TEAM HANDBALL STUDY GUIDE

Team Handball happens to be the fastest and most exciting sport in the world. It is a combination of basketball, soccer, hockey and lacrosse, and has been described as water polo played on land. The court is 40x20 m (two basketball courts) and features 2x3m goals at each end. Each Goal is surrounded by a 6m goal area (2 6m radius arcs with (center = goal post) joined by a tangent in the middle. Another arc, 9m from the posts, lies outside the goal line. This is the free throw line and it is usually dashed. A 1m long penalty throw line lies 7m in front of the goals. There is also a halfway line with a center dot for the restart. The ball used in team handball is 23 inches in circumference, and weighs about 16 ounces.

The ball-playing rules are in 3's. 3 steps with the ball (a full three steps too, landing after catching the ball is step 0), 3 seconds holding the ball, and in class we had a limit of 3 dribbles.

The goal keeper is the only player allowed in the goal area (6m semi-circle). (The goal area includes the line (5cm wide) so you can't contact any part of the 6m line or inside it.) They are also the only player allowed to touch the ball with their feet (below the knees), but only to save a goal, not to direct it out of the goal or to control the ball when it is not being shot at goal.

The attackers may shoot from in the air above the goal area but must shoot before landing. A defender (or an attacker can not travel through the goal area in order to get an advantage at another spot, (no short cuts). Casual entry into the goal area is OK. The rule only applies if you are seen to gain some advantage by entry into the goal area.

Handball is basically a non-brutal contact sport, but non-brutal varies with the strength and class of the players. Theoretically one can only use your torso to block the path of any player. If you use your arms to push or grab the player then it’s a free throw to the attack. However, we don't have free throws at the goal like in basketball. Usually its inside the 6m and you must go back to the 9 and start again, that is you loose your momentum. So the refs allow play to continue if you are still in control of the ball and can play on with out making too many steps or touching down inside 6, or making a bad pass that get intercepted basically because you were hit, ... , in summary, the attacker gets the advantage.

Attacking fouls: No barging or head ducking (lose the ball).

No using the elbow or palming off.

No swiping away the defenders arms with your hands to get past them.

* Basically just don't use your arms.

Other rules we used in class:

Must pass the ball across the center line.

A female player must have possession before a shat can be taken.

(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 Danish handbold, 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/