About Us    Our Constitution    Our By-Laws    Board of Directors    Executive Committee    Activities Jim Conners 548 Newburne Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304 Tel: 248.454.7736 Email: jconners1000@aol.com The MHA has an Executive Committee, composed of the officers of the Association. The Executive Committee shall appoint a chairman, as needed, to the following Committees: Awards, Court Construction, Equipment, Fund Raising Projects, Handball Development, Kill Shot Newsletter, Lansing Committee, Membership, MHA Directory, National Magazine Articles, Publicity, Rules and Referees, Social, and Webmaster. Additional committees may be created by the Association or the Executive Committee. The Chairmen of the Michigan Handball Association shall be elected during the Spring General Membership Meeting. A majority vote of those members present shall be sufficient for election. The Chairmen should be elected based on their visibility and experience in the handball community. The Chairmen of the Michigan Handball Association shall meet monthly to discuss and plan for the benefit of the association members. These meetings are opened to the general membership and are usually held in the Detroit Metropolitan area. The meetings usually take up the entire evening. The function of each individual Chairman shall be to recruit and direct a committee in his assigned program area. Please welcome and help Jim Conners as our MHA Handball Development Chairman. A brief message from Our Handball Development Chairman: Michigan Handball - A Dying Sport or a Game For All Ages? Several weeks ago John Schandevel approached me regarding my involvement with the MHA Handball Development Program. The conversation held at Shields after an evening of Handball at Maple Courts went as follows. Jim, none of us are getting any younger. Begrudgingly, I agreed. John continued. And how many new players have you competed against since returning to the Detroit area last year? None I stated, trying to figure out where the conversation was going. Well, John responded, I believe the MHA must consistently attract new players to ensure the long-term viability of handball in Michigan. We need a handball development program and I feel that you can contribute. Will you help? After a few more beers and some further discussion I agreed to participate in spite of the fact that I am just an average player and definitely not a model for the game. I felt that only the players that are technically sound should provide instruction to new players so they learn the game properly. John assured me we would get all the help we need when we need it. Subsequently, I attended my first MHA meeting and found out that not only was I participating in the Handball Development Program but in fact I was the leader of the program. It turns out that either John was a better salesman than I thought or I had more than a few beers. You take your choice but in either case I have accepted the responsibility of developing a plan and leading it's execution on behalf of the MHA membership. Given this background, the purpose of this article is as follows: Establish the importance of developing new handball players in an organized manner! Outline what has been accomplished to date! Provide some initial thoughts that can serve as the platform for a comprehensive strategy! Solicit input from each of you for the purpose of finalizing a plan! First, it is obvious that there are significantly fewer players today than there were five years ago. Membership in the MHA is down and participation in the tournaments is marginal when compared to the past. Courts are being eliminated daily with no end in sight. Less courts translate into fewer players both short and long term. Sports like Golf and Soccer are exploding exponentially and the PC has become "the game" for all too many teenagers. Given these trends and I have mentioned only a few, what do you think is the future of Handball in ten years? How many players will there be? Will courts continue to exist given reduced demand? What will be the scenario in twenty years? Your leadership has concluded that the future is questionable given the current trend line and bleak when viewed from a worse case perspective. We cannot remain passive and continue to add new players based simply on The quality of competition the game provides. Introduction to the game mainly via relatives and friends of the current players. Handball like any other sport competes for mind share, which then leads to a commitment of time and ultimately the pursuit of excellence. Once you accept this fact it is clear that we must begin marketing the game of Handball to broaden participation and thereby guarantee its long-term viability. Marketing tactics like a softer ball or more outdoor courts facilitate participation but they don't introduce the sport to new players. Only an aggressive marketing program focused on specific targets will expand the Handball community. MHA leadership fully supported by its members must develop and implement such a plan to attract and retain new players. I would argue that without such a commitment Handball is indeed a dying sport and its future is consistent with that of the Dinosaur. The MHA took the first steps in the required rejuvenation process by initiating a Handball Development Program at Maple Courts approximately six weeks ago. We negotiated free court time (thanks Maple Courts Management) and solicited equipment from the USHA including gloves, balls and protective glasses. We used word of mouth to kick off the program focusing on the players at Maple Courts. We designed and implemented a simple educational program (thanks Keith Dode) to introduce the sport to the new players i.e. rules, basic strokes etc. Ten children ages seven to fourteen have participated in the program. Repeat attendees were awarded an MHA sweatshirt. All the kids, using the family ball, have already competed in a singles match, cut throat and doubles. And when I say compete I mean compete. It was great to see the progress that took place. I would like to offer my thanks to Dale Chimura and Dave Rott for the support they provided working with the attendees. We have learned some lessons from this initial foray into our Handball Development Program. Specifically, instruction is absolutely required but it must be kept to a minimum or you lose the students. Small doses of instruction augmented by competition increases participation. Peer pressure and the thrill of competition are far more effective than in-depth instruction. Error correction during the matches is also a preferred method of training. The family ball is critical to the introduction of the sport to athletes in the seven to fourteen age brackets. Without it we are virtually dead in the water. We plan to continue this program at Maple Courts each Saturday from 2:30 to 4:00 p.m. We would like to see it expanded to other facilities in the state and we encourage each of you to consider helping us in that endeavor. It won't take much of your time and it is very rewarding to see a beginner participate in his or her first volley. Please think about it and let us know. The Handball Development Program described above is the start of a solution to the challenge of finding and retaining new players but we need to do more. There are four market segments available to us. They are as follows: Grade School / Middle School High School College Racquet Ball Players Each segment has different characteristics and can be further subdivided into smaller niches (e.g. Athletes vs. Non Athletes). Segmentation is critical to the success of any marketing program. By pursuing smaller segments we can focus our marketing plan. Focus always produces superior results. The major challenge we face with the proposed segmentation process is the amount of resources that would be required to properly pursue them. Simply stated we don't have the horsepower to do all of them correctly and therefore we must zero in on the segment that we believe will give us the best return on our investment. Therefore, I propose that we focus our efforts on High School Students and more specifically on the athletes at those schools. They will be our primary targets. These young adults are in the 14 to 19-age category. They enjoy competing and have demonstrated physical prowess. We would sell handball to the Athletic Directors and in turn to the various Coaches as a sport that can augment their student athlete's primary sport(s) by improving their conditioning, hand eye co-ordination, footwork etc. The coaches would conduct the initial training and create interest in the sport. Our responsibility would be training the trainers and then mainstreaming the new players. The MHA will have to put a substantial amount of effort into this endeavor to make it successful. We will need help from each of you over time to enable this success. Before we finalize our recommendation to pursue this segment of potential players we would value your input. Do you agree with our logic? Would you prefer that we pursue a different segment? If so, which one and why? We don't have he answers so please contact us and provide your viewpoint and your recommendations. Once we have assimilated your input we will finalize our plans and communicate them to you via our new Web Site. In closing, allow me to summarize the major points that we discussed above. The future of handball is cloudy because of the lack of new players coming into the game. We are proposing to expand the Handball Community by developing and implementing a marketing plan focused on High School Athletes. In parallel with this activity we will continue testing the effectiveness of the Handball Development Program we started at Maple Courts with the goal of expanding this initiative to other facilities in the state. We need your help in both these programs to ensure their success. This help can be divided into two activities. First, we require your input on the content of this article and second we need your participation in the execution of the plans we finalize as a result of your participation. Thank you for taking the time to read this information and for your response to our requests. WE NEED YOUR HELP! Please feel free to contact me with the information provided at the top of the page.
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