Team USA making history and craving success at World Handball Championships 2023
The squad is making their second appearance at the global event in 25 years, as they dream of gold at LA 2028.
Handball
Team USA is ready to make its mark at the 2023 IHF World Handball Championships, which will be held in Poland and Sweden from 11-29 January.
The U.S. team is making just their second appearance at the event in the past 25 years, having last competed at the Worlds in 2001. The U.S. squad qualified for the 2021 event but withdrew due to COVID-19 concerns.
They’ll face Morocco in the first game of group play on Friday, 13 January.
The USA’s back-to-back qualifications show a team on the rise. The red, white, and blue do not have a history of success in the sport, only having taken part in Olympic competition six times since the sport’s inaugural appearance at the Games in 1936 when they finished sixth, their best-ever at the Olympics.
Their highest finish at the Worlds is 16th (1964, 1970, 1974 and 1993).
But this squad enters with high hopes, after an impressive win in June 2022 at the North American and Caribbean Handball Confederation Championships, which qualified them to the global event.
There, they cruised through wins over Greenland, Mexico, and Cuba to take the top spot in undefeated fashion.
High hopes for Paris 2024, LA 2028
Team USA also has its sights set on longer term success with players like teenager Tristan Morawski carrying big dreams as the Los Angeles 2028 Games approach.
"I want to be the Michael Jordan of handball," Morawski told Olympics.com in an interview. “I want to be the best, to play in the Olympics, win gold, and be MVP.”
It might be an ambitious goal given that handball is one of three sports in which the U.S. has never won an Olympic medal (table tennis and badminton are the others). But it’s one that former USA Team Handball CEO Barry Siff echoed.
“The goal of our teams in the LA 2028 Olympics is to be highly competitive and in the mix for attaining medals," said Siff.
Morawski is part of an up-and-coming generation for the stars and stripes that has had recent successes, including a silver medal finish at December’s IHF Junior Trophy NACHC Championships in Mexico City.
Their only loss of the tournament came against Cuba in the gold medal match. But the second-place finish was still enough to qualify them to the junior Worlds, set for June in Greece and Germany.
“This is an incredible achievement for our Junior Men's Team program and, more largely, for US handball after both our Youth and Senior men's teams successfully qualified for the world championships,” said head coach Danilo Rojevic, according to TeamUSA.org.
With goals in mind and talent on the rise, the sky may be the limit for this U.S. team.
And the world could get a preview of what's to come as the Worlds unfold this week.
• 15 years old, 2m tall: Tristan Morawski and the exciting future of USA handball