High hopes for Handball at Champs

Last weekend saw the eagerly anticipated UK universities Handball tournament of the year – the Association of British University Handball Clubs (ABUHC) University Championships 2013. After winning 3rd place in the 2012 tournament and a dedicated start to year for the Imperial Eagles handball club, with weeks of intense recruiting and months of training, this tournament was due to show us just how we compare to the rest of the UK’s university enthusiasts in this popular European sport.

The tournament promised to be the biggest UK tournament so far with over 600 players from universities across the UK entering 60 teams to compete for the much coveted 1st place trophy. Imperial entered three teams ,including a womens’ side, and with this year’s tournament being held in the Mayesbrook Park training courts in East London where handball athletes from across the world trained for last year’s Olympics, even the location held the promise of inspiring victories for the Eagles.

The first day’s play showed a more than promising start to the tournament for Imperial Men’s I, with a victory against every team played, putting them at the top of their group and easily helping them to qualify for a place in the quarter-finals. Sadly, the Imperial Men’s II and Women’s did not fair quite so well in the competition. Due to a lack of players the Men’s II had to forfeit the entire second day of play and despite a surprising victory against Bedford whilstone player down, Imperial Women did not qualify for a place in the Women’s quarter-finals.

The height of excitement for the Imperial Eagles Handball Club was seen in the second day of play during the Imperial Men’s quarter-final match against sports university side Loughborough. With a relentless assault of goals by star shooter Lucas Carstens, a solid defence most notably held up by club president Yannick Seis and an exceptional level of precision, speed and execution of team strategy, Imperial illustrated exactly what kind of side they can be and breezed into their semi-final match against Oxford.

Towards the end of the second day of play however, with energy and concentration levels running low the side finally began to come undone and lost their semi-final match, a painful turn of events made even more frustrating by a win against this very same side in the group stages. At the peak of frustrations during this disappointing match, whenthe 4th of 4 penalties had been missed by one of our shooters, the Men’s I goal keeper was overheard to say that if he’d started shooting they may have more of a chance at scoring, a comment followed up with a flurry of colourful language from all players. Despite tempers running high at this stage a level of calm was reinstated with a serious team pep-talk which provided the side with the focus required to defeat the “Norwegian Army” AECC and take third place in the overall running. Watch this space for results of Imperial Eagles’ performance in up-coming Engineering Schools and European University Tournaments in March and April!