Why handball could thrive in Toronto?

It’s an uphill battle. But it’s complicated.

For the Canadian men’s and women’s handball teams, the Pan Ams is about gaining clout, winning medals and trying to qualify for the Olympics. Since 1987 the men’s highest place at the Pan Ams is 4^th; the women’s have won silver. It’s not a sport we’re accustomed to on Canadian soil. Sport Canada doesn’t fund handball and the sport is rarely shown on T.V., aside from the odd midnight recap or hilarious sport blooper. Handball is as popular in Europe as hockey is in Canada, but here, in the Great North, it’s still a niche sport like horseracing or dodgeball (of all sports, dodgeball has a national team.) But there is something highly addictive about handball and Canada is a country where the sport could really thrive in.

At the Pan Ams, Canada rates its chances of pinching a bronze medal. Forget that Brazil 34-17 match, that was a given. Head coach of Canada, Jean-Francois Grimala said they need to win that bronze. A bronze medal would be their highest finish and they’d have to account for the Dominican Republic and Uruguay to get there. If Canada are ever to receive any funding from Sport Canada, they need to win and keep winning which in itself is a hard ask on no budget. Canada got a $60,000 handout from the International Olympic Committee for three years but would need more than that if they wanted to be competitive. In the world of sport funding it’s simple: you win, you get money; you lose, you drift into the abyss. Funding would open doors, produce handball combines, form stadiums, train athletes and weld together a national competition. Without funding all this is a pipedream.

Let’s leave the economics of handball alone for a second and look at the game of handball. Here you have a sport with two 30-minute halves (people with short-attention spans will ove this!) , seven players on the court for each team, no off sides and no shot clock. If I said these are the rules for a new format of hockey, Canadians would be salivating. In fact hockey and handball are a lot alike: both are fast-paced, both are physical, both use the bench on the fly and both use small objects: pucks and miniature soccer balls. There’s also the basketball element to the game, with sharp passing and bounce goals and the offensive-defense set-up reminds me of water polo. If this game were to exist in Toronto or other parts of Canada, the game would be an easy adjustment and feel familiar to us all.

Another tick for handball is that the sport is played indoors giving it all-year-round appeal. Lacrosse could share their space with the handballers, or, perhaps a permanent home at the Exhibition Centre could be made? You could see a hockey-handball match in the same day. Court size is small – 131-feet by 66-feet – so finding space to house this sport wouldn’t be a problem. We make room for ultimate Frisbee on our Toronto parks, surely room could be make way for sport that boasts a national team.

Critics will say that Toronto is already inundated with hockey, basketball, baseball and also a scrolling rolodex of perhiperal, amateur and professional sports: rugby, tennis, cricket to name a few. Adding one more wouldn’t hurt. It would add more variety to the city’s roster. Handball doesn’t require large lots of land like cricket or rugby. It doesn’t need 64-court stadiums like tennis. There’s no expensive equipment or padding like the NFL and hockey. You just show up on the court, with the ball and nets and play. It's the way sport should be: uncomplicated.