The Rio Olympics are almost upon us and with it the four
yearly chance for handball to grab the public’s attention and showcase what it
has to offer. This opportunity was never greater than in 2012 when, as hosts,
Team GB was permitted to field teams across the entire range of sports. Handball
was one of the major beneficiaries of this when, for the first time, the men
and women’s British teams were able to take part in a top level international
competition. Handball made the most of this opportunity by gaining
unprecedented publicity for the sport. Millions watched on the television, new
clubs, such as
Coventry, immediately sprang up around the country, the
governing body had more hits on Wikipedia than any other except for cycling and
even Sir Clive Woodward caught the bug, tweeting about the virtues of handball
on more than one occasion, labelling handball as “
a proven start in creating co-ordination” and expressing the view that handball should be adopted as a
second sport by all of those playing team sports.
The rapid expansion in the number of schools in England
adopting handball has been aided by the sport’s recognition in GCSE PE.
However, the attraction of handball to physical educators is not only for its
novelty value and place in the curriculum; the sport is being adopted because
of a variety of benefits that it brings. In an article published last month, ‘
Spicing up your curriculum’ by Adolfo Ramos and Keri Esslinger, the writers describe handball
as feeling fresh but that it integrates many principles of more traditional
sports. In it they summarise some of these benefits, noting that handball
develops basic skills and provides participants with a workout in which they
may run up to three miles in a series of short bursts of energy over the period
of an hour. In addition, they point out that the sport helps youngsters develop
decision-making and problem solving and can even contribute to their appreciation
of diversity since handball is popular across the globe and particularly in
continental Europe. Add to these benefits the fact that handball is usually
played indoors and so is rarely a victim of the weather and the relative ease
and frequency with which scoring takes place compared with other popular team
ball games and the attraction of introducing handball becomes apparent.
So, four years on from London, what position is handball in
to exploit the potential boost of the Rio Olympics? There will be no British teams
to follow this time around but even if funding had been available for full Team
GB squads, they would not have made the progress required to qualify in such a
short time frame. On the other hand, since handball is not starting from the
relatively low awareness based of four years ago, more people may be encouraged
to watch, having been introduced to it since 2012. A major drawback for
handball has often been the size of court required; only a small proportion of
sports halls in the UK are built to the dimensions required (40 by 20 metres).
However, this year the EHA has introduced the ‘
Try Handball’ initiative which
has been designed to introduce more flexibility to the way that handball is
played and importantly encourages play in more limited spaces. Importantly, the
coaching base has also expanded so that when the Olympics have finished there
will be more available to take advantage of any interest generated as well as
many more teachers aware of what the sport has to offer. Handball will also benefit from being one of the few sports that takes place across the whole of the games and across the whole of the sporting day. Until the advent of the
red button and the Internet we were lucky if we had more than the final 30 seconds of the final broadcast on TV. Also, it will be featured in the major holiday event
I am Team GB on Saturday 27 August.
So, 6 to 21 August, the duration of the handball tournament
in Rio, may well be the most important 16 days that British handball has had since
London 2012 despite there being no British teams in the tournament. It remains
to be seen if these Games will give the sport the boost it needs to grow even
faster but given the wider participation, and the advances outlined, even a small proportion of the
publicity handball attracted in 2012 should enable it to take advantage.