Handball takes Khomas by storm

Titans beat Swallows in a thriller on penalties to win the inaugural Bounce & Battle Handball Tournament at Katutura on Sunday.
Six handball teams from Windhoek competed in the tournament which was held on a round-robin basis at the UN Plaza.
In the semi-finals, Titans beat The Birds, which mainly consisted of women, 3-0, while Swallows beat City Pillars 6-3.
The final went down to the wire with the teams deadlocked at 9-9 at the end of normal time, before Titans went on to win the penalty shootout 3-2 to lift the trophy.
Tournament organiser Hermanus Naobeb says it was a huge success.
“The tournament was a big success and the turnout was fantastic. I’ve got a big problem now because there were a lot of parents and children watching, who came to me and asked when I’ll host the next tournament.
“A lot of children want to join up. It gave us a lot of joy to see the huge interest in the sport,” he says.
“There were also a number of sport activists from various locations like Hakahana, Donkerhoek, Dolam, Nama location and Khomasdal, who now want to introduce the sport in their communities,” Naobeb says.
“This is a new sport, but its growing fast. We now want to start a league in Windhoek, but we need sponsors for that, so I call on them to come on board.”
Swallows was originally established as a football team, but Naobeb says they decided to expand their activities.
“Swallows is registered with the Business and Intellectual Property Authority as the Swallows Development Sport Foundation, which allows us to have any sport code under our umbrella.
“The idea to start a handball team came after a chat I had with another coach, who reminded me that we used to have handball at school and that we should try and start the sport again,” he says.
“I thought it was a good idea, because we have boys and girls who are not necessarily good at football, they are just there for the love of the sport, so I thought, let’s not chase them away, let’s try and incorporate them into handball, which is basically a combination of football, basketball and netball,” Naobeb says.
He started a Swallows handball team and got into contact with Immanuel Tobias, the coach of another fledgling handball team, Titans, to form a combined team.
“The president of the Namibia Handball Association, Issy Nakanawe, came to one of our training sessions and said we should enter a combined Khomas team for the Erongo Regional Tournament, which was held at Omaruru earlier this month. At that stage they only had one team from Khomas, DHPS club,” he says.
“We only trained for three days and most of the children didn’t have an idea about the game, but they learnt quickly and the results were spectacular.”
The Khomas team lost all of its matches, going down 3-1 to Hardap, 4-2 to both Zambezi and DHPS, and 6-3 to the eventual runners-up Omusati, but Naobeb says their expectations were exceeded.
“I think we did better than expected. We were leading 2-0 at half-time against DHPS, and I think it’s a great achievement to score six goals against Omusati.
“The people there could not believe we had only trained three days for the tournament, and we received a lot of compliments. The cherry on the cake was when three of our players, Innocent Gaseb, Ariano Garoeb and Ginola Afrikaner were selected for the national trials, although they did not make the final squad because they are still too young,” he says.
Nakanawe, meanwhile, says handball is growing fast in Namibia.
“Handball is now ranked as the fastest-growing new sport code in Namibia,” he says.
“The Namibia Handball Federation was established in 2021, and since then we have gone into the regions to develop the sport at school level. We also received an instructor from the International Handball Federation earlier this year, Klaus Feldmann, who helped to train teachers, and now we have several coaches who have received C and D licence coaching certificates,” he says.
“We had 10 regions participating at the Erongo tournament, and our aim is to take it to all 14 regions of Namibia. We currently have more than 3 500 children playing the game throughout the country, and our aim is to start regional leagues in the near future,” he says.

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