AKITA restarts training with plenty of new joiners

On Wednesday 15th September, City University of Hong Kong invited AKITA to a training match. No less than 10 new players joined this first season as well as 6 players registered last year. Even better, 2 of them were goalkeepers! Welcome to Alexis, Eugene, Gaspard, Jens, Fabien, Julien, Leon, Per, Pierrick and Kevin.

In order to get some effective coaching and training, the teams decided to play 3 times 20 minutes and AKITA tried to mix old and new players to help the integration of everyone. City University used well the AKITA hesitations to win the first period (7-5) as players were a little rusty in attack and few expected misunderstanding in defense occurred.

For the second period, AKITA was looking much more like a team and ended up with a draw 9 - 9. Despite conceding more goals, it did look better in defense except on fast breaks and on attack, we could already see a certain depth in options provided by the number of players.

In the last period, there were some well crafter attacking phases and the much improved defense combined with the tiredness of City University resulted in many succesful defense including few fastbreaks. AKITA won this last period 12 - 6.

Thanks to everyone for joining this scrimmage and thanks to City Uiniversity for their welcome. We hope to organise a training next weeks and are looking for a pitch.

AKITA 2010 Beach Handball Tournament

After a very long break, AKITA is finally back on the courts this coming Sunday (Sept 5th) but that would be without shoes and on the Lido Beach!

The 9th annual Hong Kong beach Handball tournament is sponsored by our namesake sponsor AKITA and that would be one more reason for us to have fun and try to make the show. AKITA's first match will be at 930am, the second at 1100am and the third around 1230pm. In the afternoon, there will be matches based on the rankings of the morning matches.

The location is Lido beach in Ting Kau (LIDO BEACH 11 1/2 MILESTONE, CASTLE PEAK ROAD, TING KAU, TSU, 男子公開組). You can get there using Bus 53, 234B and 234S or more simply by taking a cab. In that case you can take the MTR first to Tsuen Wan, Tsuen Wan west or potentially Tsing Yi depending on which line is most direct for you.

That is a perfect occacion to bring the whole family to see entertaining fast paced Handball.

You can find a link here to a set of rules:
http://activities.eurohandball.com/hb4all/content/3BeachHB/IHFBeachHandballRulesoftheGame.pdf
A quick summary is nevertheless easier so here are important diffences:
1. You can dribble the ball but you can also roll it on the floor and pick it up after
2. Creative goals count double! (Kempa for example but careful, attempt to ridicule the opponent do NOT get double points)
3. Goalkeeper goal counts double too!
4. Finally penalties also count double to prevent too many fouls so another thing to pay attention too
5. changes can happen in most places of the pitch but on one side only
6. Goalkeepers can get out anywhere but only get in in the goalkeeping area
7. To win a match, you need to win both halves or win one half and the final shoot out!

That seems all for the moment and let's go and eat some sand!!