Team Handball - Battle of Chicago
By USA Team Handball
Thousands of spectators and 1,000,000+ television viewers helped USA Team Handball celebrate a major victory for the sport at the Battle of Chicago, a four-team international doubleheader held on July 17th, 2010.
Top-5 world powers Germany and Poland headlined the festivities at Chicago’s UIC Pavilion on July 17th. An overwhelmingly pro-Poland crowd sang, chanted and cheered through a tense affair, but Germany prevailed, 27-26, in a rematch of the 2007 World Championship final.
In the first game of the Olympic doubleheader, the USA Men’s National Team played at home for the first time since 2007, cruising to a 23-19 win over the 2010 USA club champions, L.A. Team Handball Club. The USA’s Adam El-Zoghby was the top scorer on the day, notching nine goals.
More than 6,000 seats were sold, providing a festive atmosphere that rivaled that of a match set in Europe. More than a year in the making, the Germany-Poland game represented the first full international match in the USA since the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. The event’s magnitude was also enhanced by the first widespread broadcast of Olympic handball in the U.S. outside of the Summer Games; Comcast Sports Net distributed both games across its nine outlets including Top 10 media markets such as Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Boston and Seattle.
The Germany-Poland match, featuring 2009 World Player of the Year Slawomir Szmal (Poland) and the Mohawk-sporting fan favorite Pascal Hens (Germany), was broadcast live in prime time via Germany's Sport1 and Poland's PolSat networks, which are distributed to more than 70 countries around the world.
The excitement surrounding the Battle of Chicago and the event's success is a milestone in the sport’s explosive growth in America since the 2008 Beijing Olympic Summer Games. The number of clubs in America has grown 800% around the country as USA Team Handball marches toward its goal of Olympic qualification and 100,000 children playing the sport. Olympic handball, a fast and fun seven-on-seven team sport, is growing right now in Chicago.
Want more information on how to join or start a club? Contact Alex Leopold at alex@usateamhandball.org or (312) 861-4914.