Results | All Tournament Team | Coaches & Rosters | In the News | Photos | Sponsors | Referees & Tournament Directors | About the Festival

The inaugural Handball Futures Festival brought 48 athletes to Colorado Springs, July 22–25, 2026, for four days of training, competition and community. Here’s how it all came together — and who took home gold.

Bringing the community together

Athletes from across the country competed in four regional teams — East, West, North and South — coached by Olympians and former National Team players. More than 23 Olympians and National Team players joined us during the week to share their experience with the next generation, alongside the volunteers, families and fans who made the Festival possible.

The Festival is a key step on the pathway Handball Futures creates: introducing women athletes to team handball, helping them grow through camps and competition, and giving standout talent a stage to shine and be referred to USA Team Handball for consideration.

Your 2026 Champions: the West Region

The West Region claimed the first-ever Handball Futures Festival title, defeating the East 23–13 in the championship match. In a thriller for bronze, the South edged the North 23–22.

Final Results

Place	Team
Gold	West Region
Silver	East Region
Bronze	South Region
4th	North Region

Match results

Day	Time	Match	Result	Replay
Wed., July 22	3 p.m.	North vs. South	North won, 14–13 Match Report	Watch
Wed., July 22	5 p.m.	West vs. East	West won, 10–9 Match Report	Watch
Thu., July 23	2 p.m.	South vs. West	West won, 21–18 Match Report	Watch
Thu., July 23	4 p.m.	East vs. North	East won, 23–17 Match Report	Watch
Fri., July 24	2 p.m.	North vs. West	North won, 20–19 Match Report	Watch
Fri., July 24	4 p.m.	East vs. South	East won, 17–14 Match Report	Watch
Sat., July 25	2 p.m.	Bronze: North vs. South	South won, 23–22 Match Report	Watch
Sat., July 25	4 p.m.	Gold: East vs. West	West won, 23–13 Match Report	Watch

Award Winners and All Tournament Team

Meet the 2026 Festival Coaches

Eight coaches led the four regional teams, bringing Olympic, international and national-level experience to the court.

2026 Team Rosters

Forty-eight athletes competed on four regional teams of 12. GK = goalkeeper.

Referee + Tournament & Technical Directors

Voices from the Festival

“The Handball Futures Festival (HFF) represents a massive milestone for USA Team Handball. It is the most significant development initiative for emerging women’s talent since the U.S. Olympic Festival program concluded in 1995. By bringing together 48 elite athletes, legendary Olympians, dedicated coaches, and passionate volunteers, the event successfully revived a vital pipeline. It establishes a foundation for long-term growth and scouting ahead of the LA 2028 Olympic Games. I am honored and grateful to have taken part.”

Dawn Allinger Lewis, 1996 Olympian & North Region Head Coach

“From the first day of competition to the last day, you could definitely see an improvement across the board — every team and every player, not only played better themselves, but made their teams play better. The general message you heard was that everyone was learning new things, trying new things on the court, and surprising themselves and their teammates with their accomplishments. The camaraderie and sportsmanship was palpable and celebrated — everyone cheered for their friends on other teams, and every successful play was applauded, no matter who was making it. It was truly a celebration for playing and learning the sport of Handball.”

Martin Bilello, West Region Coach, Gold Medal Winner

“The Handball Futures Festival was truly an unforgettable experience from start to finish. What stood out to me most was getting to learn from Olympian coaches who were so genuinely invested in our growth. Opportunities like this—where you can completely submerge yourself in an all-handball environment with that level of heart, competition, and support—are so rare in this sport. It’s amazing that handballers now have an annual space to connect, level up, and leave forever changed. I know I did!”

Janell Williams, Athlete

“Training and competing with handball futures was the most challenging, rewarding, and fun athletic experience I’ve had in over a decade, perhaps ever. I am immensely grateful for the whole team that put this experience together and so excited for the future of handball in the USA!”

