Handball is experiencing an explosion in juvenile participation levels – the next challenge is to hold on to these enthusiastic children. So, a pathway to progression is needed not just for our top juveniles but the rest, too, writes PAUL FITZPATRICK. It happens often – too often. The best young handballers are generally also the best athletes in their peer groups, and they are in demand from other sports.
The skills that make a novice 12-year-old handballer stand out from his or her friends and team-mates are the same ones that separate them as star soccer, hurling, rugby or tennis players – co-ordination, maturity, physical strength and agility.
It stands to reason, then, especially given the cross-training benefits our sport provides, that our best young handballers will also excel in any other sports they pursue, or are exposed to.
Why, though, does handball tend to lose out when the time comes to specialise in one code or another? Why, to paraphrase Liverpool FC's enfant terrible Mario Balotelli, always us? At some point, usually around the age of 17 when they first become eligible to play at adult level in football, hurling or soccer, every talented young sportsperson - not just the elite but even the those on the tier just below county or regional standard – finds their time is squeezed.
More coaches want more from them and, eventually, something has to give. In my own county of Cavan – where Gaelic football and soccer have ploughed significant resources into providing a pathway to the elite level for talented juveniles - handball can be the one that slips to the side, and the anecdotal evidence suggests that this is mirrored in other areas of the country.
Likeliest to maintain their participation in handball are those juveniles who excel. The nature of sport, even in handball where there are a multitude of titles on offer, is that only a small minority can contest the big finals and find themselves exposed to the promotion and general razzmatazz that playing in front of a big crowd in a national final offers.
That buzz is contagious and once a young player experiences the hit, they often become hooked. The point being that the drop-off from juvenile handball is not an issue for the best players – those whose ability is rewarded with titles and representative honours generally stay involved.
It’s those who do not win that handball needs to concern itself with. It’s worth noting, too, that it’s not always the children with the most potential who make those finals. Some are just more mature, physically, mentally and emotionally, than their peers, and their development can be fast-tracked by dint of pure good luck.
An All-Ireland, a Nationals or a World Championships might happen to fall at the opportune time where a juvenile player is weeks or days away from their birthday and just makes it in ahead of the deadline. That 11-12 month advantage over some opponents counts for a huge amount at that age.
Don’t take my word for it. In his bestseller Outliers, New York Times columnist Malcolm Gladwell identified what he called ‘the January rule’.
Children who are born earlier in the year, he suggested, have an advantage over those born later, which obviously evens out over time. However, when development squads and representative teams are selected, those who stand out make the grade.
They then receive extra coaching, are exposed to higher levels of competition and gradually reinforce their superiority. Gladwell's study focused primarily on Canadian ice hockey but the point stands for other sports, including handball.
“Those kids born in those lucky months are lucky because being selected into an All-Star team at an early age gives them a chance to work harder than their peers,” he told ESPN.com recently.
“They get three or four times as much ice time - and that's huge.”
In the case of handball, “ice time” can be replaced with “court time”. So, it could well be the case that some more talented young players are being left behind in handball – they might just lose at make-or-break trials for a development squad or national team because they are giving away age to their peers.
Missing out on the glory of succeeding in handball may then be a factor in their choice of sports when the crunch time arrives further down the line.
Gladwell makes a good point; if a young handballer, who may not be far off the mark, is giving away months in terms of age when they are 12, the stronger player who does make the grade and is exposed to better coaching and a higher standard of competition will naturally pull further clear of the chasing pack as the months and years go on.
So, in attempting to retain as many budding young handballers as possible, it may make sense to look not just at the elite juveniles but those on the second tier of the ladder. GAA Handball excels in providing a pathway for top-class underage players to advance – they train hard, win titles, make development squads and eventually national squads. Then, when they advance to adult level, there is an obvious route to progress to the senior ranks, via the intermediate division.
What pathway, though, is in place for those juveniles who do not make a development squad at the first time of asking and thus miss out on the specialist guidance needed? Only the very determined and dedicated can plot a path from a by-road back on to the main route to the top.
Were these diverging paths to converge back into one, it could provide the answer as to how we hold on to as many of our throngs of juvenile players as we can. That may not necessarily mean the introduction of development squads for the B standard player – and certainly not more All-Ireland championships - but perhaps a ranking system for juveniles.
The Irish Juvenile Nationals is a mammoth competition, involving qualifier stages, which condense it into something which can reasonably be run over a weekend. Could the sport be served by scheduling a Clár of separate juvenile tournaments, at A and B level, with a weighted points system, culminating in the Nationals weekend?
Achieve enough points in the B grade and a player automatically makes it to the Promised Land of A handball for the season finale. This would have the triple effect of providing more competitive handball for juveniles of all abilities and a clear pathway for those who are not among the elite but have potential and are willing to work towards that level, while doing away with the need for qualifier weekends.
Pie in the sky, maybe, but worth considering.