Culture, Leisure, Travel, Dutch organisations, Feature articles, posted October 23rd, 2007

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This is the first in a series of articles written by US student Amrit Dhir as he explores those sports traditions that are foreign to his home culture, yet thrive in Maastricht.

Handball? That’s the game we played in elementary school bouncing a rubber ball against the exterior classroom wall, right? Team handball? You must mean four square, that other childhood game we played on the chalked-up asphalt during lunch breaks.

Wrong again. Team handball, referred to as simply handball here in the Netherlands, is an Olympic sport played all over the world and enjoying particular popularity in Europe. For Americans, the sport is virtually unknown or plainly misunderstood. For Europeans and the residents of Maastricht, it is quite a different story.

The game itself has been through quite a number of different incarnations, with variations on the rules, the number of players, and the court size and type. It was first introduced to the Olympic Games as field handball at the notorious 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, with two teams of nine players each competing on a field of equivalent size to a soccer pitch. Today, the game is played on a court less than half that size (40m x 20m), and the teams are represented by seven active players.

While the accounts of the origins of the game vary among sources, it is consistently indicated that the roots for the modern sport are to be found in Europe. Some wish to trace the game back to ancient Egypt or to the ancient Greek game urania, and, as the International Handball Federation’s (IHF) website so persuasively notes, “The very fact that man has always been more adept at using his hands than his feet lends credibility to the claim made by famous sports historians that he started playing handball much earlier than, say, football.”

In more recent history, the sport is tied to the Czech and Slovak hazena, the Danish haandbold, the Ukranian gandbol, and the German torball. The rules for the modern game were codified by Dane Holger Nielson in 1898 with later revisions incorporating elements borrowed from soccer and basketball. Over a century later, handball is played in over 180 countries, and, according to IHF, “there are 31 million players, trainers, officials and referees worldwide acting with 1,130,000 teams.” Still, continental Europe seems to remain the most competitive grounds for the sport.

Maastricht’s student handball association Manos
In Maastricht, a competitive handball team is organized by student sports association MSHV Manos. Players practice every Tuesday evening under the direction of coach Louk Geurten at the Sporthal Randwijck. The association fee for Manos is EUR 35 for the year and includes discounts for tournaments. Member Tim Wilmes explains that “it is financially clever to join Manos if you stay for the whole year and play in at least three tournaments.”

Moniek van Lieshout, who has been a Manos member for two years and is currently serving as the association’s Treasurer, recalls that in addition to exercise and keeping up with her handball skills, she had other compelling reasons to join Manos: “I was looking for some social activities, which Manos also offers, and I did not want to join an association.” Indeed, anyone subscribed to the email listserv will testify that the association is remarkably active, organizing get-togethers at the local Café Falstaff and engaging in promotional activities.

From an American perspective, the gameplay of handball can most closely be likened to basketball. Players must dribble the ball to move forward; however, instead of being allowed two steps without a dribble, a handballer may take three steps, but every step made while pivoting on one foot is counted. The goal is more like a small version of a soccer net, and only the defending goalkeeper is permitted to step inside the six-meter radius semicircle at either end of the court.

Characterizing the game with just two adjectives, Manos player Niels Köstring chooses “fast” and “physical.” In fact, the physical intensity of the game is identified as the appeal of the sport for many of the players.

Handball is distinctly a team sport. As Van Lieshout explains, “you really have to be a team, really have to work together, to get the best result. One good player cannot win the competition.” Köstring agrees, adding that playing well means playing as a team, and “only then is it also nice to watch for the spectator.”

Köstring, who moved to Maastricht to pursue his graduate studies at Maastricht University, started playing handball at the age of fourteen. Originally from the Westphalia region of Germany, he has played a number of sports, including soccer, karate, basketball and tennis, but ultimately selected to continue more seriously with handball after watching a game of Tus Nettelstedt, a team that competes in the premier league, or Bundesliga, of Germany.

He started training at the local club, HSG Hüllhorst, and joined a few weeks later. “It was a great time, mainly because we were a great team in the sense that we were also great friends.” Later, Köstring was offered a spot on reserve team and played with them up until moving to Maastricht.

A popular game all over Europe…
Manos’ teams have also achieved a good deal of success in recent years. The men’s team won the Dutch Student championship last year and represents the Netherlands in the European University Championships. The women’s team, although only placing in fifth last year, came in second in the previous year’s National Student Championship.

For the bigger tournaments, the team is joined by local professional players. As Wilmes recounts, “We have some really motivated players, [but just before the tournaments] everyone comes out of their holes and starts playing again.” The team, which player Timo Karamustafa from Düsseldorf estimates to be mostly German, breaks down into half-German and half-Dutch during the tournaments.

Questions as to why the team tends to be dominated by Germans are followed by silence and smirks. It is as if everyone anticipates the question and delicately avoids addressing it. That is, until teammate Robert Schuybroek bursts out: “Dutch players are lazy!”

Van Lieshout provides a less controversial answer: “Handball is not as popular in the Netherlands as I think it should be; [however,] in Germany, it is quite popular.” Köstring asserts that handball “is definitely one of Europe’s most popular ball games. Of course, soccer is number one, but, in many European countries, handball comes right after.”

But why is handball so popular in our close neighbor, Germany? Köstring attributes it to Germany’s recent World Cup win “and the status of the Handball Bundesliga as the best league in the world.”

Handball Bundesliga Trailer

Köstring adds that the appeal of handball is generally more pronounced in the towns and rural areas of Germany, as opposed to the larger cities. “When you take a look at the names of the Bundesliga teams, you will recognize that many teams come out of… small villages. I also come from a more countrified region and Handball is clearly the number one team sport there.”

… but still unknown in the US
With so much support and attention, why has the sport not carried over to the other side of the Atlantic? Van Lieshout speculates that the reason is that American culture is already dominated by sporting cultures of its own: basketball, baseball, and American football. Perhaps this would put it in a category with sports like rugby and cricket that do not resonate with the American sporting culture. Is handball dismissed by basketball the same way rugby may be by American football and cricket may be by baseball? Or is it just that Americans already have a plethora of national sports, and any additions experience difficulty achieving attention?

Still, rugby and cricket are nominally familiar to the average American, even if he or she may not have ever played them or seen them played or know all the rules. Yet, with handball, that familiarity does not exist. Could this be because the childhood association makes a sport by the name of handball less seriously regarded?

Speculation aside, for the expatriate community here in Maastricht, the opportunity to familiarize oneself is in easy reach. Köstring recommends that those who are interested ought to “just watch some games on television or watch some games of a good local club with a more experienced handballer and get used to the rules, which I think are not so hard to learn.”

Van Lieshout agrees and adds the simple advice: “Just join! You never know what something is like if you never experience it yourself.”

By Amrit Dhir

Amrit Dhir is pursuing a masters in Media Culture at the Maastricht University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Originally from Los Angeles, he received his bachelors degree in International Studies from Emory University in Atlanta.

Handball Dutch women’s team

Further information: MSHV Manos

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