Handbollen!

Every Tuesday night now, I imagine myself as Yao Ming, Ichiro or one of the baseball players from Latin America that barely speaks any English.  I’ve read about these players for years, how the teams bring in translators for them, but that they basically go through practice without every REALLY knowing what the coach is yelling about, or what their teammates are saying.  They just go out and do their jobs, knowing that they’ve played long enough and are talented enough to figure out what is needed.

So I guess that is where my imagination gets a little ahead of me.  Because I’ve never actually played Handbollen before…nor ever seen a full game…and my teammates have played since they were 9.

So for 8 to 10 years.

This began when my neighbor last year asked me to play in the local “innebandy” (floor hockey)  pickup game held at the school gym 10 feet from our house.  We would get together once a week (if we had enough players), show up, run around and be out of there within an hour.  In the winter when you don’t really want to exercise outside at all, this was HUGE.  I really enjoyed playing and it was fun, casual atmosphere.  Most of the guys were a few years older than me, so I could out-hustle them to make up for my lack of hockey skills. And they didn’t mind when I missed the ball completely on my slapshot, because they know I was just learning.

When we moved out to Åkersberga, I wanted to find something similar. But for some reason, all I found were “official” clubs.   I emailed the innebandy league, the handball league and the basketball league.  I found nothing that was “casual” enough for me.  Eventually, my coworker called and used some magic Swedish words and told me that the Handball club would practice on Tuesday night – 8pm. He also said that it wasn’t a pick-up league – that it was Division 4.  I had no idea what that meant, and I’ve never played handball, but Sweden is one of the best in the world at it, and so it was shown on the Olympics a lot last year.  I remembered a little of the game, so obviously I would be a natural at this one.

As I said, last year it was just 6-8 middle-aged guys showing up and playing hockey.  When I showed up for my first practice, there was a coach and 12 guys already stretching and jogging.  The first practice started off with about 10 minutes of running, then another 10 minutes of focused running, with a final 10 minutes of really fast running.  All directed by a coach’s whistle.  Not exactly the informal thing I was thinking. 

We then switched to drills.  Which were all in Swedish.  The coach gave a 5 minute explanation of what we were all supposed to do, then looked at me and kind of shrugged.  I agreed that no explanation was necessary and jumped to the back of the line – I would be able to figure it out by following everyone else.

Some of the other weird parts of that first practice were that they use sticky wax on their hands.  There is a big vat of pine tar type stuff that you dip a few fingers into to get a better grip on the ball.  That DOES NOT come off and I almost had to sleep in my contacts that night for fear of poisoning my eyes.  As opposed to innebandy, I was not the on the faster side of the age curve here – I made the horrible mistake of asking one of the guys how old everyone was – he let me know that he was 19, the guy on my left was 17 but that some of the guys were probably in their mid-20’s. And they were all fast and in shape. Also, practice was not the 60 minutes in and out that I was used to, this went a full 90, with the last 15 spent doing more running. 

The guys were all nice – definitely (most likely) all younger than me, and spoke Swedish 100% of the time, but this was good.  It was actually one of the few times since we’ve been out here that people don’t switch to English automatically.  I might actually get a chance to learn Swedish from them.

We’ve had a few practices now and my learning curve is moving in the right direction – I’ve almost gotten close to not taking anything OFF the table.  Another few weeks and maybe I’ll actually add something, but we’ll see. So far I  would not be recruited to the national team yet, but well on my way. 

We have had two games so far – and because they are Division IV, they are actually against other cities.  So weird.  Last week was a home game, and I was ready to show Lisa and Calvin how handbollen was played!  I had prepped lisa that I would like just be sitting on the bench for the game as I had just figured out how to run and catch the ball.  We get there and I realize that everyone else has official jerseys…when I ask the coach he says that they only have 10 spots on the whole team, so it might be best if I watch this one from the stands.  A little embarrassing probably, but it was good to actually see an actual handball game.  And I could tell Lis and Calvin what was going on ( a little bit at least).  It was also the first time I’d seen Åkersberga play against other teams.  The first game we saw was the 15 yr old girl game.  These girls were possibly the most ruthlessly efficient team I have ever seen in any sport ever. EVER.  They were a combination of rick pitino-style full court press with oregon’s no huddle offense.  They literally made girls on the other team cry.  Watching them, I was pretty sure I would have been further down on their depth chart than the team I was playing with.  I asked one fo the guys and evidently this team is one of the best in the country.  Then we watched our game get started – and I felt a lot better about myself.  The other team were more what I was expecting, older, a little out of shape, just having fun.  I definitely could have played with those guys no problem.  Needless to say, our team KILLED them.  They were doing no-look passes, fast breaking constantly and just overall playing a class above.  That’s when I realized that I hadn’t just decided to walk on to a regular handball team – I’d basically walked on to the Alabama crimson tide of Swedish division 4 handball. 

So now my goal is to keep playing, reduce the mistakes, and start to get a better feel for the flow of the game.  I’m still convinced that I’m going to be a stud at this game, it might just take a few more months and bruises than I had anticipated.  Maybe a better goal would be to suit up for one game this season….

(UPDATE – I WROTE THIS THE DAY BEFORE LUCY WAS BORN.  I HAVEN’T BEEN BACK SINCE…SO TBD I GUESS)