Women: Croatia (CRO)

Coach: Iva KANJUGOVIC

Key Players: Nika VOJNOVIC (pivot), Anja Vida LUKSIC (left wing), Ana MALEC (specialist), Petra LOVRENCEVIC (goalkeeper)

Path to Buenos Aires 2018: Re-Allocation Process

 

Croatia arrive in Buenos Aires with top 10 finishes in the most recent world and continental championships, but know they will have to put in their very best performances if they want to stand any chance of standing on the podium.

 

The Croats are coached by Iva Kanjugovic, a former beach handball player who also coaches indoor handball for the youth teams of HC Lokomotiva, based in Zagreb, and is head coach of the senior women’s beach handball teams and she is under no impression about how important the Youth Olympic Games are for beach handball as a whole, remarking before the 2017 IHF U17 Beach Handball World Championship in Mauritius, that her team would be “writing history” if they qualified through to Argentina.

 

They did, but it was not directly through from Africa after they finished ninth, as their historic place was claimed eventually after the team spots in Buenos Aires were re-allocated.

 

In Mauritius, they lost their opening game against future world champions Hungary 2:1 and then lost again, in a shoot-out, against Argentina, who finished with bronze in the end. It went down to their last preliminary group match-up against Paraguay to decide who would qualify through to the main round, and Croatia registered a 2:0 victory to ensure progression, but the next stage would prove to be a job too far as they lost 2:0 to Netherlands and then Chinese Taipei.

 

9-14 placement round defeats of Mauritius, Venezuela and Paraguay then confirmed their ninth spot as Anja Vida Luksic ended with 96 points and fifth-place in the tournament top-scorer list.

 

In 2016, the Croatians finished sixth at the EHF EURO 16 and earlier this year in Montenegro, they finished eighth at the EHF EURO 18 where they beat Romania and France, but lost to Portugal in their preliminary group, and then the Netherlands in the quarter-finals and Spain and Ukraine in their two 5-8 placement matches.

 

“The Olympic Games are a dream come true for every athlete, especially for the young ones and especially for the beach handball players,” said Kanjugovic to IHF.info ahead of the Games.

 

“We will see beach handball as an Olympic sport for the first time in history and will do our best to achieve a good result, but we are also aware that we didn’t look good at the last championship.

 

“We have tried to improve the things which weren’t that good, but we have good players, a good team and I hope we will go far.”

 

Looking to stop their journey will be five very different teams in preliminary group A – world U17 champions Hungary, fellow Europeans Russia and three other teams from different continents – Asian team Chinese Taipei, American Samoa from Oceania and Mauritius from Africa.

 

“We have played a lot of times against Hungary and Russia, so we know what we can expect from them,” explained Kanjugovic. “Chinese Taipei are always an unpleasant opponent and we don’t know anything about American Samoa – a similar situation when we talk about Mauritius because we don’t have the opportunity to play against these teams.” 

 

Nika Vojnovic (pivot), Anja Vida Luksic (left wing), Ana Malec (specialist) and goalkeeper Petra Lovrencevic form the nucleus of the squad for Argentina who have just finished their preparation with a training camp in Ivanic-Grad, a small town outside Zagreb (26-28 September), alongside the men’s team for Argentina.

 

Earlier on in the summer they held another training camp, at Lake Jarun, also in Zagreb, and home of the 2017 EHF EURO U17 Beach Handball Championship, where they trained alongside both Croatian men’s and women’s senior teams.

 

Follow the Croatian Beach Handball team through Google+, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and their official website at www.bhc.com.hr.

 

Group at Buenos Aires 2018
Group A: Hungary (HUN), Chinese Taipei (TPE), Croatia (CRO), American Samoa (ASA), Mauritius (MRI), Russia (RUS)

Preliminary Group A: Match Schedule
All times local

Monday 8 October

11:40    CRO vs MRI

16:10    RUS vs CRO

 

Tuesday 9 October

10:50    TPE vs CRO

15:20    CRO vs HUN

 

Wednesday 10 October

11:40    CRO vs ASA