More than 1500 school children from the Skane region – including the WCh host cities Malmö, Lund and Kristianstad - competed on Monday 17 January 2011 in the Baltiska Hallen in Malmö for the ”Lilla VM”, the ”School Handball World Championship”. In four age groups 54 school teams aged eight to twelve years, coming from 15 cities, fought for the titles after a long series of local qualification tournaments in autumn. Supported by their parents and other kids from their schools they played on three mini handball courts parallel.  Each match took 16 minutes, 2x4 minutes the boys and 2x4 minutes the girls from the qualified schools played the same system as the ”real” World Championship in Sweden.

The tournament was an absolute promotion for handball, ”It was a fantastic event. It was a real joy to see the kids playing handball,” IHF President Dr Hassan Moustafa said. He joined the finals with Jörgen Holmqvist, Chairman of the Swedish World Championship Organizing Committee and handed over the Gold medals for the four ”Skane School Handball World Champions” – those medals and the Silver ones were replicas of the original medals the two WCh finalists will be handed over on 30 January in Malmö.

And 1200 of those schools kids had already attended the “real” World Championship, as they had received tickets for the opening matches in Malmö and Kristianstad.

School handball tournaments like the “Lilla VM” are played in all hosting regions of the World Championship, they were organized in cooperation with local handball clubs – it’s their main target to attract handball for kids via those tournaments and the WCh.