(Basic game play and court diagram courtesy of Luke Wildman)

History of Team Handball

Team handball is very popular in much of the world, but little known in North America. Its very name is confusing even to an American who knows quite a bit about sports.

The modern game actually grew out of three sports that were developed, independently, in three different European countries: The Czech hazena, the Danish handbold, and the German Torball.

All three were based on soccer, but essentially replaced the foot with the hand, so that the ball could be advanced by batting or throwing, rather than by kicking.

Hazena was being played by Slovak peoples as early as 1892; its rules were first codified in 1906, by a college professor. Handbold(the Danish word for handball) was developed in 1898 by a teacher, Holger Nielsen, as an alternative to soccer. In 1906, Nielsen revised the rules considerably and began organizing competitions outside the school at which he taught. Similarly, Torball was created in 1915 by a German gymnastics teacher, Max Heiden.

Professor Carl Schelenz of the Berlin Physical Education School in 1919 combined elements of handbold and Torball and adapted the soccer playing field for a new sport, which he called handball (actually translating the Danish into German). Schelenz also borrowed from basketball, which was just becoming popular in Germany, to allow dribbling as a means of advancing the ball.

By 1925, the game had become fairly popular in other European countries. The International Amateur Handball Federation (IAHF) was established in 1928; handball was a demonstration sport at the Olympics that year and again in 1932.

That form of handball, designed to be played outdoors by teams of eleven players, was a full-fledged Olympic sport at the 1936 Munich Games. The United States finished sixth and last in the competition.

Meanwhile, a different, indoor version of handball was being developed in the Scandinavian countries. Based largely on Danishhandbold, this version had only seven on a side and was played in a considerably smaller area. The IAHF held the first seven-a-side world championships in 1938. It was also used as a way for soccer players to train during the winter.

After World War II, the seven-player game gradually took over from the eleven-player version in Europe and also spread to other continents. World championship play, which had been ended by the war, began again in 1954 and handball was restored to the Olympic program in 1972. Competition for women's teams began in 1976.

When handball was introduced to the United States, about 1930, the name was already being used for the court game that was very popular in YMCAs across the country, so the new import was called "field handball," eventually shortened to "fieldball," and it was at first played primarily by girls and women. The seven-player version, however, became known as team handball in the United States.

Although it has never achieved great popularity, it was adopted by the U. S. Army as a camp sport in many areas of the country. Many Boys' and Girls' Clubs also took it up, followed by Explorer Scouts and even some high schools and colleges. The U. S. Team Handball Federation was founded in 1959 to standardize rules and sanction competition.

Now, handball is played in roughly 150 countries, with 8 million players registered worldwide. The South Korean women won gold medals in 1988 and 1992. Yet, the game's heartland remains Europe, where Olympic handball stars like Czechoslovakia's Jiri Vicha, Romania's Gheorghe Gruia and the Soviet Union's Zinaida Turchina became some of sport's biggest names. In Sydney, the Olympic champions were Denmark for the women, and Russia for the men.

(History provided by Ralph Hickok)

References:

Hickok, Ralph. HickokSports.com. www.hickoksports.com/history/teamhand.shtml#hist1

Team Handball Rules. www.cs.uq.oz.au/personal/bof/Handball/rules.html

Official Site of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. www.olympics.com/eng/