
FRANCE 3.5-1
CROATIA 4-1
DENMARK 4-1
RUSSIA 6.5-1
SPAIN 7-1
SWEDEN 9-1
GERMANY 11-1
SERBIA & MONTENEGRO 20-1
SLOVENIA 25-1
NORWAY 30-1
ICELAND 66-1
TUNISIA 66-1
CZECH REPUBLIC 100-1
EGYPT 100-1
GREECE 150-1
JAPAN 350-1
ALGERIA 500-1
ARGENTINA 500-1
BRAZIL 500-1
ANGOLA 1000-1
AUSTRALIA 2500-1
CANADA 2500-1
KUWAIT 2500-1
QATAR 2500-1

Why aren't US National Teams More Competitive?

2004-08-10T20:37:00.000+02:00

As with almost any sport there are only a few key variables that predict success. With Team Handball, as well as most sports, those variables are
1) Raw Athletic Talent,
2) Training
3) Experience

Let's assess those variables with the current Men's National Team.

1) Raw Athletic Talent

A good handball athlete typically has the following traits: good quickness, good hand-eye cooperation, jumping ability, and a strong throwing arm. Additionally, since Team Handball is a rough sport, athletes must not be immune to contact. While height is not as critical in Team Handball, as it is in a sport like basketball, it still can be a significant factor, particularly for Backcourt players at the International Level. As described, it's safe to say there are no shortage of athletes with these characteristics in the US. Unfortunately, too few of them are playing Team Handball. And those that are currently playing for the US National Team are simply not as talented as most other National teams are. Now, this is not to say that these athletes aren't trying or working hard, they just simply don't have the raw talent to compete.

(Side note here: This is not to say that I ever had the raw athletic talent either when I played on the National Team 11 years ago. Quite frankly, I had decent size, a little jumping ability and the willingness to mix it up inside, but I never had the coordination to play backcourt or the quickness on Defense to consistently stop top players in 1 on 1 situations.)

But, bact to my point on raw athletic talent, its safe to say that when the US team steps on the court right now, most teams are better talent wise. I don't think that this was always the case. From my own National Team experience, I can safely say that while most of the athletes on the other teams I played against were better athletes than me, they were not better athletes than several other players on the US team. Where the Euros beat us, and beat us handidly, was with experience.

2) Training

Handball in Europe is a well known sport and players start playing organised Handball at a very early age. The typical US player doesn't start playing Handball until his late teens. In the US there are few organized leagues and the level of play is very rudimentary. In Europe there are Professional and amateur leagues at many different skill levels. Quite simply the opportunities to play are greater and the quality of competition is much higher. Case in point is the recreational league that I played in, in France. This amateur league in the greater Paris Metropolitan level fielded better teams than one would typically see at the US National Championship tournament. In fact I would wager that if all 10 teams in the 2nd tier Paris Rec league had participated at the US Championships in 2004 that they would have have taken 10 of the top 12 spots. The team I played on also practice 2 times a week. The US National Team has been getting together a couple of weeks before major tournaments and as far as I know only a very few teams in the US have regular structured practice.

3) Experience
Unfortunately even if you practice regularly your level of improvement will at some point be limited by the people you are training with and the competition you face in matches. Having quality athletes who train hard still won't work if you lack experience. When a US National Team plays against other national teams US players are often seeing techniques and strategies for the very first time. Sometimes, there is simply no substitute for the experience of getting your assed kicked a few times to understand what you need to learn in order to become a better team.

Summary: In the history of US Team Handball there have been a few instances where we've had the athletes and we've had the organised training, and the level of experience was increasing. Invariably, however, players would retire and move on with their lives and the program would have to start over from scratch. With the current US National Team, we are lacking in all 3 categories. This is not to blame the players: they are trying their best. This is not to blame USATH: they are trying to do what they can with limited resources. This is simply reality.

How competitive are US National Teams against other countries?

2004-07-31T16:55:00.000+02:00

The diplomatic answer, is "not very".

The undiplomatic answer, "not at all".

National team can be broken into three fairly distint tiers of quality. The first tier consists primarily of European teams, with a few others (notably Egypt-Men and South Korea-Women). The second and third tiers basically consists of the rest of the world, minus the noted exceptions. When first tier teams play second tier teams the game might be close for awhile, but in the end the first tier team's experience results in a comfortable victory of 5-10 goals. When a first tier team plays a third tier team it is generally a blow out in which the first tier team can pretty much decide what they want the final score to be. (As an analogy, think original USA Dream Team Basketball vs Angola)

Historically, the US has alternated between the second and third tier. Currently, the US is clearly in the third tier. Recent results in Pan American Championships certainly support this assessment. In July, the Men's Team finished 7th out of 8 teams at the Pan American Championships in Chile. The US had a 1-4 record and lost to the 2nd place team, Brazil 31-13 in Pool Play. Last year the Women's team placed 4th in the same competition. The Women's Junior team this past Summer finished 7th out of 7 teams and lost by an average of 28 goals. Keep in mind, too, that none of the Pan American Teams are in the first tier and only the Brazilian and Argentinian Men's and Women's Program can be considered 2nd tier. (Although, an argument can be made, based on recent World Championship performances, that they may be poised for a breakthrough to the first tier. It will be interesting to see how Brazil does at the Olympics.)

US National teams have not always performed so poorly. In the 1980's and 90's the US was a second team tier and usually placed 1st or 2nd at Pan Am championships. Performance in the Olympics and World Championships varied between a 2nd tier or 3rd tier performance. As a point of reference the World Championships team I played for in 1993 lost every game they played by 16 or more goals-- clearly a 3rd tier performance. In Atlanta, the Men's team played to some measure of respectability, placing 9th. The Women's team also has had periods of respectability. At the LA Olympics in 1984, the Women placed 4th, although they benefitted from a weaker field due to the Communist Boycot.

To sum up, the US can be characterized as a team, that while at times has shown promise, has consistently been at the back of the pack.