The national anthem has a different meaning, a different emotional connection when its you standing out there representing your country. The first time I heard it will always be my most vivid memory of the tournament.

On Friday the 9th of August, the Otago cohort of the NZ Handball youth and junior teams flew to Wellington to meet the Wellington girls from the U17 & U19 NZ Handball teams and be presented with our uniforms. This intimate ceremony indicated the start of an amazing experience. Early the next morning, we flew to Auckland, collecting our coach and another player, before departing for New Caledonia. We were greeted with shell necklaces and very hot and humid weather. One of the biggest challenges was adapting to this heat and learning to train and play in it. We spent the rest of the day getting settled in. On Sunday, we had a morning training and some time to explore the area of Noumea, which included going down to the beach for a quick swim. At the opening ceremony that night, we got to see all the other competitors from all the other competing nations. The atmosphere and vibe was electric and our whole team felt the excitement of walking behind the New Zealand flag.

Our first game was verse the host nation, New Caledonia. We knew they would be our toughest opponents as they have trained together for a long time with top French coaches, since New Caledonia is a French colony. We were all very nervous, and just before going out on to the court our team captains were announced. Myself and Tahndae, our only NZ incumbent, were named co-captains. Now I was really nervous! Honoured, but nervous.

Every player in the team was introduced individually, then the national anthem, which was very emotional and then we were into it. This was the first time that the whole team had ever played together, we learnt a lot but we lost. Even though we lost, after that game we were the most excited and positive. The feeling in the team was awesome, we were on such a high.

We played Papua New Guinea on Tuesday, who had a very different style of play. We worked together well as a team and managed a win. Points on the board! Wednesday we were up against American Samoa, now that was yet another style again! We were down by 6 points at one stage but came back to won 24-21, again we were ecstatic! More points! The gloss of the win was taken off a few players faces when the WADA Drug testing officials turned up & randomly picked 2 players from each team to to a urine drug test on. It was a highly stressful experience for all those competitors.

Thursday was another big day as we faced Australia and we knew this would be tough from seeing their previous game results. It didn’t help that we had lost our major playmaker, Sophia, to concussion, and this brought more doubt into the team. Needless to say we lost, but knew that we were still in the running for a medal if future results went our way. We needed Australia to beat American Samoa, and they did. In our final of the whole tournament we had to beat Fiji to secure a medal. We did it and thus ended up 3rd on the table. Bronze!!!

The closing ceremony proceeded our final game and our U17 NZ super stars came 2nd and we came 3rd. As we were presented with our medals an extra special moment occurred when our U17 sisters performed very emotional and powerful haka for us. Many of us were in tears. Following the awards, the host nation put on a wonderful traditional performance and a party atmosphere went on for quite a long time, where every country had opportunities to share their own traditional dances and songs.

We ended up with a day to spare on the Saturday, where the New Zealand players were given an option to attend a training session with EHF Master Coach, Roland Nemes, and our coaches had a training session as well.

It was such an eyeopening and intoxicating experience. We made new friends from other countries and got to experience life in New Caledonia and we all feel so grateful to those who made it possible, most especially our 2 coaches Jaclyn Parker & Eoin Murray who made all this possible. Two years ago I was playing handball as a social sport and without their commitment and encouragement I would not have had this opportunity.

We are already planning next years tournament and hope to go further afield and gain more international experience. Handball is continuing to grow in popularity in Oceania and I encourage everyone to try it. 

Sophie Gaudin