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Olympic Handball Club holds its own

Cynthia Marcinek, For The Miami Student

The Miami University Olympic Handball Club hosted the first RedHawk Invitational the weekend after spring break and hope to continue improving and become more well-known on Miami's campus.

Though many students on Miami's campus are unfamiliar with the sport, it is the game junior Komi Akpalo grew up with when he lived in Togo in West Africa as a child.

"I personally grew up playing handball and soccer in my home country of Togo," Akpalo said. "It's a sport that is fun and very easy to learn. It keeps your interest because it is high paced and very physical at some points."

According to Akpalo, the sport includes seven people from each team on the court at a time-six of which are field players and one a goalie.

While playing, a member can pass the ball upon receiving it, keep the ball or shoot. If a player decides to hold the ball, they can either dribble or take three steps for up to three seconds at a time without dribbling. The ultimate goal of the game is to put the ball in the opposing team's goal.

When Akpalo first started the team, he said he gathered players using word of mouth, but this year the team also participated in Mega Fair and Club Sports Fair.

Although it currently consists of around 15 people, at one point there were 24.

First-year player John Evans said he likes that handball combines aspects of many different sports.

"It's a lot of the different parts of great sports of the world and they kind of roam together," Evans said. "There's a lot of raw movement and energy about it, which makes it fun."

First-year Ethan Bush has drawn on past sports he has played for experience to help him learn.

"The best feeling is rocketing the ball past the goalie," Bush said. "Getting to know this sport has taken time, but my past baseball experience has built up my arm strength to be ready for handball."

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According to Akpalo, everybody works together to improve the team when they meet Mondays and Wednesdays.

"Everybody helps out," Akpalo said. "[When] someone learns from watching handball, like a video, they bring it to practice and show it to others. Everybody tries to help out the full team."

Akpalo said he hopes to see the Olympic Handball Club continue to grow in the future. He also said he hopes to see the team go above and beyond his expectations.

"I created the team so that we could establish handball as a big club sport at Miami," Akpalo said. "With many new teams being created nationwide, I would like us to take things we learned from this first year and use them to develop into a national powerhouse as well. The team is currently very athletic with many of the players having a background in at least two other sports, and these guys will be the leaders for the newcomers next year as we make a push to become well known."

Evans also said he hopes to see the team make an impact on the sport nationwide.

"I heard about [handball] from watching the Olympics and [knew] we've never won a gold, and I thought 'What if we could change this?'" Evans said.