The debut edition of the South and Central America Handball Confederation (SCAHC) Men’s and Women’s Youth Beach Handball Championship will be played from Wednesday 23 to Friday 25 March in Buenos Aires.

Five women’s teams and four men’s teams will compete for the regional title, with the top two in each competition qualifying for the 2022 IHF Men’s and Women’s Youth (U18) Beach Handball World Championships in Greece in June.

Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay men’s and women’s teams along with Chile’s women will go up against each other the National Centre of High Performance Athletics, or ‘CeNARD’ – Centro Nacional de Alto Rendimiento Deportivo (in Spanish).

Beach Handball has been extremely active in Argentina recently with the first-ever men’s and women’s SCAHC Beach Handball Club Championship, played in Puerto Madryn earlier this month, and the Argentinean club season drawing to a close with the ‘Copa Argentina’ in February. 

Coordinator and coach of the Argentinean youth teams is Leticia Brunati, who guided the women’s side to gold at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires – the first time the sport appeared at an Olympic Games. The Argentinean men won bronze at the same event.

And the hosts will be the strong favourites on the sand in Buenos Aires, with the indoor courts at the same venue being used for the SCAHC Women’s Junior Championships at the same time (22-26 March).

“We are happy to be hosting international events at home again. Argentina has shown over the years to be a great host and we want to continue down that path,” said President of the Argentina Handball Confederation ahead of the event.

“Seeing the public again in the stadiums, with the massive support they give us every time we host this type of competition, is going to be something beautiful. It is a challenge to be able to carry out three events at the same time, as we will do at CeNARD, but we have a work team that has a lot of experience and above all desire to do great things and to continue raising the bar for the growth of our sport in the country and on the continent.”

The Uruguayan national beach circuit has also just finished and their sides will also pose a threat, while local rivals Brazil – the spiritual home of beach handball for many years – will want to get one over on their neighbours.

“It is important to point out that, in a pandemic year, we managed to hold [various events] in addition to carrying out two training phases with the youth teams, observing athletes from Brazil,” said Brazilian Handball Confederation (CBHb) Beach Handball director, Gulliver Esteves to the CBHb website. 

“We still have great challenges and a daring goal in 2022. To podium in all of our international competitions with the Brazilian teams. We will fight.”

“We carried out two training phases, one of them in the south/south east, the other in the north/north east [so] we were able to observe the entire national circuit and choose the 10 athletes who presented the best result,” added men’s coach Júnior Cardozo. “We have two objectives for the SCAHC: to win one of the two spots for the World Championship and to win gold.”

Women’s Competition

Teams: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay

The women’s competition will be played in a round-robin league format, with the top two teams going directly into the final.

Men’s Competition

Teams: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay

The men’s competition will be played in a round-robin league format and then move into the semi-finals and final.

For more information on the event, click here.