Every team has their icon. Slave Jovanovski is undoubtedly one of the major contributors of our men’s team successes in the last few years. He has seen a lot of the club’s development – from its establishment as a NPO to the club becoming a reference in the country – and experienced it all on the court.

Hi Slave! As a starter, tell us briefly about your position and role in the team?

Hi everyone, I’m Slave 🙂 I have played back court throughout my whole career at Calheat, most often as a center back (playmaker). I am also the captain of the San Francisco Calheat men’s team and was a founding member of the Calheat board.

Tell us more about your Handball career prior to San Francisco Calheat…

Though I had been fond of sports throughout my childhood, I actually started playing handball pretty old by current european standards. I was mainly into soccer and basketball in my youth. I think I must have been 13 or 14 when I played on my middle school team in a regional competition. That was probably the first time I tried handball.

Right after that, the local handball team called a bunch of us to join a newly founded junior squad for the RK Radovis team in Macedonia. That was the first time I experienced handball in an organized fashion, with a coach, regular practices, and all that. A year later, that junior team became national champion, with me as the captain. It was a completely unprecedented and unexpected success at the time, given that we came from a very small town and our senior team only played in the second division. That must have been in 2000 or 2001, I forget.

Following that success, the year after I joined the RK Radovis senior team. I played one season with them in the second division, which we ended up winning and qualifying for the Macedonian Super League. For the most part I was keeping the senior team bench warm, while playing on the junior team that year 🙂

For the next two years I played with the RK Radovis senior team in the Super League. I remember scoring my first goal in that league at age 16 against HC Vardar, the current EHF Champions League champion. Those two years in the Super League were surreal and intense. I was practicing 7-8 times per week and had 1-2 games per week. It was an absolutely amazing experience. My team wasn’t that great and we always barely ended up surviving relegation. I am not sure if we ever won an away game, actually…

In my senior year of high school I received a scholarship to go study university in the USA. So I made the big decision to quit handball in 2003 and move to Athens, Ohio. From playing in one of the better leagues in Europe on a weekly basis, I quit “cold turkey” and didn’t actually touch handball for six years. It sounds pretty crazy now, when I think about it today. But back then, I couldn’t find any handball teams around me and getting a good education was very important to me. So I didn’t play until the fall of 2009, I believe.

You joined Calheat 10 years ago. What was it like back then? Do you have some memorable moments?

I am trying to find the appropriate word to describe it. It was more… unpredictable, maybe. There was quite an interest in handball even back then, so it wasn’t necessarily small. But it was a bit less organized and less stable. I remember the women’s “team” having 1 or 2 players per practice, for the longest time. We also weren’t organized as a non-profit entity yet, so there was a lot less structure when compared to today.

It was a great group of people nevertheless, which quickly became more or less like a family to me. We had some decent teams as well, just never complete enough to win a national championship. And don’t get me wrong, we gave it all on the court (and in the bars) even back then as well. I also remember having plenty of player churn, year over year. Another difference was that back then we only played very few games or tournaments per year, before US Nationals. But I was just happy to rediscover handball again and be able to practice and play in the great facility we had in Fremont, CA. It was amazing! 

I have a ton of good memories from that time, mostly involving the people on the team and the great camaraderie that we had even back then, similar to what we have today. One that keeps coming back was playing goalie for one half at Oregon State, because our goalie couldn’t make it and the player that was going to replace him had miscalculated how long it takes to drive from San Francisco to Corvallis, Oregon (many, many hours). That game I played better as a goalie, than I did as a player. I also remember playing in Colorado Springs and asking for a substitution after 3 minutes of play, because the oxygen there was so rare. I thought we had played for 20 minutes! Then there is also the time when one of our players left in the middle of the game in Phoenix (we were winning by a wide margin) to chase over a cab in which he had left his phone the night before….

I should really stop there before we get to the juicy stuff.

In the past 2-3 years, the club has turned into a powerhouse at the national level. What are some of the reasons behind this success?

There are many reasons for this. For starters I think the club became a lot more organized ever since it became an official entity. The player pool has increased significantly and the churn decreased over the last few years, producing a nice stable core set of players which allows us to have high quality practices and games throughout the season. Very, very, importantly, we have a super dedicated and very professional coaching staff that takes their role very seriously. One can not overstate how important that has been to the success of the team. There has been a huge increase in intensity across tactics, techniques, and conditioning. We play a lot more games throughout the year and there is more competition even within the team. Last but not least, there is a nice, positive, and friendly atmosphere in the club, which definitely adds a ton.

Your role in the team has evolved over the years, from a young top scorer to an experienced leader and captain. Walk us through this evolution and some of your major moments as a player at Calheat…

It has definitely been a journey for me, both as a player and as an individual. When I first started at Calheat, I was one of the youngest on the team for several years. At the time handball for me started and ended on the court. For the last five or six years it has become a lot more. One realizes that as much as you build a team during practice and tournaments, you equally build the team off the court. I actually credit handball and Calheat with certain types of career success as well. If you are reading this and you have never played a team sport, you might be surprised how much team and leadership skills transfer from a sports team to professional life. If you are a parent, make sure your child plays a team sport at some point during their childhood. But I digress…

Early on I had won several MVP and Top Scorer awards from tournaments and nationals. Nowadays when I score the most goals in a game, there is usually something wrong about that game. We rarely win those types of games…

Don’t get me wrong, winning Top Scorer and Nationals was one of the highlights for me at the time and will cherish that forever. But as a captain and center back, now I care much less about individual performance  and more about the team coming together and hopefully winning. And sometimes you don’t even win, but you still feel good about how the team held itself. That’s when you know you have a Team. Nowadays I try to focus a lot more on enabling others and getting the most out of the team, rather than the individuals. I believe in “The Whole is Greater than the Sum of its Parts”.

As far as major moments with Calheat go, they would have to be the 2018 and 2019 nationals. The US Nationals of 2019 was the first time this generation of Calheat had won the US National Championship, finally joining the ranks of the previous great generations of this club. But probably even more memorable for me is wining the 2018 semi-final penalty shootout at Nationals against NYAC, after sixty minutes of regular play and two overtimes. What could possibly ever top scoring the final penalty and qualifying for the 2018 Finals?! That was the first medal from Nationals for me.

The team won the 2019 US Nationals. How does it feel to win the National Championship?

It is a dream come true. I feel like it is something that every handball player in the USA wishes to experience, whether they say it or not. I was fortunate enough to be part of a great group of players that worked very hard to get there. After the 2018 season, in which we came second, I was ready to “retire” from handball. I had always wanted to win a medal at Nationals, so that gave me closure. Boy was I happy to stay for the 2019 season?! 😀

Lifting that gold medal trophy was one of the happiest moments in my life.

The world is quite uncertain at the moment, however, we all hope to resume competition soon. What are your goals and dreams for the next season?

At this point, I just want to play again. We had big hopes, goals, and dreams for this past season. We wanted to repeat the success of last year at Nationals, we wanted to play the Super Globe Qualifier, hopefully qualify for the Super Globe and play against the best teams in the world. But apparently the best way to make the gods laugh is to make plans…

I am now spending some quality time in Macedonia, and training intensively with RK Radovis, a regular participant in the Macedonian SuperLeague. I can’t wait to be back on the court!