Something has to change — The Handball Story that needs to be told
With the 2016 Olympics underway and more articles being written about how “Handball Is The Best Sport You Don’t Know Shit About”, “Calling all U.S. athletes: Handball needs you”, “Team USA can win handball gold in 2020 by recruiting your favorite mobile quarterbacks”, “USA Coach Says It Would Take LeBron James 6 Months To Become The World’s Best Handball Player”, “U.S. athletes run fast, jump high, throw hard — why are we so bad at handball?” amongst the many that have been written in the past; I need to tell my story.
4 years ago, I had a similar Hypothesis and I agreed with all the articles written up till then so much that many WRITE about every year during the Olympics yet have taken NO ACTION on and decided to apply some “Athletic” Scientific Method / Tim Ferriss methodology to prove it.
Step 1 — Hypothesis: If we pull together some of the best athletes in the US who want to compete in the Olympics with minimal training could we do so Internationally in the sport of Team Handball? And why has this not already happened?
Step 2 — Do Background Research: I needed to put together a handful of high level athletes with zero handball training and start playing. Luckily, I had the 2012 So Cal Beach Handball Tournament in my back yard, was a former Division One athlete and had friends who also played collegiate and pro athletics over a wide range of sports.
Step 3 — Construct a Hypothesis: I reached out to the director to sign a team up for the So Cal Beach Handball tournament and he initially replied that because we had never played handball it might be better to join another team with experienced players.
This would go against my Hypothesis so I insisted the group of beginner players I had would be sufficient enough to compete. In the end, the director compromised and said we could build our own team as long as a Member of the US Handball team could join to show us the ropes and make sure we did not make fools of ourselves. AWESOME… or so we thought.
I managed to scrap together the following former college athletes:
(Myself) Notre Dame Lacrosse — Attack —6’1–205 lbs
USC Volleyball — Outside Hitter — 6’5” — 185 lbs
USC Volleyball — Outside Hitter — 6’3” — 190 lbs
USC Volleyball — Libero — 5’11” — 177lbs
Claremont Mckenna Defensive Back — 6’1” — 180 lbs
USC Volleyball — Outside Hitter — 6’6” — 215 lbs
Essentially, I had a very well rounded group of former collegiate athletes who were also multiple sport athletes in high school. Add the Team USA player and we felt like we could run with anyone!
Step 4 — Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment:
Tournament time; after signing our team in, the director of the tournament introduced us to our new teammate and he taught us the rules. During that time, we all started to joke around about how we were going to kick the shit out of everybody but our teammate and USA member immediately put us in our place. He described how much experience each of the teams had, how long they had been playing together as well as how far they drove to play showing their dedication (one all the way from Vegas).
Shit, maybe because we have never played this sport these guys who have played for 6 years will kick our ass? Immediately humbled…
With that in mind, we started warming up and then the team USA member joined in… After the first throw, our minds started racing at how good all of us could really be at this sport because our teammate was not the athlete we thought would be on Team USA. Our expectations were now super high for what was to come.
Essentially, we dominated each game leading up to the finals and never let the team USA member touch the court unless we couldn’t run because of sheer tiredness.
The finals was a much closer match and eventually led to penalty shots. In the end, “Uncles With Benefits” (our ridiculous team name that they had to announce at the end of the tournament), took the Beach crown against a team with collectively 30 years of handball experience; our team, simply hours. One of our players even took home Tournament MVP and the hardware was ours!
Step — 5 — Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion: Okay, so we won this tournament and we were on cloud nine, we were even pushing the hashtag #RoadToRio and if we would have trademarked the saying at the time, we would have received it before the Olympic Committee #FAIL. Handball was so much fun and we needed to find a way to continue playing with a glimmer of Olympic hope in our eyes!
CONCLUSION ONE, better athletes can compete in the Sport of handball with limited training and win.
