When you have the IHF Women`s Beach Handball World Championship top scorer and All-star Team player on your side you always have a chance.

And that is what USA coach Lisa Dunn will be hoping for when her side takes to the home sand in Birmingham, Alabama on Monday morning against Norway, followed by Australia in the afternoon.

The Norwegians arrive in the USA on the back of their worst-ever ranking at an IHF Women’s Beach Handball World Championship.

Their 11th-place finish at Greece 2022 last month is their worst in seven appearances and sees coach Eskil Berg Andreassen make four changes to the squad of 10 that played on the Heraklion sand.

Coach Miguel Contreras has named an unchanged squad of 10 for his Mexico side, who finished 15th at the 2022 IHF Women’s Beach Handball World Championship in Greece last month.

The event in Heraklion was only the second time ever the side had appeared at the global event but was disappointing for the North American team who could only record two wins against their The World Games 2022 preliminary round opponents Australia (20:9, 15:12 and 17:13, 14:12).

Unbeaten in two championships, 18 games won in less than a year. European and world champions.

It is not simply a question of who can beat Germany, it is a question of who can win a period off of them as they took gold at the 2022 IHF Women’s Beach Handball World Championship in Greece last month without losing one. When they won the European championship last year, they only lost two.

Speaking to NZ Handball Kōrero at the 2022 IHF Women’s Beach Handball World Championship in Greece, Australian defender Rosalie Boyd revealed that the Oceania champions would be bringing some new faces to the team in the USA.

“We've got about six debutants that will go to the World Games,” she said. “That'll be a really good experience for them to strengthen that ability and knowledge of competing on that world stage and what to expect.”

2022 could be the time for Argentina’s women to win their first senior global gold medal. In 2017 they came close.

At The World Games in Wroclaw, Poland, they faced the historically-best Brazil in the final and lost, but five years later that will not happen again.