We have interviewed Brian Finley, the USA Team Handball Federation West Region Director. Read more if you want to find out more about the progress of Team Handball in the USA, youth programs, future growth and even possible NCAA scholarships in the future.

Vedran: We have here Brian Finley, the USA Team Handball Federation West Region Director at the Croatian Cultural Center and we are about to ask him some questions about the Federation, the direction in which it is going and the overall progress of the sport of team handball in the United States. Welcome, Brian.

Brian: Thank you, glad to be here.

Vedran: Croatian handball has a big tradition and it is a part of Croatian culture because of its success. We hope that handball reaches the same popularity here in the United States. What are your hopes for the sport in US in say, 2 - 5 years?

Brian: In two to five years we really want to see the development of some basic infrastructure on the youth side. 

We have started the program called The Futures Program that has been initiated in six cities this year, across the country: Los Angeles, it originally started in Colorado Springs, Houston college station area, Florida, New York and Chicago. We started with the girl’s side of it and we will introduce the boys program next year. It is basically an 8-week program where we recruit some top athletes from other sports and bring them into an eight-week program and introduce them to the sport. It culminates with, what we call “The High School Championships” in Colorado Springs at the end of May where each group will bring their team and compete in the tournament for the title of High School Champion. That is a sort of the seed of the program. Ultimately, down the road want to introduce as many school as possible, teachers teaching the sport to kids, and hopefully from there we see some kids taking the next step and joining the club and really developing their skills with a qualified coach.

You guys had national team tryouts at a couple of locations. Did you notice any special talent at those events?

Brian: One of the programs we have started with our older players is that we have created a partnership with European federations: Croatia, Denmark, especially with Germany and the Bundesliga. Also some other amateur clubs are taking our players, sort of our lead players, and they are getting the experience of competition on a regular basis with good coaches, which is one of the things we lack here in the United States There is just no place for an elite-level player to train and develop their skills on regular basis with good competition. So we send them overseas and they play on daily basis and we have seen a lot of growth in these players in the past year. Right now there is about 15 men and we have about 10 women that are playing in different teams in Europe.

Vedran: The National Championship for clubs this year is in Las Vegas, would you tell us something more about this event?

Brian: Yes, we had 27 teams last year, we are looking at 32 this year and we are dividing them into two levels: elite level program of eight clubs: 2 from the west, 2 from south-east, 2 from the north-east, one from the Midwest and one from south-west. They have to go through a qualifying process to win their slots in the tournament, and then the champion of that tournament will be the National Champion. And then alongside, at the same venue will be our open tournament, which any club can enter as long as they have membership with the Federation. That is, pretty much, for everybody else who wants to play, so we have about 32 teams all together between men’s elite, women’s' elite and the open tournament. 

Vedran: What about the referees, I understand you also have a referees program?

Brian: Yes, we are going through the process of certifying those people that are interested and have had some experience. We have just had a certification clinic in Colorado Springs where we had 12 guys. We are just trying to develop as many locally certified referees as we can, so that we have referees in place when we start to develop more teams so we can have more local competitions without having to fly the guys all over the country.

Vedran: One of our fellow Croatians, Mr. Marko Brezic is working for the USATH, and you have mentioned that he might be moving to the Los Angeles area soon. Given that he is our co-patriot, we are looking forward to him gathering the kids around handball, teaching them how to play. What did his skill brought to US Team Handball Federation?

Brian: Marko is an excellent coach; he brings a national-level coaching ability that we don't have here. He is great with kids and kids seem to respond really well to him. He has been working a lot in Salt Lake City, Utah and has developed a nice program there; we have got a lot of kids involved. That has evolved and he handed it over to the people there locally and it looks like we are going to move him out here definitely for the summer to start working here in southern California because I have a number of things lined up for him to do. We have a big group up in Oxnard, about 300 kids that have been working with sub-part coaching. Admittedly, the guys that are there are water polo players trying to teach handball, but there is a lot of talent, we have some good players up there who, with the good coach like Marko could really develop into some elite-level players. And they are at the right age, that 12-14-age range that we are looking for.

