We would like to welcome the newest handball organisation in New Zealand - Porirua Handball. It is founded by Ben Potaka, a previous national player who represented New Zealand in both indoor and beach handball. As President of Porirua Handball, here is what he has to say.
Porirua Handball Incorporated is built to develop handball in the Porirua region. Handball has existed in Wellington for many years and there have been teams from Porirua in the past. Yet there has never been a handball organisation fully focused on Porirua. Due to the nature of things, Wellington Central garners the most attention from the handball community. Typically, it is the outskirts of the region that gets less attention and therefore less development, less competition.
By creating this new organisation, we hope to give Porirua the attention it deserves. To develop all levels of handball in Porirua. This includes school handball right through to adult club handball.
It is written into Porirua Handballs constitution that our focus is the development of handball at a grass roots level. We are looking to take the long-term approach, instead of focusing on short term success, instead of focusing on our high-performance players, we are intend to focus on constantly developing our player base and growing the sport as much as we can in our area. With the hopes that this will filter through to the higher levels, high performance, over the long term.
Handball is a small sport in this country therefore most regions rely heavily on others for competition. Although Porirua Handball intends to compete as much as we can across the country, we also intend to be self-sufficient. We wish to create competition within our area that does not rely on another. Our focus is on people playing handball and would welcome anyone who would want to join our competitions, given they are a positive influence on our community.
Although Porirua is a small city population wise, we endeavour to punch above our weight. As our focus is on developing our player base, we wish to become the biggest centre for handball in the country. We intend to do that by focusing on our community and making our environment a great one, where our most newest members feel the most welcome.
We are new and starting from scratch, we are unapologetically ambitious. We are hopeful that we will provide real value to the New Zealand Handball Community in the coming years.
All the best to Ben and Porirua Handball.
Ben Potaka representing New Zealand in Indoor and Beach Handball