To develop their sport, handball fans are taking matters into their own hands in Acadia

Handball clubs from Quebec and New Brunswick are joining forces so that young people develop their skills in this discipline that is still relatively unknown here.

Teenagers from Lévis, a suburb of Quebec, played with young New Brunswickers at the École Antonine-Maillet gymnasium in Dieppe over the weekend.

This friendly interprovincial meeting aims to exchange technical knowledge, create contacts and promote this sport in both provinces.

The minihandball is popular in schools in Acadia, but after a certain age, young people don’t have many options to continue if they liked the sport.

Fritz Mathurin and his partner noticed this while encouraging their daughter, who played sport at École Le Marais.

We were hooked, but we realized quite quickly that after the Acadia Games in 6th grade, there were no more sports. The minihandballit ends, then there is no continuationexplains the father.

We said to ourselves that it is valuable. It’s a beautiful sport. We would like young people to play! So we decided: we’re going to form a clubhe explained in an interview on Sunday.

The Club Handball Dieppe was therefore founded a little over a year ago.

To play at another level, it takes Quebec. That means we travel oftenexplains Fritz Mathurin. Links were forged in the Lévis region, probably the place where the handball is practiced at the highest level in Quebec.

Lévis, in return, offered to come and do a training camp in the Moncton region.

This is an exceptional opportunity for our young peoplesaid Fritz Mathurin. In Quebec, they are still at a higher level than the rest of us […]but it is still growing.

Player, then coach handball for around fifty years, Jean-François Mainguy, the head coach of Handball Lévis, is familiar with the obstacles encountered by this sport, especially popular in Europe, notably in Germany, France and Scandinavia.

It’s a sport that is relatively little known.observes Jean-François Mainguy, who runs a sports-studies program with around fifty students in Lévis.

He recognizes that attention must always be drawn to the handball so that it finds its place in school sports in Quebec, but that the results for young people are worth it. Success is here when you put in the effort, he said.

Jean-François Mainguy remembers that such exchanges with New Brunswick took place as far back as the 1980s, but with young athletes from the Edmundston region. Traditionally, New Brunswickers went to Quebec.

This is the third time he has had the opportunity to travel to New Brunswick, and the first to the Moncton region.

He brought with him players aged 11 to 16 for games or clinics with New Brunswick students.

The goal in doing so is to come back, to do it again!he said.

The wish of Fritz Mathurin, from the Club Handball Dieppe, is that the sport gains popularity and that athletes can develop.

The handball has been on the Summer Olympics program continuously since 1972. However, Canada’s women’s and men’s teams have only participated once, in 1976.

The club of handball of Dieppe is even the only one operating in New Brunswick at the moment. There was one in the past in the Acadian Peninsula.

Since a team of handball is made up of seven players, Fritz Mathurin thinks it is realistic to bring together 20 to 30 young people to form enough teams in cities like Moncton, Saint-Jean and Fredericton and propel the sport on the right track in the province.

In addition to this exchange of knowledge with the athletes from Lévis, the young players from Dieppe can now count on the expertise of their new coach, Sahar Hakimi, from the Tunisian Football Federation. handball.

Sahar Hakimi is originally from Tunisia, where since 2008 she has coached the regional teams of handball girls and boys in the Tunis region.

Recently settled in Canada, she says she is delighted to be able to share her passion.

I’m lucky to find a team hereshe said. In my country, we have the tradition of handball. So, I want to move this sport from my country to here.

She aims to bring a team to Quebec soon. To develop, to improve, you really have to participate in competitionsshe emphasizes.

Sahar Hakimi also hopes that we will be able to organize tournaments between several clubs in New Brunswick.

Since Canadians don’t see many games of handball in person or on television, she explains that a good part of her training focuses on developing playing techniques.

Sahar Hakimi is excited by the enthusiasm she sees from the Dieppe players so far. Young people have the potentialshe said.

According to the report by Myriam Breau