Kia ora Koutou Katoa
Happy International Handball week to all our members. Today is the theme of beach handball and I want to take this small window in the busy indoor schedule to give you a taster of the upcoming Beach Handball season. The NZHF Beach Handball stakeholders have met and discussed how to best move forward and we wish to share what was decided.
Last year our high performance programme was left as an open programme. To increase continuity and consistency across the programme the squad named at the end of the previous season shall be the only players with a standing invite to High Performance Camps (See this link). Other players may be invited to the camps at the discretion of the Men’s and Women’s Beach Handball coaches.
We believe that the blueprint set out last year was a great building block and our year will be formatted in a similar fashion. While the below image shows an indicative timeline for the current year given the current global situation we understand the need to be agile and will set by the end of August when we have a clearer picture of the international situation.
This timeline will help prepare our teams for potential international events later in the season, including the Australian Beach Champs which we are expecting in March. We will try avoid our own programme clashing with international events. While we are cautiously optimistic we will be attending these events, we understand the need to provide a high level of competition in our own back yard to keep pushing our players to be better tomorrow.
Looking forward to seeing you all out on the sand soon,
Ngā Mihi Nui,
Willy Silcock
NZHF Executive Board Member (Beach Handball Portfolio)