After beach volleyball began to thrive on Italy’s beaches, it inspired the country’s handball players to transfer the game to the sand.
Beach Handball Evolution
In the late 1980s, Italian coach Simonetta Montagni began developing handball on the beach. As the discipline began to grow in popularity, coach Luciano Bartolini was asked to create the first set of rules for the game in 1990, making the fast-paced game fit within the existing beach volleyball court lines.
In 2000, beach handball became an official European Handball Federation (EHF) sport, and the first EHF Beach Handball European Championship was held that year in Gaeta, Italy. The sport was further developed with representatives of the International Handball Federation (IHF), and it began to reach a global audience. In 2004, the first Beach Handball World Championship was held in Egypt, and the first IHF under-17 World Championships were held in Mauritius in 2017. There, Spain won the men’s event and Hungary claimed the women’s gold.
Beach and Indoor Differences
While beach handball stems from indoor handball, the sand underfoot shapes how the game is played. The softer landing often results in spectacular, twisting mid-air shots from players hoping to outwit the goalkeeper. Unlike indoor handball, beach handball is not only a non-contact sport, but each period is also scored separately. The winner of a period is awarded one point. Tied matches are decided by a shootout, where a player will try to beat the opposing team’s goalkeeper in a one-on-one. In the shootouts, each team gets five initial attempts. If the scores remained tied, sudden death decides the winner.
The Basics
In beach handball, four players from a squad of 10 – nine at the Olympic Games – take the court at a time: three players and one goalkeeper. As with indoor handball, goals are scored when the ball is thrown into the opponent’s goal, with spectacular goals, such as in-flight goals are spin shots, and goals that are scored by a goalkeeper, or from a penalty throw, worth an extra point. Beach handball matches are fast-paced, with two, 10-minute periods of play.
Olympic History
Beach Handball, a new discipline of handball, made its debut on the Olympic stage at the Summer Youth Olympic Games Buenos Aires 2018. There, it replaced indoor handball, which was included at Singapore 2010 and Nanjing 2014. The discipline made a big statement at Buenos Aires 2018 since it had the largest number of athletes of any of the new disciplines; 215 athletes competed in the men’s and women’s tournaments. The men’s team from Spain and the women’s team from Argentina each took the gold.
