Running a major tournament like the Men’s EHF EURO 2022 requires a huge amount of manpower – including, in Hungary and Slovakia, hundreds of volunteers giving up their time for the love of handball.
Across the three Hungarian venues in Budapest, Debrecen and Szeged almost 700 people have volunteered to work at the EHF EURO 2022, including a number who belong to the Hungarian Sports-Volunteer Association.
Some of the team have volunteered almost every major event organised by the association since its establishment in 2014, including the Women's EHF EURO 2014 and several editions of the DELO EHF FINAL4, so they know handball inside and out.
While most of the volunteers at EHF EURO 2022 in Hungary are Hungarian, some have come from much further afield to help out at the tournament. These include an Egyptian, Omar Elwardany, who also volunteered as the team attendant for Sweden at the IHF Men’s World Championship 2021 in Egypt.
But the volunteer who has travelled furthest to Budapest is 36-year-old Enrique Huerta from Mexico, who is part of the doping control team and helped carry the EHF flag as Denmark played Croatia on Saturday night. Huerta has played handball since 1999 and coaches both men and women from under 14 to adults.
He says his motto is “dare to be different”, and in Mexico, loving handball is a bit unusual. In the absence of domestic opportunities to educate himself in the sport, he often goes abroad to develop professionally and also to compete in tournaments with his own teams.
“At the current European Championship, I want to gain as much experience as possible about the internal functioning of such a big handball event, and then I will share these observations with my compatriots to make this sport more popular in Mexico,” Huerta said.
Huerta, Elwardany and the other volunteers are led by a team of 14 coordinators who support their well-being, and who have been joined by a team of 12 volunteers who have worked for over a year to help them prepare.
The coordinators have been focused exclusively on the EHF EURO since the start of November 2021. Although the tournament is one of the biggest events they have been involved in, in terms of the number of staff and the size of the venues, they are still doing their job with joy and satisfaction.
The coordinators also try to encourage volunteering whenever an opportunity arises, because it gives a unique insight behind the scenes of such a huge event. In addition, volunteering can help build lasting relationships and gives the experience of a lifetime.
Péter Wiszt
