Working hard to promote Olympic Handball in Ireland

Date Published: {J}

IF you asked most Irish people what they know about Olympic Handball, they might have a dim recollection of playing the sport in primary school or in the Community Games in their childhood. Simply, even as a minority sport, it is in the minority.

Hard to believe, then, that Olympic Handball, according to Irish Development Officer and Rahoon native Lisa Regan, has the second highest participation levels in men’s sport on mainland Europe and that it is the No. 1 sport played by women on the continent.

Indeed, a cursory run of the fingers over the TV remote and you will, more than likely, find the game being aired on Sky Sports or Eurosport on any given evening. Yet, little is known about Olympic Handball in Ireland, although the game has, for want of a better word, a “cult” following in the likes of Dublin, Kildare and Meath and remote outposts such as Clifden and Tralee.

However, Olympic Handball, which first found its way to Irish shores in the late 1970s, has been played at some time or other in almost every national school in Ireland, including Galway, where Craughwell National School principal Dara Mannion has organised and spearheaded the inter-school competitions in recent times.

Charged, though, with elevating the game in terms of development and promotion nationwide is Galway native Lisa Regan, who is one of only three full-time officers who run the Irish Olympic Handball Association (IOHA). The other two are General Manager and Clare native Lúcás Ó Ceallacháin and Administrator Susan Moloney from Walkinstown in Dublin.

Having just returned from Serbia, where she watched Denmark claim the European senior men’s title with a final victory over their hosts in front of a packed arena of almost 25,000 people, Regan chats enthusiastically about a sport she readily admits she knew nothing about a year ago.

“I didn’t know anything about it,” she smiles bashfully. “However, it is the biggest team sport after football on mainland Europe and the biggest for women. It is actually a really good sport and anyone who plays it genuinely loves it. It is a very inclusive game and there are so many goals scored.”

Played mostly on an indoor court, teams comprise of seven players, including a goalkeeper, with games lasting 60 minutes, 30 minutes a half. A squad is made up of 16 players and these freely rotate in and out of the contest throughout the hour “because it is such a physically demanding game”, she says.

Regan joined the Association as Development Officer in July of last year, having previously worked as a sales manager in the Kingfisher Gym in NUI Galway. She is an Arts graduate from the College (2006) and later she worked as a staff journalist with the Galway Independent for two years before taking a career break to travel Asia and Australia in 2009.

While her role with the IOHA may represent a seismic shift in terms of a career change, Regan has always had a keen interest in sport. It wasn’t from the wind that she took it either, given her father is the one and only Tony ‘Horse’ Regan, former Sports and Recreation Officer at NUI Galway, while her brother Tony Óg is a member of the Galway senior hurling panel and her sister Susan once lined out for Galway’s minor camogie team.

Lisa, herself, also played camogie – the former corner back winning a Connacht junior title with Salthill – while, in Salerno Secondary school, she also participated in hockey. In later years, she has taken part in running and triathlon races, while she is currently secretary and PRO of Rahoon/Newcastle Hurling Club and is an active member of Galway Hurlers Supporters Club.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.