USATH works to popularize team handball

Steve Pastorino, USA Team Handball General Manager, has a vision.
 
One day, regional team handball leagues will exist all over the country. Not just in the handball meccas of New York City and West Point, N.Y. But everywhere. It'll be Southeast vs. West, Midwest vs. Northeast, Southwest vs. Northeast.
 
"The goal is a league in each of our five regions,'' Pastorino said.
 
Perhaps those leagues will produce future Olympians coached by Olympic coaches. Maybe, even, the USA will join some European nations as a handball power, driven by regional handball clubs from New York City and West Point to Chicago and Bozeman, Montana. Remember, the USA men won a silver medal at the 1986 Goodwill Games in Moscow and the women won gold at the 1995 Pan Am Games.
 
The start to all began November 14, when Park West High School in New York City played host to the first round of men's league play in the Northeast Region. West Point - the host for a second round of games on December 5 - was there, as was the New England Freeze, a Boston-based club; the New York Athletic Club, and the New York City Team Handball Club, the defending national champs.
 
"The long-term vision is to have them competing within their region and then meet up at nationals," said Dominque Dumont, USA Team Handball East Regional Director.
 
"It's progress, it's a step forward," she said.
 
"We want to see the sport keep moving forward," said Maj. G. Adam Hodges, coach and officer in charge of the handball program at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
 
Jan O'Shea, a longtime team manager for national handball squads, is the league's commissioner.
 
A second tier of Northeast Region clubs, the "B'' Division, will play each other in a series of tournaments. That division will feature teams from Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia, Penn State University, and the University of Pittsburgh, in addition to teams from West Point and New York City.
 
In time, USA Team Handball officials hope to have this format in place coast to coast. The Southeast Region hopes to have a league in place by 2011, Pastorino said.
 
"We talk a lot about having a de-centralized structure," Pastorino said. "National championship teams qualifying from various regionals."
 
Among the best of those clubs now are the teams from New York City Team Handball Club and West Point, which played to a 21-21 tie in the recent Chicago Inter Challenge. But why, suggests Pastorino, do both of those New York teams have to go all the way to Chicago to play each other?
 
"They should be playing each other on a regular basis, never leaving the region (except for tournaments)," Pastorino said.
 
League play on a regional level is just one substantial change being invoked within a sport that hasn't had a USA team in the Olympic Games since they were held in Atlanta in 1996. That year, the United States men earned an automatic entry by being the host country of the Games. The men finished ninth in a 12-team field that year, and the women, who qualified as 1995 Pan Am Games Champions, finished last out of eight teams.
 
Since then, the sport has fallen to low levels in the USA.  At one time, the former handball governing body-the USA Team Handball Federation-wound up being de-certified by the U.S. Olympic Committee. USA Team Handball was certified in 2008 with Dieter Esch as president, and is headquartered in Salt Lake City.
 
Despite the news in October that Chicago would not be hosting the 2016 Summer Olympics, which would have provided automatic berths for USA Team Handball, the new governing body has moved aggressively toward earning an Olympic berth.

USA officials have their eyes on the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games, but haven't given up hope on the London 2012 Olympic Games. The biggest obstacle is that the USA is among 57 countries in the Americas vying for one Olympic handball berth. Esch and other officials are attempting to get the Pan American Team Handball Federation split into a North American group with its own Olympic berth.
 
"Realistically, 2012 is a long shot,'' Pastorino said. "But we wouldn't be doing anybody any favors if we don't at least make an attempt to get there."
 
On the women's side, a group of Olympians formed to study ways in which the sport can grow in the USA. Chairing that effort is Kathy Rex, a 1988 Olympian.
 
Already, the USA has forged relationships with Croatia, Germany and Poland, in which foreign handball federations will help train coaches and referees, and develop players. Pastorino said those are three of the top five handball-playing nations in the world.

He added that the USA is working to establish partnerships with the other two top handball nations, France and Denmark. France won the men's gold medal at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
 
"We're telling them they can have a great impact on building the sport in the U.S.," Pastorino said.  

"It is an honor to be able to help the United States. At the same time, this is a great recognition of Croatian handball,'' Croatian Handball Federation President Sandi Sola said in a statement.
 
As a part of the program, coaches from Croatia, Germany and Poland will visit the U.S. for two months at a time to train coaches here, said Mariusz Wartalowicz, USA Team Handball Technical Director.
 
The European connection doesn't stop there. Some of the U.S.'s top male handball players are playing for club teams in handball-rich Europe, including Keith Fine, 23, a national team goalie and West Point graduate, where handball has a tradition covering more than 30 years.
 
This month, the U.S. women's national team is heading to Poland to play Denmark, Poland and other select U-21 teams in Szczyrk, Poland.
 
Earlier this year, a pair of USA U-18 teams had an impressive showing in Germany. The girls' team won four of five matches, and the boys' team won three of five.
 
Eight youth athletes, including Kobi Rex, son of Olympian Kathy Rex, have been training all fall in Iceland, and going to school there. Iceland was silver medalists in the men's division at the 2008 Olympic Games.
 
To see such success at the youth level is no small accomplishment, Pastorino said. While men's, and eventually women's league play in various regions will promote handball at the adult levels, it is the youth development that will play a key part in chasing those Olympic berths. By 2012, four years out from the Rio de Janeiro Games, USA Team Handball officials want to have 50 girls and 50 boys identified as strong candidates for national teams.
 
Many of those athletes will come out of USATH Futures Programs, which will begin in January 2010 at five sites: Los Angeles/San Jose, Calif.; Bozeman, Mont.; Denver; Dallas, and Salt Lake City. The programs grew out of a national camp that was held in Colorado Springs, Colo. The program includes six to eight weeks of instruction for groups of kids split into grades 4-5, middle school and high school, and is especially geared for girls. The 2009 pilot program, Wartalowicz said, produced eight to 10 athletes for the U-16 and U-18 national teams.
 
"They'll feed into our national teams," he said.
 
Additionally, USA Team Handball has worked with World Sport Chicago, an outgrowth of the Chicago 2016 bid, to introduce team handball at selected high schools. Elgin, Ill., a Chicago suburb, was host to the national championships.

And in New York, members of handball clubs are actually going door to door to promote the sport.
 
"The New York guys are going into schools. They're handing out the handball gospel all over town,'' Pastorino said.
 
Even at West Point, promoting the game at a grassroots level is crucial.

"Most of the guys, they're former basketball players or former baseball players,'' Hodges said. "They come and try out, and make the (handball) team and they learn the game."

Story courtesy Red Line Editorial, Inc. Paul D. Bowker is a freelance contributor for teamusa.org. This story was not subject to the approval of any National Governing Bodies.