Lessons from Partille Cup

The Partille Cup is one of the biggest annual events in Sweden and for the 13th year in a row, the organisers of this event set a new record as this year’s tournament attracted 1 120 teams and 21 500 participants from 41 countries who competed from the Under-10 to Under-21 age-groups. Among these participants were 75 young handball players from Zimbabwe who were drawn from three schools — Harare’s Girls High School, Howard High School from Chiweshe and Mashonaland East Province’s Chishawasha Primary School — and Mashrhino, a select side from Mashonaland West Province.

Their participation at the Partille Cup was made possible by a number of sponsors back home in Zimbabwe who included Chicken Inn, Dulys (Ford) and Zimplats. They also received some enormous support from fellow Zimbabweans who are based here in Gothenburg, who included Glen Norah-born Pedzai Muusha and Audrey Madakiwa from Bulawayo. During this year’s tournament in Gothenburg, Girls High School took part in the girls Under-21 competition, Howard High were Zimbabwe’s representatives in the boys Under-18 section while Chishawasha and Mashrhino took part in the boys and girls Under-12 matches respectively.

Although all these four teams propped up their group standings in the respective age-groups that they played in during this year’s exciting Partille Cup, both the Zimbabwe Handball Federation and the players feel that their participation in this tournament gave them an important step in their quest to make handball one of the most popular sports back home in Zimbabwe.

They also described their participation in this year’s Partille Cup as an achievement — the achievement is even greater when you consider that all the players who were in Team Zimbabwe were making their maiden appearances at this tournament and played mostly against top European club sides from countries such as Sweden, Belgium, Norway, Germany and Austria.

Girls High School also played against the United States girls Under-21 side in their group matches.
Zimbabwe were also the only country from Southern Africa who took part in this year’s Partille Cup and the Zimbabwe Handball Federation president, Amon Madzvamuse, and secretary-general, Alphios Magiya, said they were now part and parcel of this annual event and they would like Team Zimbabwe to be a regular feature at the world’s biggest youth handball extravaganza.

“We are now more than determined to send our teams to the Partille Cup on a regular basis because it gives us the platform to develop our talented young handball players.
“In fact, participating in the Partille Cup is not about winning but to give the youngsters the much-needed international exposure when they are still young and this will make them fall in love with the sport,’’ said ZHF president Madzvamuse yesterday.

His secretary-general Magiya also said that they were now going to come up with a proper talent identification programme back home in Zimbabwe which will see them selecting “the right players’’ for the Partille Cup.

“We need to come up with a proper strategy that will see us identifying young players from the ages of say nine or 10 years who we can bring to the Partille Cup for a couple of more years and then help to turn them into national team stars. We don’t need to keep on changing the players who we will be bringing here, year in, year out for the Partille Cup because it won’t effectively help us in developing these players . . . We need some form of continuity,’’ Magiya said.

Madzvamuse and Magiya also said they were now going to make sure that they start their preparations for the Partille Cup much earlier than what they did this year.
“In fact, what we are going to do once we return home after this competition is that we are first going to write letters or contact the schools and the select side, Mashrhino, who were here to find out whether they would be interested in returning to Sweden for next year’s Partille Cup.

“After that we will send invitations to other schools or clubs who will be interested in taking part in the 2014 Partille Cup and we will make sure that we get all the responses by the end of November this year.

“This will allow us to make all the proper preparations and arrangements for our participation in the 2014 Partille Cup well in advance and everything should be done by March next year,’’ said the ZHF bosses. But kudos should go to the young Zimbabwean players who took part in this year’s Partille Cup as they were just a marvel to watch and won the hearts of many neutrals with their sportsmanship during this tournament.

The Zimbabwean players and the coaches also said their participation in this year’s Partille Cup was quite a good experience for them and it gave them some invaluable lessons in handball. Phillip Munyaradzi (17), who turned out for Howard High at this tournament, said he learnt a lot of things during this year’s Partille Cup.

“I’ve been playing handball for only three years at the school and it is my first time to play at the Partille Cup and I learnt a lot during this tournament.
“I learnt some basic handball and the handball that is being played here is more advanced than the one that we play in Zimbabwe. Here in Europe, I noticed that most players take up the sport at a very young age and they end up being more experienced than the rest of us who take up the sport late.

“Players from these European countries also specialise in playing handball . . . once one takes up the sport, he or she will continue playing it until he or she gets old and these are some of the things that we lack back home in Zimbabwe,’’ said Munyaradzi, who is an O-Level pupil at Howard High.