England Handball archive Issue 1 September 2013 | Page 4

4 PASS IT ON! ‘I ER! POW Girl -Moores olly Lam H o player wh Handball ic Games ld mp 23-year-o Holly is a England at The Oly ball. nd ed represent about her life in Ha s she tells u Playing in front of 8,000 noisy spectators when you are used to being asked if you play volleyball was very humbling and made me feel extremely proud. Handball is a very inclusive sport and doesn’t require much equipment, which means it is fantastic for children and schools. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing 30 children going wild playing handball. R STA R! YE PLA R STA R YE PLA my next challenge and ambition! Our GB head coach Jesper Holmris used to represent Denmark in my position. He used to join in and spend lots of time teaching me new tricks most that I could never do! But the fact that he invested that time with me motivated me and gave me all the con?dence I needed. But on the other hand one coach has told me that I have too much energy and I needed to cool it. People should join their local clubs, and learn as much about the game as they can by watching it at a high level on the internet. The England Handball Association have also worked very hard to create manageable and easy courses for handball beginners. There are more and more of them cropping up all over the country. If participants and coaches get on those and spread the word then the handball craze will spread like wild ?re! started to play handball at school when GB men’s head coach Bill Baillie introduced me to handball as a one o? lesson in my PE class. I was in year eight at the time and I loved the session so joined his club at the time (Haslingden Handball) which very luckily was only ten minutes from my house. The next closest club was Chester! Being a part of any big event or competition is an unbelievable experience but a home Olympics is very special. It was overwhelming to begin with, which is why we entered the village a week before competing. Staying focused on the matches ahead rather than all the huge sports stars walking around with you was extremely important. Being very passionate about my small sport the Olympics was a fantastic chance for us to spread the word and handball bug! “ Pre Olympic Games I would ask a class how many of them had seen handball. One person would put their hand up. Now nearly everybody will raise their hands. The Olympics was fantastic for our sport and there is a lot of hard work to be done to capitalise on this especially at grass roots level. Investment in handball will make sure that in 10 years time we could be winning gold medals which is ”