EM silver for the handball players of the University of Duisburg-Essen

We congratulate the handball selection of the University of Duisburg-Essen on the Vice European Championship

By winning the German university championships in 2016, the handball team from Uni DUE qualified for the European student championship in Antequra, Spain (Málaga). On Sunday July 2nd, the team headed by coach Daniel Haase started their journey to the Iberian Peninsula. When they arrived in Spain, the team initially followed the group draw. The game was played in four groups, each consisting of three teams. Here the first two teams should qualify for the quarter-finals.

After the victories over Turkey 31:29 (16:10) and Romania 22:17 (9:10), the DUE team was the group winner and quarter-finalist. On Wednesday the team had a game-free day and thus time to relax. As the winner of Group D, the quarter-finals against the runners-up in Group A were on the program on Thursday. Here the DUE selection showed their best game in the tournament and could clearly defeat the Poles with 34:23 (16:10).

In the semifinals on Friday there was a German duel against Goethe University Frankfurt. The Frankfurters had traveled to the EM as latecomers. Since the financial outlay for such a tournament is immensely high, one team withdrew their report in advance, so that the Frankfurt team was also able to compete as the second German team and German runner-up in 2016.

The game against the University of Frankfurt remained open for a long time, so the Uni-DUE only led with one goal six minutes before the end at 20:19. Until the end, however, the team around coach Daniel Haase proved to be fresher and smarter at the goal. After a hard-fought sixty minutes there was a 27:22 (11:10) victory and thus the final.

On Saturday at 7 p.m. everything was set up for the final. The opponent was no stranger to the DUE selection: they had already played against the Romanians in the group stage and won the game by five goals. In the final, however, everything went differently. After a mediocre first half (9:14), the race to catch up came too late. Especially in the offensive game, minor mistakes crept in and made it difficult to stand up to the tall Romanians. With twenty seconds to go the Romanians were 23:22 in the front and it should stay that way. The team from the University of Duisburg-Essen did not manage to equalize in the remaining seconds and had to be satisfied with the runner-up European championship. Even if it is difficult to be happy about a silver medal at first, when you have invested so much to get the title, the joy on the part of the DUE team was huge.