It has been five long years, but on Tuesday 14 June, the handball world finally gets to celebrate the second edition of the IHF Women's Youth (U18) Beach Handball World Championship, which will be played in Heraklion on the island of Crete, Greece.

In the time since Mauritius 2017, the world has changed a lot, most recently due to the global COVID pandemic and it was with that thought that Chairman of the IHF Beach Handball Working Group, Giampiero Masi, asked for a minute’s silence at the pre-championship technical meeting, featuring delegations of all teams in Crete, to remember all those relatives, friends and beach handball family who are sadly no longer with us.

After the pause, an applause broke out amongst everyone present and thoughts turned to action at the newly-inaugurated Karteros Beach Sports Center, which will host 16 youth teams, across six days of competition featuring 58 matches.

At the end, a champion will be known. Will it be a new one or will it be Mauritius 2017 title-holders Hungary, one of the big favourites? Or could it be Argentina, who have grown exponentially since their bronze in Africa at that first edition of the Women’s Youth World Championship on sand?

What is known is that the first of two preliminary round match days featuring 24 games sees the European and world title-holders Hungary open the championships on the central court at 09:30 EEST, facing Poland, while Thailand take on Uruguay at the same time and Germany play Romania.

That last clash is extra-special as it will be the first-time in either gender at any level that the historic handball nation of Romania fields a team in a Beach Handball World Championship.

Youth Olympic Games’ title-holders Argentina throw off their campaign against France at 10:20 EEST, before the host nation takes to the sand in the midday sun, against Puerto Rico.

Highlights of the afternoon session include Spain taking on a Ukraine team who have overcome adversity to find themselves in a position to compete on the Cretan sand.

“We’ve had a long pause in matches but we had a test tournament in Bulgaria in early June where it was important for us that players felt a passion for the game. We succeeded and the team is in a good mood,” said Ukraine coach Borys Myloslavskyi.

“There is a great desire to win for our country. The minimum task for us is to qualify from the preliminary group and given the current situation in Ukraine, we want to thank everyone who supports us.”

Due to their expected late arrival we will not see two teams in action on the opening day: Brazil and India.

The two nations will move their opening day games to Wednesday 15 June to cover their delayed appearance, meaning they will play all three of their preliminary group games each on the same day and the potential classic of Spain vs Brazil will have to wait another 24 hours.

A total of 13 games will have completed after the first day, all of which will be streamed live on the IHF YouTube channel, with a number of teams likely to already have confirmed their pathway through to the main round.

Photo courtesy of South and Central American Handball Confederation