The four players, three from the U16 girls' team: Zoé Lacour, Emeisha Joseph-Scarlett and Klaudia Las, and U16 boy's team captain Saimonas Urbutis, will now embark on the next stage of the England Handball pathway.

The selected players will benefit from monthly training sessions and be in contention to be part of the 16 girls and 16 boys who will represent the EHA National Academy at an international tournament in Hungary this summer.

Ealing Handball Club has had boys in both Regional and National U16 Academies for the past three years and it is rewarding that three of our girls have now been invited, considering that the club only launched its U16 girls team in September!

A lot of the credit of course goes to their coaches, Mel Chowns for the girls and Cesar Castillo and Marc Fayemi for the boys. Both Mel and Marc are part of local elite senior club Ruislip Eagles and have been supporting our juniors with coaching under a development partnership agreement signed in 2014.

Ealing Handball Club Chairman Paul Bray commented “the girls’ team was a key focus for us this season so we are delighted to have Emeisha, Klaudia and Zoé selected for the National Academy, this is a big milestone for us. In the boy’s team Saimonas has been going from strength-to-strength and is also a key player in the club’s U18 team. The players’ selection is a great recognition for all their hard work and our development partnership with Ruislip Eagles.”

Ealing also has eight other U16 players in the boys’ South East Regional Academy squad: Noah Bridges, Alexis Noel, Razvan Mihaila, Ruairi O’Connor-Harte, Tarek Gharbi, Todor Nikolov, Kacper Wojcik and Daniel Rushton, some of whom were unfortunately ineligible for the national academy because they were born before the 1 January 2000 cut-off.