Benjamin Maciejewski - Children are our future

As a former handball player, I have never lost my fascination for this sport since my school days. Even during my active club days, I coached my own “Minis” group, so at some point it was also clear that this voluntary commitment would continue to be important to me alongside my professional work as a lawyer.

At TSV Munich-Grosshadern, I coach our “little ones”, i.e., four to eight-year-old children in the Bambinis, Minis, and recently also the E-youth groups. It is quite a challenge to keep a group of 15-20 children happy and to inspire them for this great sport. However, you should never underestimate the positive, lasting and long-term effects that training has on all the children.

Because of the young age of the kids, it’s not primarily just the handball-specific skills that they need to learn. Rather, I believe it is my responsibility to instill in the children the joy and fun of exercising and playing a team sport. Sports must be an integral part of every child’s life!

At the end of 2020, we unfortunately had to switch to online training, but fortunately most of the children stayed with us for a very long time. One highlight was certainly our appearance on SAT.1 Bayernsport. Here, they film clubs that provide offerings for their members even during the lockdown period.In the spring of 2021, our handball kids designed their own T-shirts for Mrs. Flory’s tent schools in Lebanon (www.zeltschule.org) as part of a small raffle. The motifs, created with much joy and love, accompany the refugee children in their everyday school life and also show our kids that not all children in the world have the same access to education.

Even though I am there as a coach to teach the children handball, the greatest learning success is probably within myself. Training with the children is very enriching and I am very grateful for every training session I get to experience.

Children are our future - we should do everything for them.