Six years ago, the Netherlands women’s senior handball team produced one of the biggest surprises in the history of the IHF Women’s World Championship, winning the title.

Sure, it was the crowning achievement for a team which finished second, securing the silver medal at Denmark 2015 and third, ending up with the bronze at Germany 2017. But the Netherlands had not qualified for France 2007 and China 2009 and finished 15th and 13th respectively in the next two editions.

The gold medal was a crowning achievement for a golden generation for the Dutch team, with a perfect mix of experience and youth, as players like Bo van Wetering, Dione Housheer or Larissa Nüsser were 20 and 19 years old respectively.

Then, right back Housheer was just one of the plethora of young players breaking into the Dutch side, but now, as the Netherlands will co-host the 2025 IHF Women’s World Championship, she is one of the stars of the team.

“It was really crazy, we had a really rollercoaster this tournament, because we went from losing the first match until going full on and win the title. It was really special, because winning a medal with your country is already one thing, it is something special and really exciting, but just winning the World Championship was something really unbelievable,” says Housheer.

“Especially with many girls in the team who had been playing there for many years, who had such a dream and worked hard and had a long road to be there, just joining them and winning the world title, it was something hard to fathom. It is really hard to be at the top, because there are so many good countries in women’s handball. But doing this in 2019  was really special and it's something I will never forget because winning the gold medal for your country with all those players around was a really special journey”.

In that edition, Housheer was still in the team for all the 10 matches the Netherlands needed to win the title and now is a bonafide superstar, one of the best players in the world on her position, with 114 matches and 387 goals scored for the national team. She has also played for Odense Handbold and since 2024 has been featuring at Győri Audi ETO KC, winning the EHF Champions League Women last season.

“I joined the team when I was really young, I made my debut when I was not even 20 years old and I was just there to get the experience and just to see how like the international level is and I think it went really smooth that every year I got more minutes, more experience, a bigger role in the team,” says Housheer.

And now she is absolutely living the dream.

“It's crazy. If you told the 10-year-old Dione that I will be here, I would never believe that I would achieve already those amazing things in the last years. I'm really proud and I'm really happy that I did this and I am even happier that every year, step by step, it goes well and better and better. Playing for Győr and winning the Champions League was incredible, and now I get to live a World Championship at home. It’s something really special to start in the Netherlands where handball was quite small when I started and now being a well-established sport, it just adds to everything,” says the right back.

Since 2014, the Netherlands have finished in the top-10 of every major competition they took part in, including a fourth place at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and fifth at Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024. In the last edition of the IHF Women’s World Championship, the Dutch side ended fifth, with one loss, in the quarter-finals against Norway.

But now, they eye more. They want to be again on the podium, especially as the competition will be co-hosted by the Netherlands and Germany, and the Dutch team will play in front of their own fans in Rotterdam, with two other groups played in ‘s-Hertogenbosch.

“It's really an honour to play a World Championship in your home country, just to play all the games in such a big arena. I think all my friends and family will be around and just to see that the handball is growing in the Netherlands and there is even more attention and so many tickets sold is perfect,” says Housheer.

“I think every one of my teammates want to win and achieve a special result and for us it is going to be really special. I am really looking forward to play this competition at home and play every match in the Ahoy filled with Dutch fans.”

The Netherlands will throw off their campaign in Group E of the preliminary round, alongside Austria, Argentina and Egypt. Provided they make it through to the main round, they will face three teams from Group F, which has France, Poland, Tunisia and the People’s Republic of China in its composition.

A shoo-in for the quarter-finals?

“We really want to help to promote handball in Holland and to get it even bigger, like for example in Scandinavia or some Balkan countries where it's really popular and of course we have football and so on. I think this is a really huge step to promote it even more and maybe get a lot of kids interested to play this sport and maybe that there will be more money around the sport to invest in it,” adds Housheer.

“We have not won a medal for some years now, therefore it would be the ultimate dream to win a medal at home, in front of an orange Ahoy Arena, therefore we are definitely thinking about it and doing everything in our power to do it.”

In both of the last editions of the IHF Women’s World Championship, Housheer was one of the Netherlands’ top scorers, hitting 35 goals at Spain 2021 and 31 goals in 2023, with the trademark number 48 being prevalent in the Netherlands’ attack.

But why 48?

“Well, when I was younger, I always played with number 8 and when I left the Netherlands to play in Denmark I wanted to have a number I could hopefully have for the rest of my career. My mother always played with number 4, so I thought: let’s combine those two numbers together and yeah, it's a number you don't see so often, so I think it was pretty cool to have a number to have hopefully everywhere I go and so far so good, I'm still number 48,” smiles Housheer.