The 2024/2025 Scottish Handball season that recently finished was another outstanding step on the continued development of our sport.
We started off with our SHA Cooper-Neilson Awards evening in September which brought together the full handball family into one location to celebrate the successes of each team and player from the past season. It was a great night of celebration and our thanks go to the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow for helping deliver a truly memorable night in Glasgow! September also saw us elect David Watt OBE as our new Chair and he has slotted in brilliantly – we were delighted to welcome you David and delighted you have enjoyed your first season with us.
Our schools’ competitions started in November with our Girls leading the way. We managed to attract nearly 300 participants in these events, which is an increase of nearly 42% on the season before! Our primary school event was a real hit with 15 boys’ teams and 15 girls’ teams participating on the day (again somewhere just over 300 children – and was our biggest ever such event!); with one team coming down from Angus to join the fun! We're really looking forward to all of next season's Schools Championships too!
In our Youth section, Tryst ‘77 brought home the gold for both boys and girls 2010/11’s leagues with runners up being Kelvinside. Well done to all teams who participated and showing us what the future of handball can become! Our minis section was amazing this year, bringing loads of new players to our events to start their journeys in handball within clubs too. Our Scottish Cup Finals Day was another real highlight for everyone in the Scottish Handball family as we got glimpse of that exciting future ahead!
The season for the senior men teams started out hot with all teams showing the passion for the sport and their desire to hit the number 1 spot. Every match was played at full-tilt – with every team giving their all and we had some wonderful games to watch.
A massive congratulations to East Kilbride ‘82 Men’s team who finished the season with winning 3 gold medals in the League Cup, Scottish Cup and the League, taking over the mantle for all three domestic competitions from the long-time holders: Livingston Handball Club. A huge shout out to Kelvinside who came in strong this season; and, by finishing runners-up in the League they showed the determination to get to the Super Cup and compete with great efforts against the top teams in England. They also qualified for the Celtic Cup next season, alongside Tryst ‘77 Men’s and EK ‘82 Men’s through the League Cup.
The season for the senior women teams was a bit smaller this year but that didn’t stop the talent coming through from all players participating. All teams showed their strengths and the passion they have for the sport, and of course giving everything to try to win.
A massive congratulations to Tryst ‘77 Women’s team who finished the season with a gold medal in the League and Scottish Cup, stealing the trophies from the holders: Edinburgh Women’s team. The determination and passion that Tryst ‘77 brought this year was unbelievable and that really showed off at each match. A huge shout out to Edinburgh handball team for retaining the League Cup; and to them, Tryst ’77 Women’s and EK ‘77 women’s team for qualifying for the Celtic cup next season.
We also held the finals of the Celtic Cup and Super Cup this year, the gold for the Celtic Cup managed to stay in Scotland for the women’s team with Tryst ‘77 winning, however, the men’s teams couldn’t quite keep it in Scotland. Perhaps next season! Huge congratulations to Dublin InternationalHandball Club on their win.
The Super Cup was another really successful event with the top 2 Scottish and top 2 English teams competing against each other across the weekend of the 17th & 18th of May. It was an incredible weekend, with amazing handball being played and lots of supporters coming from all over the UK to watch as well. With a global broadcast going out on YouTube, we are delighted to have reached the many thousands of viewers who love Handball and who are keenly watching our growth and development.
Whilst the gold wasn’t able to stay in Scotland this year, our hearty congratulations go to Loughborough Handball Club in the Women’s event and Oxford Handball Club in the Men’s event on their wins. Loughborough were hugely dominant across the event and finished their season unbeaten in all competitions – really setting the playing standard for everyone else to work towards! Oxford came out on top after an absolute classic in the Men’s Final, only winning in extra time after their ‘keeper saved a penalty after the buzzer in normal time to keep the score level. Of course, all of this, and more, is still available on the SHA YouTube channel.
Another notable success of the year was that Scotland were the first to pilot the revamped EHF Rinck Level 1 coaching course. This was an outstanding opportunity for our future coaches to be the first to experience and participate in the course and learn from some of Europe’s best coaches/players in Handball. Thank you, EHF, for giving us this opportunity! This is an important part of our growth here in Scotland and such activities help underpin all the amazing work our Development Team and all our coaches across Scotland have done in recent years.
We started our work with the EHF in delivering our MasterPlan 360 Programme in 2022 and we have made huge strides thanks to the efforts of our entire team since then. We have multiplied our reach into Schools by c. 500% and we are now reaching around 25,000 children each year. Whilst this will take time to filter through to the Senior Leagues, we are working hard with our clubs to help develop our pathways for everyone in our sport.
Our National Academy had another extremely busy year too! We had an outstanding trip for the Senior Boys to Portugal in October, and followed that for our younger Boys team with the first of our trips to Germany as we start the Partnership between Scottish Handball and with the German club SV Anhalt-Bernburg. The trip was amazing and our Boys were even hosted by the Town Mayor – who had made cranachan herself as a welcome! Watch this space for exciting developments happening here.
Our younger Girls team then went back to The Toros Cup in Mios (near Bordeaux) for the second year running to take part in their annual girls Handball tournament. They did really well and learned a lot during the trip, everyone acquitting themselves extremely well. Since then, our Boys and Girls teams have taken part in trips to Stoke Mandeville and Nottingham respectively to join with colleagues in England at two of their Regional Tournaments. We end this season with our senior Girls going to Viborg in Denmark for the Generation Cup at the end of July / Start of August. Another excellent, and very busy (!), year for our National Academy. Whilst there is a lot still to do as we develop our international pathway for Scotland, we have made yet more encouraging strides this season. Also, a big shout goes to all the players from Scotland who have been selected for their respective GB squads - well done all!
We also continued our partnership with Scottish Student Sport who have, yet again, proven to be an excellent partner in helping us to continue to grow in student sport - a very important part of our landscape.
Finally, we launched the pilot year for our Handball Scholarship with Oriam and Heriot-Watt University. This will start in September and we have had a brilliant response from across the world! We look forward to welcoming the first tranche of successful applicants to that in September – and to re-starting applications for next year very soon!
We have continued to make operational changes in the background to maximise the efficiency of all that we do, and we made the decision to implement a new Playing and Competition Management system – GameDay – so we are all excited to see that launch in time for the new season ahead. We also want to say thank to you to everyone – from the Board through to all our team, colleagues and wider connections and supporters who made last season such a memorable one. We were delighted to see our CEO, Ewan Hunter, elected to the European Handball League Board at the recent EHF EHLB meeting in Cologne in June. He is there to represent all the smaller and emerging nations, so we wish him well for his upcoming 4-year period too. As ever, he has already started to make positive suggestions for change, so watch this space!
We thank everyone who played, coached, watched or contributed to our Handball family this season and we can’t wait to see what next season brings for us all!
From the SHA, we say a huge “Thank you” for everything – here’s to season 2025/2026!