ehf_25yers_book_webversion

Anybody who wanted to
gaze into the crystal ball
of women’s handball was
well placed if they were
present at Rotterdam’s
Topsportcentrum on 14 August 2011.
In the middle of the Dutch summer,
before the start of the actual season, teenagers
were playing here for the crown
of European handball, in the final of the
Women’s 19 European Championship. Pitted
against each other were Denmark, the
country with the great handball tradition
and a virtually inexhaustible pool of talents,
and crass outsider Netherlands, where
the sport of handball had time and again
been confined to a marginal existence.
On that day, however, this clash of cultures
was all but invisible. Supported by
2,100 fanatic spectators, the Dutch hosts
gave the Scandinavians a really hard time.
Goalkeeper Tess Wester saved three of
the favourites’ penalty throws and quite
generally did a a great Job saving the ball
the ball (and was celebrated as her team’s
best player). The tournament’s top scorer,
Lois Abbingh, scored nine goals. Angela
Malestein as right wing and playmaker Estevana
Polman even exhibited such a strong
performance that they were even voted
into the tournament’s All-star team.
In the end, after a tough fight, the Netherlands
were honourably defeated 27-29,
but had gained some invaluable experiences
in a match played at the highest level.
They felt how close they had come to the
big handball national Denmark. While they
lost a final, they won great motivation for
the future.
Some four years later, the core of this
team had a fantastic run that took it to the
next final – the final of the Handball World
Championship 2015 in Denmark. They
lost again, though, this time against Norway.
But the Netherlands had made it to the
global top, and for good, as shortly thereafter
the team also qualified, for the first
time, for the Olympic handball tournament
in Rio de Janeiro. And who knows, perhaps
both these finals were only just a harbinger
of the rise of Dutch handball at large.
These Dutch teenagers, who used a youth
tournament as a catapult lifting them to the
top of world handball, are just one eminent
example in the history of younger age category
tournaments held under EHF auspices.
For many of the stars, these tournaments
were the first time they were exposed to
an international atmosphere and got a
sense of what it was like to compete with
other excellent players of their generation.