I Kid You Not! Team Handball Has A Lot To Like

What can you say about a sport whose corporate sponsor is The Weather Channel?

Well, this: Its forecast can be anything they want it to be.

And here athletics imitates real life. The people who bring you team handball say sunny and warm, and then it pours: On Day 7 of the 1996 Olympic Games, the United States women’s team got drenched 29-19 by Denmark. What’s more, the Danes in the audience seemed to outnumber Atlantans, and even dissed the hosts in a chant that translated to, “USA is a cartoon team!”

Denmark. Hmph. Serves them right if they jump on an ACOG bus back to the Olympic Village and wind up in “Deliverance” instead.

At the Georgia World Congress Center, there’s a sport behind every door. Judo in one room, weightlifting down the hall, fencing in the broom closet. And handball.

Obviously, this is not where America shops for medals.

The U.S. women are thinking bronze. The reality is, they were 17th in last year’s world championships.

Danish goalie Susanne Lauritsen has played handball for 22 years. U.S. backcourt starter Dawn Allinger has played for four.

Before that, she played basketball at Washington State University. Everybody on the U.S. team played basketball somewhere - perhaps as recently as last week - except those who played softball.

Behind every fast break and rundown, there’s a handball player waiting to be brainwashed.

“I think it’s the perfect American sport,” insisted Allinger, who took her B.A. in sports management from Wazzu in 1991. “It’s everything Americans love. It’s fast-paced, it’s high-scoring and it’s real physical.”

You have all seen team handball - but only parted out. You can call it indoor soccer for the hands instead of the feet, but that would be shortchanging the heritage.

It has the dribbling of basketball. The physical rigors of rugby. The penalty box of hockey. The passing of water polo. The traveling of Michael Jordan. The clothes-lining of Fred “The Hammer” Williamson. The inscrutable officiating of, well, pick your game.

And the migraine-inducing, rock-and-roll filler of any event produced by Brett Sports Inc.

“Let’s get ready for handba-l-l-l-l!” bellowed the P.A. announcer at the GWCC, a la Michael Buffer. And then he did it in French.

What handball doesn’t have is much of a player pool.

Slippery Rock has a club team. So does Ohio State. New York and Minnesota have pockets of participation, and since the national team has relocated to Atlanta, the game is getting a handhold here.

Allinger, who grew up in Bozeman, Mont., stumbled upon the sport when she was doing an internship at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs to complete her WSU course work.

“I’d peek in the windows of the gym and think, ‘That looks kind of cool,”’ she recalled. “It’s actually more fast-paced (than basketball) because the referee never touches the ball. If there’s a charge or a travel, the other team can pick up the ball and - boom - they’re gone.”

Unless they get knocked on their cans.

“That part’s OK,” she shrugged. “I was always kind of a hack myself.”

Well, yes, there is this perception that you can walk in off the street and be a star. Allinger hadn’t been playing for two years when she was named MVP of the 1994 U.S. nationals. It’s her opinion that the U.S. team has better athletes than the European powers, but less handball savvy. That’s probably due to the fact that the feeder system for the U.S. team is “maybe 250 players, while in Norway more than 100,000 women play handball.”

Which brings us to the best marketing tool known to man, or woman: the Olympics.

“We’re kind of living and dying by this right now,” Allinger said. “This is our one chance to show America what a great sport this is. Everybody who sees it, loves it. It’s a matter of getting it on television, getting it exposed.”

Except the only reason NBC might rush a minicam over to the handball venue is because Hakeem Olajuwon’s in the stands watching.

And even if these missionaries make some converts, where are the churches?

Handball has no infrastructure in the states - no AAU age-group play, no high school programs, no NCAA sponsorship. No one knows the game, so no one can coach it.

The national team is trying, though. Another sponsor, Cumberland Mall, started an adopt-an-athlete program that sent Allinger and her teammates into Cobb County schools twice a week to start intramural programs. That led to a 70-team tournament at the mall, and two teams going to Sweden for an international festival that annually draws 11,000 players. Two of Allinger’s proteges from Dickerson Middle School made it.

Allinger would like to spend the next year in Europe herself, sharpening her skills on a club team. At the very least, she’d like to get a beer league going in Atlanta.

“You start small,” she said, “and maybe someday we’ll have a league that stretches across the U.S. - even up in Montana and Washington.”

Maybe. Maybe you get sponsored by MTV.

Just as long as you don’t wind up on C-SPAN.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: LOCAL WATCH A look at how athletes from Idaho and Washington fared on Friday at the Olympics: Track and field: Tawanda Chiwira (Zimbabwe and Idaho), placed third in Heat 6 to qualify in men’s 400, clocking 45.89; Michael Joubert (Australia, ex-WSU) placed fifth in Heat 1 of men’s 400 and failed to qualify with 46.30 clocking; Francis Dodoo (Ghana, ex-WSU and UI), placed 16th in Group 2 and failed to qualify in men’s triple jump with mark of 53-3-1/2; Erica Wheeler (Sequim), placed 15th in Group 1 and failed to qualify in women’s javelin with toss of 175-0. Men’s basketball: John Stockton (Spokane) scored five points and Gary Payton (Seattle) did not score in limited action as the Dream Team clobbered China 133-70. Women’s cycling: Rebecca Twigg (Seattle), who ditched her SuperBike after a disappointing individual pursuit race on Thursday, fared no better on a conventional bike. Twigg switched back to her own Hooker bike but still lost to Germany’s Judith Arndt. Women’s team handball: Dawn Allinger (ex-WSU), did not score in USA’s 29-19 loss to Denmark. Rowing: USA men’s lightweight coxless fours with Marcus Schneider (Everett) won semifinal heat in 6:09.89.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review