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.
With the lack of international events in the current year it will be imperative to keep a strong grassroots scene to keep our players performing at the highest level. 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.
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 reach out to beach@handball.org.nz, Willy Silcock or one of your regional beach organisers if you are not already part of the High performance squad communications.
We believe that the blueprint developed over the last two years has provided us with a great building block. The season ahead will be formatted in a similar fashion, with the indicative timeline shown below.
This timeline will help prepare our teams for potential international events later in the season, such as the Australian Beach Club Champs. 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 fourth year of the North vs. South Championships will be back. Following on from its success last year we will again hold all N v S games across one weekend to allow continuity of teams and training opportunities throughout the games. We recognise that the current timeframe is rather close to the proposed dates for Australian Beach Nationals therefore we will be reviewing our options for changes shortly.
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)