HSG talent flies to the World Games

Created: 07/07/2022, 17:04

Nominated for Birmingham: Carolin Hübner, here in action at the U18 World Cup.

© IHF

Carolin Hübner from HSG Würm-Mitte celebrated her debut in the national beach handball team at the four-nation tournament in Gdansk at the weekend.

And the national coach also nominated her for the World Games in the USA.

Würmtal

– Paula Reips and Carolin Hübner from the third division handball team HSG Würm-Mitte took second place with the German national beach handball team at a four-nation tournament in Gdansk last weekend.

The DHB selection competed with a completely renewed team compared to the World Cup victory a week ago.

Reips and Hübner, who played for the HSG in the 3rd league for women in the indoor handball season last season, weren't there.

In Gdansk, they won their third group game against Poland after two defeats against Croatia and Spain and advanced to the final against Spain as the best runners-up.

However, they clearly lost this in two sets on Saturday (7:14, 12:24).

Despite the defeat in the final, national coach Alexander Novakovic drew a positive conclusion from the tournament for the newly assembled team.

“We can consider second place behind runners-up Spain, who, apart from two players, started with the World Cup squad, to be a great success for our completely new team.

At this tournament, we were able to see that we have some promising athletes behind our top twelve athletes.”

Youth national player Hübner, who, unlike Reips, played for the first time in the women's team, took stock after her return in an interview with our newspaper: "The team had to find each other first.

We trained together once on Thursday and you just noticed that the details of the agreement didn't quite fit," she said.

“But we found each other better from game to game.

Of course it's a shame that we ended up having to admit defeat in the final.

But if you look realistically, everything else would have been a miracle.

In Spain, the squad consisted of two players from the World Cup squad.

With us, he was newly thrown together.”

Paula Reips played in the national team in Gdansk.

© IHF

Hübner was rather critical of her personal performance.

You couldn't quite match the performance from the U18 World Cup in June.

"It was just another difference to play against women's teams, which I had to get used to." In addition, as a line player it was difficult for her to play with players she didn't know.

"The timing was not right, especially with the Kempa allusions."

National coach Novakovic apparently saw things differently.

The national team is now flying to Birmingham (USA) for the World Games, which begin on Monday 11 July.

And Carolin Hübner is also part of the team.

Her name came as a surprise on the Birmingham nomination list.

She will also go, she confirmed.

The team is scheduled to leave for the USA today.

The World Games are a major international event that brings together around 3,500 athletes from non-Olympic sports every four years.

The German beach handball players start the tournament on Monday with the game against Mexico.

Ideally, they will play for victory in the final on July 15th.

For the extended national squad, which, in addition to Reips, also includes the HSG player Kristina Krecken, who is injured in Gdansk, there could be another opportunity to prove themselves in Orihuela (Spain) from July 29th to 31st.

Then the second of a total of four tournaments of the "IHF Beach Handball Global Tour" planned for this summer will take place.