Though our activities are on-pause due to the restrictions in place, San Francisco CalHeat is effortlessly planning for the future. As part of our plans to develop the sport in the Bay Area we are aiming at advancing education for our coaches and referees in the upcoming seasons.
There is an increasing need to build a more foundational knowledge of the sport at every level, by training and empowering middle and high school teachers, but also our own youth and adult coaches. Our club has grown its membership quite significantly in the last few years, resulting in more teams, adult and youth, more competitions. It’s now our objective to support that growth with the right level of mentorship and coaching. Moving forward, our first women’s and men’s team head coaches, Tina Alavanja and Danilo Rojevic, will lead our coaching committee. The plan is to develop a path forward to further advance the education of our youth team handball coaches, through coaching clinics and seminars, as well as identify and train promising prospects. If you have any interest in becoming a handball coach at SF CalHeat, or coach any of our partner middle or high school team, please contact us at coaches@calheat.com.
Similarly, we plan to develop more referees moving forward. Despite a general improvement of our competitions, women, men, Elite and Open, we have noticed that the quality of refereeing in the United States falls significantly behind and is dropping over the years. The development of our sport can only be successful if we simultaneously train more and better referees. In the past years, we’ve had Chris Kraemer successfully lead our referee program and we are currently in the search of someone to take over those activities. We have had a few of our club members take basic refereeing certifications for indoor and we hope to advance their knowledge in the future. At the same time we are investing in beach handball referees lead by NACHC referee Michelle Mensing to support both the indoor and beach versions of the sport. The ultimate goal would be to have two dedicated referee pairs sent to the 2021 US Club Nationals and at least one referee pair participating in the US Beach Handball Tour. If you have any interest in leading or being part of the project, please contact us at referees@calheat.com.
Stay safe, and see you on the court soon.