Handball in Liechtenstein
The history of handball in the Principality of Liechtenstein goes back to the 1960s at club level. The Liechtenstein Handball Association (LHV) was founded in 1977.
The sport reached its peak in the mid-80s with regular participation in the handball regional association of Eastern Switzerland in the second or third division. Between 1995 and 2002 there were no active handball players in Liechtenstein, today there is an active club, HC Buchs-Vaduz. The national team has not been able to achieve international success so far.
history
For the first time handball was played at club level at the end of the sixties in the two clubs HC Vaduz and HC Unterland . In 1977 the Liechtenstein Handball Association (LHV) was founded. Currently there is only one purely Liechtenstein club under the umbrella organization LHV - the HC Unterland.
In the mid-eighties handball reached its peak in Liechtenstein. Active teams in both women and men played in the handball regional association of Eastern Switzerland in the 2nd or 3rd league, junior teams made it into the Inter category and a broad mini-handball movement was carried out. In the years 1986 to 1988 male youth national teams took part in renowned international tournaments such as the Suhrli Cup, the Coppa Interamina, the Partille Cup et cetera. In 1991 the first official international match took place, the match between Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.
At the beginning of the nineties, the handball clubs HC Vaduz and HC Buchs from Switzerland merged to form HC Buchs-Vaduz. After the 1994/1995 season, HC Unterland was given the status inactive due to a lack of players, and handball was practically no longer held in Liechtenstein.
In 2002 the first handball activities in Liechtenstein began again with the participation of a men's national team in the 2nd European Beach Handball Championships in Cadiz / Spain. The team was able to achieve some notable successes, including the draw against the Hungarian national team, a wafer-thin defeat against the handball nation Sweden and winning the fairness prize.
A year later, a men's team took part in the European Beach Tour (EBT) in Weymouth in southern England, which ended with an excellent third place; they missed the finals in the shoot-out. Furthermore, the team took part in the EHF Challenge Trophy 2003 in Malta, where two victories were achieved against Ireland, against Great Britain and Malta they were narrowly defeated. In 2004 a women's team took part in the EBT tournament in Jurmala / Latvia. In the 2003/2004 season, the previously inactive club HC Unterland resumed gaming operations; there was also the participation of a women's and a men's team in the championship operation of the handball regional association of Eastern Switzerland.
The 2007/2008 season can be tackled for the first time with two women's teams and one men's team.