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NY Times: Unified, In America, By An International Sport

09-03-2012 Tweet Follow @NYCTeamHandball

By BEN TEITELBAUM and MONICA ALBA
Published: September 1, 2012
On a makeshift court in Minneapolis, victorious players locked
arms around one anothers necks and broke into an unusual
cheer.Everyone count in your language, Shkumbin Mustafa
exhorted. Lets see how it sounds.
What followed was a raucous chant redolent of the Tower of Babel
un, deux, trois! eine, zwei, drei! ena, dyo, tria and
then the jubilant hollering of two words that unite men and women
from more than 20 countries: New York!
The mens squad from the New York City Team Handball Club had
won its fourth national title in five years in May, bolstering its
reputation as the best team handball outfit in the United States,
where the word handball often evokes two leathery, sun-baked
men smacking a blue rubber ball against a wall, not the rapid-firing
Olympic team sport that has been described by the clubs players
as water polo without water, lacrosse without sticks or soccer using
hands.
These players, who hail from five continents, would not need to
put the sport in such terms in their home countries, where handball
the preface team exists only in the United States is
popular. Although most are European, members of the club also
come from Senegal, China, Colombia, Japan, Egypt and the
Dominican Republic.
Not everybody has an easy story coming here or why they came
here and who they left behind, said Mustafa, the clubs president
and starting center back. A political refugee from Kosovo, he
moved here in 1999 with a small bag, a tennis racket, a pair of
jeans and two T-shirts. Initially he did not expect to stay long, but
now he calls New York City home.
Everybody needs something to fit in, he said. We have the

Olympic sport of team handball.

The team includes a German doctor and a Montenegrin custodian
engineer, a French financial analyst and an Egyptian cook/personal
trainer, an Italian travel agent and a Greek hairdresser. Despite
their various backgrounds and myriad languages, we understand
each other in the court, said the top scorer, Sayed Shalaby, the
Egyptian. Handball is the same. Different language, but same
handball.
More than 41 million people around the world are involved with
team handball, said Mustafa, an ambassador for the game as much
as a player. Nearly 20,000 fans packed an arena in Belgrade,
Serbia, to watch the finals of the 2012 European Cup. But the sport
is relegated to the fringes of American consciousness, if it exists at
all. Only 800 people play competitively in the United States, said
Mariusz Wartalowicz, the USA Team Handball technical director.
Team handball is one of three Olympic sports in which the United
States has not won a medal, the other two being table tennis and
badminton. USA Team Handball did not qualify for the London
Games; in fact, the national team has not competed at
the Olympics since the Atlanta Games in 1996, when the hosts
received an automatic bid.
Lewis Howes, the token American on the New York City team,
said he was frustrated by his countrys ignorance. When he saw the
Olympics of handball in 2008, he said: I got mad because Id
never seen the sport before. I was like, Why dont Americans
play this?
A former collegiate all-American who went on to play in Arena
League football, Howes packed up his life in Columbus, Ohio, and
moved to New York City to pursue his handball ambitions and
chase his childhood goal of playing for Team USA.
A lot of people say they want these things, but they dont take
action, Howes said. I want to be an example, go after my exact
dream.
Though he has been playing competitively for less than a year,
Howes recently made the national team and competed in the PanAmerican Championship in Argentina in June. The United States
placed seventh out of 10 teams.
Although Howes, 29, still fantasizes about Olympic handball

stardom 2016 might be his last chance the rest of the team
plays for the love of the sport and the community it provides.
Many players were professionals in their homelands. Shalaby won
10 Egyptian League titles with Cairo-based Zamalek Sporting
Club, and claimed three African Championships as a member of
the Egyptian national team. The former French
professional goalkeeper Martin Strub-Hidalgo played against
international superstars like Nikola Karabatic (2007 International
Handball Federation player of the year) and Luc Abalo, who have
each won two Olympic gold medals and two world championships
with the French national team.
I remember very well having to deal against them as a goalie was
never an easy task, Strub-Hidalgo said.
Whatever their backgrounds, team handball players in America
find it is a humbling and unifying part of their immigrant
experience.
Its totally different, said Strub-Hidalgo, whose European teams
used to provide housing, transportation and food, as well as a
paycheck. Even my shoes, I never bought shoes, he said,
flashing a pair of simple black-and-white Adidas. Maybe my
second shoes I bought of handball in my life.
Also gone are the days of well-maintained arenas. Here, they play
on high school gym basketball courts, where they use masking tape
to outline a handball court.
Despite the material differences of team handball in America, the
players say they would not trade their team for anything. Not only
do they play on the best squad in the country many of them
argue that they could beat international teams but they also
say that they have found a family. The players are not shy about
public displays of affection; they hug and kiss seemingly any
chance they get, whether before practice, during breaks in game
action, or at the bar. The team goes drinking together every
Saturday night in a Hells Kitchen bar that proudly displays a
signed team jersey framed on the wall.
Sport as connective tissue is nothing new, but Mustafa says his
team is unique. As he tells it, the team was founded in 1973 by the
United Nations so that immigrant employees could continue
playing their beloved sport. The club no longer retains any
affiliation to the United Nations, but Mustafa said it still promoted

the ethos of its parent organization.

You put in a team, 16 guys from 16 different countries, he said.
Each one of them has a different culture, different tradition,
different language. Some of our guys dont even speak English,
but we get on the court and we communicate somehow.
Right wing Djole Radovanovic and goalie Ivan Ignjatovic are two
stalwarts. As Serbians, history might consider them enemies to
Mustafa, an ethnic Albanian Muslim, but here were best friends,
he said.
Mustafa then smiled wryly, his twinkling eyes punctuating his
rugged, handsome features.
Peaceful conflict resolution is part of our plan, he said only halfjoking. Wider plan: solving all the problems of the world.
A version of this article appeared in print on September 2, 2012, on
page SP14 of the New York edition with the headline: Unified, in
America, By International Sport.

1. Which 2 words were either unfamiliar to

you in this article or were used
differently out of this context?
Word or phrase- What followed was a raucous chant
redolent of the Tower of Babel

Paragraph ____2________

What do you think it means- I think it is just

describing a loud and strong chant.
Word or phrase Whatever their backgrounds, team
handball players in America find it is a humbling and
unifying part of their immigrant experience.

Paragraph 17
What do you think it means? It means that
people can be unified and people can put their
differences aside to play the game of handball.
2. Team Handball Club Players come from
many different backgrounds and
cultures. Describe which players story
was of most interest to you? Write in
complete sentences.
I think that the thing that interests me is that
people who's countries are natural enemies can put
their differences aside and just play a game. It is
something that has brought the world together.
3. Team Handball is a sport of which many
Americans are unfamiliar. Use 3
examples from this article in complete
sentences to promote this sport in
America to someone who does not know
about it? I would explain to them the factor of
how the world is brought together with this sport.
It is something that the Us has never won anything
in so that can be the motivation to bring home
some gold. I would also explain to them how just
being in the Olympics is already