This time last year, there was still no handball team at the University of York, something that Chrysanthi Stefanou and Helene Nyegaaard-Larsen, were determined to change.
The girls soon contacted YUSU in the hope of starting a club and, a year later, they ended their season in style, winning their match at Roses against an experienced Lancaster team, who were the clear favourites.
Their task was never going to be easy: “We had to start from nothing, a lot of people came to try it out, some people didn’t comeback, but now we have about 25 to 30 members. When we spoke at first I was like I don’t really think this is going to work,” Helene admits. “We lost a few people at the beginning because we struggled to order handballs to play with, we only got them before the first term ended, so when you think about it on the first day we were training with footballs and now we’ve won Roses!”
According to the club goalkeeper Andre Costin, “(Handball’s) a lot like chess. When a player moves in a certain way, if they’re not fast enough they might get tripped.”
Chrysanthi had Roses as her aim for the year. “We’d been practising all year. The night before the game we just said ‘we’ll just see how it goes’ and we actually won! A good start I guess.” For a first season this is truly an amazing achievement, and a great for the team to push on from. To say it was simply a ‘good start’ would be an understatement.