Step 6 — Alter Experiment, Reanalyze Data and Draw another Conclusion — Could we do the same in an indoor league with real handball rules? (Beach Handball is different)
To do this, we joined the LA indoor handball league and once again only did so with athletes who hadn’t played handball before the Beach Tournament. Our team started on fire and continued to progress all the way to the finals where the opposing team was essentially a collection of all the best available players from the other teams in the league. An all star team of experienced players put together against a group of athletes who have only played for a couple of weeks seems a little unfair but we were willing to take on the challenge.
In the end, we went into overtime because of two horrible calls leading to two penalty shots, one to send the game to overtime and the other ending our championship run. Everyone in the gym wanted the newcomers to lose but although they got what they wanted, we still put on a show.
Step 7— Communicate Your Results:
Overall, better athletes EQUAL better competition EQUAL potential for USA greatness! All of this can happen in a matter of weeks or even months leading up to qualifiers proving CHANGE is needed for the 2020 Olympics.
SOMETHING NEEDS TO CHANGE
IN THE END, our experimental group was rejected by the inflexible system in place which I believe is not tapping the correct networks or raising enough awareness for the sport in order to first qualify for the Olympics via the Pan Am games and then win gold.
Our group was definitely not the answer but I know it could have been a good start.
People point to the funding problem but if you can get famous athletes in professional sports or wealthy enough former collegiate athletes involved and run fundraising events with celebrities, high end networks, etc. to send a team to the Olympics… anything can happen.
Will these athletes train year round at a sport in a remote location for the slim chance of becoming an Olympian?
DEFINITELY NOT, however, imagine what you could do with the right athletic connections, training sessions at a training center in a fantastic vacation like city while giving amazing current and former professional / national team level athletes the opportunity to be an Olympian in a sport outside of their own on their own dime with access to funds via their own networks the year leading up to the Olympic qualifiers and Olympics themselves…
USA gold.
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The Struggle is real for the US Handball Organization
As many articles have eluded to, Handball as an overall sport is easy to pick up for anyone with an all around athletic background and for it to get the recognition it needs to be a reputable program; we need to change the US national team playbook and start thinking outside the box. Maybe they should emulate the USA Lacrosse model which builds the team the year of the World Games with athletes who have other jobs.
With the success of my little experiment I thought it was a great time to reach Team USA, like the Coach is asking now, letting them know what we’d done with our Rio aspirations (many now Tokyo) and a very well thought out plan for upcoming tournaments as well as the training needed in a location that made sense. I also understood the group of athletes I had was good but if we were able to pick it up that quick I can only imagine what NBA, NFL, MLB or alternate National Team level athletes would be able to accomplish.
So, I contacted as many people in the US Handball community as possible, essentially telling each our story and how I thought they could find the best athletes like ourselves via D1 college networks into professional level players. I even went so far as meeting with a former Team USA Olympian in Los Angeles.
What happened next?…
I got no where with the organization outside of the fact that I should sign up for all the USA things they have in place in remote locations that are not easily accessible on quick trip for someone who works full time. From a Team USA manager perspective, I would be pissed because doing this immediately limits the pool of athletes the team can access thus limiting the possibility of the US truly competing at an International level.
The US Handball organization expects people to move or travel to a central location to train and uproot their lives. However, unlike almost every other sport that actually has high chances of Olympic aspirations, this is asking way too much. Add in the politics for who makes the team, having to pay your timing dues through the organization and you might get a chance.
I understand their needs to be a certain level of commitment but for a sport trying to find its place in the states something needs to be done differently considering we’ve made little headway. The ability for high level athletes to pick up Handball compared to more technical sports with established programs should open access to so many athletes but we have failed.
During the time that I reached out, Team USA was also looking for a long term residency program and landed on Auburn. Although the University is gracious enough to provide facilities for training, it isn’t enough.
If you were to bring a centralized training regime to a city like Los Angeles where there is a large pool of off season pro, former pro, former collegiate athletes and even former Olympic athletes, an abundance of jobs, networks for fundraising, facilities, and a place people visit for vacation; you’d have a recipe for success. It’s the perfect place to start growing the sport. In addition, Olympic athletes train there between Games and could give insight into the elite level of competition. Or instead of centralizing something, putting money into regional training facilities / club teams around the largest cities in the US that are accessible to more athletes could open the pool available to play the sport.
