Fall 2011: Success

The Fall Semester of this 2011 can only be summarized with the word success. Not only we had our biggest turnout on every practice so far, but we also played more games this semester than the last two semesters combined. And what makes us more proud than anything else, is that 80-90% of our players have never played this game before.

Our practice facilities this time around were provided by the Marian Park, located on the southwest area of Houston. We reach an agreement with them of having our practices on their facilities in exchange for collaborating with their after school program for kids on the elementary and middle school years. For this task we were fortunate enough to find Oscar Grisales, a very experienced coach and with several years of presence in the local community. He took charge of Team Handball on the after school program allowing us to practice on Wednesday nights, holding practices to everyone interested in participating.

We started the semester right away having to compete on the first ever edition of the Texas Team Handball League, at the beautiful facilities of Texas State University. We struggled on the first game as it was the first one ever for most of the players, but end up loosing by only three goals against the experienced A&M team. Our second game was against the local team, who had several players with experience on their roster and still we managed to loose by only three goals again. All in all a very good experience looking forward to our development. (Recap at USATH website: link, pictures).

Following that first experience, and in preparation for the second round of the league, when we were going to be the hosting team, we arranged two scrimmages games with the Houston Firehawks, a local powerhouse in the Houston area. On these games we made use of our youth and athleticism, and were able to close the gap and win the second half on both games.

Then the time came to host our round of the league, and we had the enormous luck of having Bogdan Pasat and the people from Southwest Indoor Soccer to provide us with their new Team Handball court for free. And thanks to the great turnout and energy from all the participants, they got so excited that, not only decided to rebuild their own Team Handball club (perhaps a new addition to the league for 2012/13?), but also to start a new city tournament in the near future.

This time we had to play with the two most experienced teams on the state, the Houston Vikings and the Austin Rockstars. Sadly the fellows from Austin could not make it so they forfeited their game in our favor giving us our first two points for the standing. We did faced off against the Vikings in what was going to be our toughest match of the season. By pacing ourselves, and playing with the edge that our Eagles had develop, we were able to score 14 goals (the most any team scored against the Vikings) and only lost by a differential of 14. (Recap at USATH website: link).

All this development and progress was tipped with our performance on a scrimmage game against Texas A&M, in which we won the first half for 10-9 showing our best playing of the season. We then mix and match the second half roster to give more playing time to the less experienced guys.

All this events rounded a semester of mayor success on development and skills learning for our players, and of success and growth on the whole Texas Team Handball landscape. In summary: Success.

Up: Miguel, Kevin, Aissata, Chrys, Eric, Coach Martin. Down: Juan, Cameron, Christian, Oscar, Javier, Julian.

Up: Coach Martin, Jeff, Marcus, Eugene, Eric, Julian. Down: Cameron, Colby, Christian, Oscar.