Vedran: So you mentioned to me earlier that your target audience is junior-high kids. Why is that?

Brian: Yes, we are really looking towards 2016 and beyond to be realistically at the level where we can compete with some other teams in the world. And those are the kids that are now 13, 14 years old.

Vedran: As far as big European clubs coming to United States, will that be happening this year?

Brian: We are putting on a match in Chicago in July between Polish national team and German national teams; both in top 5 teams in the world. There is already a lot of excitement in Chicago; obviously, there is a big Polish and German ex-patriot community there. We have already gotten a lot of sponsorship with European sponsors, its really already a win-win for us, we have already covered most of our costs and hopefully it will be a big boost to our federation in terms of helping us financially plus getting a lot of excitement with what is going on currently and getting handball in the news.

Vedran: There are some European brands that are really covering handball closely; some of them are Hummel and Select that are not well know here in the US because they don't cater to sports that are popular here. Have you guys worked with those brands?

Brian: We are in negotiations with some of those guys, but I can't get into details right now except that we are talking with them and they are entertaining a possible partnership.

Matija: The difference between the US and Europe is that sports in Europe stem from club competitions which are completely detached from the school system. Sports in Europe are something that kids do after school, after they finish their homework (and vegetables), but things in the USA, and sports are often tied closely to school activities, and that is one of the main sources for the popularity of particular sports. Is injecting team handball into schools in your long term plans, when can we expect to see the rise of school handball?

Brian: Yes, it is critical to us to develop that end of it because the model in Europe is the club model; players enter the club at the young level and they work their way up to professional level. Here it’s the school through the NCAA. And its interesting, because I have just talked to a young man who is a Division 1 football player who made a comment in daily news when asked what sport would he want to play if he didn't play football, and he said team handball. So I looked him up on Facebook, and got in touch with him and his father or guardian contacted me and the first question was "Is there any potential scholarship in this?". Of course, at this point, I have to say no, so it is very critical for us to develop the sports and be in place where we can develop some scholarships, so that when we find that elite athlete of 13, 14 or 15, we can talk to mom and dad and send him or her down the path where they actually have the potential to get NCAA scholarships and they can develop that way.

Matija: Sounds very promising. I wasn't here during the explosion of soccer, but I know that there are some common traits between the two sports, and there is definitely some serious prospect for team handball in the US.

Brian: One of the biggest pluses for us is the fact that it is both the men and women’s sport. Because of the Title IX requirement in the US United States, whenever they add a means sport at the college level, they have to add women sport as well. The fact that there are men and women side of this, they can just add handball on both levels and it will just work out well. Plus, we have what is called a Merging sport status, on the woman’s side, a few years back NCAA listed I think 6 or 8 sports that are merging sports that they want to see developed into Title IX type sports. We still have that status and it makes it a little easier to get sanctioning from NCAA, certainly on the women side of this sport.

Matija: And once handball really does take off, what is the prospect of continental competitions? There is the continental cup both for clubs and national teams in Europe, Asia, even South America. Aside from World Cup and Olympic exposure, what other international competitions would Team Handball USA experience, since there are very few competitive countries in the North America?

Brian: USATH is already a member of Pan-American Federation, and it is our pathway to the Olympics. We actually proposed to the IHF (International Handball Federation) that we create a North American Team Handball Federation (which would include some of the Caribbean countries, United States, Greenland, Canada) just because the Pan-American games have been so Latin-controlled and Latin-dominated and they tend not to care too much about North America. So, we are waiting to find out from the IHF what their decision will be on that. It would be a big boost for us if we could separate the federations because then we will have a lot more control over our destiny and it would open up somewhat easier path into World Championships and the Olympics if we had a North American champion getting a spot in those tournaments. We are keeping our fingers crossed on that one, and we'll see what happens.

Matija: Thank you, Brian, I wish you luck and success and it was a pleasure having you at Croatian Cultural Center.

Brian: Thank you, it was a pleasure to be here.

--- to learn more details, get in contact with Brian or find out how to get your children or yourself involved in Team Handball in the US, please contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it