Kia ora Koutou Katoa e te Whanau Handball,
With the beach season fast looming and the indoor season wrapped up for another year I want to give you a taster of the upcoming Beach Handball season.
The NZHF is extremely proud of the mahi our Beach Handball teams put in last beach season. The women took their first game off Australia and have shown great progression over the last two years. With such a youthful and enthusiastic squad we can’t wait to see them go from strength to strength over the coming years. The men took it a step further and recorded 2 wins over Australia and earnt the right to represent our Oceania at this year’s World Champs in Crete and World Games in Alabama. At both the World Champs and the World Games our men did us proud, recording New Zealand’s first ever wins at a global tournament, including triumphing over the African champions Egypt to put themselves in a position to contest the 13th place play-off match after narrowly missing out on a top 12 finish in a penalty shootout with the United States. While the men weren’t able to repeat the wins at the World Games, they were competitive and received excellent feedback with current World Champs Croatia and perennial favourites Brazil.
It is imperative that we keep driving the momentum and growing the NZ Beach Handball scene. The NZHF Beach Handball stakeholders have met and discussed how to best move forward and we are excited to share what’s in store for the coming season.
Last year our high performance programme was restricted to a selected squad. As the campaign reached a natural end point we want to re-open selection in both high performance squads to ensure that we provide pathways for all beach players to perform at the highest level. The first and second camp will be open selection camps. If you are interested in participating in the high performance programme please fill out the form at these links. EOI Closes this Sunday so get in quick!
Men's Sign Up - https://forms.gle/TapVU54ak3CZW8qZ8
Women's Sign Up - https://forms.gle/v4dVmbwXu2NMYUm37
We believe that the blueprint developed last year was a great building block. The season ahead will be formatted in a similar fashion. While the below images show a couple of indicative timelines for the year, given the current global situation and with Oceania qualifiers still to be decided on (we are currently putting in a proposal to host in little old New Zealand) we understand that there may still be a need to be agile.
This timeline will help prepare our teams for potential international events later in the season, including the Australian Beach Club Champs as well as Oceania Qualifiers which we are expecting in March. This will provide a pathway into the ANOC Beach World Games in August. While 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. This means that the third year of the North vs. South Championships will be back and better than ever for the coming year. These will be closely linked with High Performance camps and NZ Beach Champs so stay tuned for more information.
On a final note due to this tight timeframe there will need to be a focused effort on regional growth this year to provide high value training and player pathways for all. It’s going to be an exciting year ahead for Beach Handball!
Looking forward to seeing you all out on the sand soon,
Ngā Mihi Nui,
Willy Silcock
NZHF Executive Board Member (Beach Handball Portfolio)