Sophia Randolph, Athlete

In the News

Local media covered the inaugural Festival all week:

• KRDO News 13: First-ever USA Team Handball Futures Festival aims to build talent pipeline ahead of 2028 Olympics
• FOX21 News: USA Team Handball hosts Futures Festival in Colorado Springs to grow sport ahead of 2028 Olympics (In Studio)
• KOAA News5: USA Team Handball hosts Futures Festival in Colorado Springs to grow sport ahead of 2028 Olympics
• The Gazette: Inaugural Handball Futures Festival aims to bring U.S. handball back to prominence ahead of 2028 Olympic

Relive the Moment

Click on a photo to launch into a Lightbox.

Browse and order Festival photos by Joe Rogers — proceeds support athlete programming. Missed a match? Catch the broadcasts on USA Team Handball’s YouTube channel.

Thank You

To our sponsors and supporters, who made the first Handball Futures Festival possible: the USTH Foundation, El Pomar Foundation, Colorado Springs Sports Corp, FuseSport, USA Team Handball, Increnovo LLC, UCHealth, Fountain Valley School, Trader Joe’s, Sam’s Club and Gatorade — and to the many volunteers who handled Festival logistics and served as ambassadors to the athletes.

Chris Cappelmann wasn’t looking for anything sentimental when he started digging through his old festival gear. He was just looking for team gift ideas before this year’s Handball Futures Festival, where he coaches the East team. What he found instead was a small button, decades old, tucked away from his own playing days at the Olympic Sports Festival.

He couldn’t quite place how he’d come to have it. But he’d held onto it all these years anyway, one of those quiet keepsakes that outlasts the memory of its origin.

Looking at the old button, Chris had an idea: turn it into a sticker and give it to his players before the Festival began. Bonnie Harris took his idea and helped redesign the button, pulling the design from the original pin and modifying it to read “HFF 2026.” Chris then had a batch printed, a small nod to a tradition he’d once been part of.

During the Festival, Chris started handing the stickers out. One found its way to Olympian Melinda Rhoades.

She looked down at it and stopped. “That’s my handwriting,” she said. “I made these.” She was the one who had drawn the ball.

The story unspooled from there. Back in 1985, at the Olympic Festival in Baton Rouge, Melinda had been coaching and wanted to bring her team a gift. So she made the buttons herself, by hand. Chris, it turned out, had been playing on the national team that year, on the East team, at that very festival. Somewhere along the way, one of Melinda’s hand-made buttons had ended up in his hands, and stayed there for forty years.

Neither of them had put it together until that moment. Chris had unknowingly recreated Melinda’s own design and handed it right back to her, decades later, at another festival, on another East team.

It was, by every account, an amazing feeling. The kind of coincidence that makes the years collapse a little, past and present standing shoulder to shoulder on the bleachers. The spirit of the Festival, carried forward on a pin and a sticker and one recognizable drawing of a ball, had come roaring back.

Chris Cappelmann, Melinda Rhoades, and that sticker, forty-one years in the making.

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🎉 TODAY’S THE DAY! Welcome to the Handball Futures Festival! 🥅🤾‍♀️Opening Ceremonies kick off today, and from there it’s four days of non-stop Team Handball action right here in Colorado Springs — Olympic City USA!

Can’t make it to Fountain Valley School in person? We’ve got you covered. Every match and the Opening Ceremony will be livestreamed — just click the link for the game you want to watch.

All times Mountain Time (MT)

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Opening Ceremony
https://youtube.com/live/bidNJOH3SCg?feature=share

Matchday 1, Game 1: (2:30PM – 4:30PM) – North vs South
https://youtube.com/live/OzrlkMvb80o?feature=share

Matchday 1, Game 2: (4:00PM–6:00 PM) – West vs East
https://youtube.com/live/oFu0S-7Svtw?feature=share

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Matchday 2, Game 1: (2:00PM – 4:00PM) – South vs West
https://youtube.com/live/pFMEk2ILGdU?feature=share

Matchday 2, Game 2: (4:00PM – 6:00PM) -East vs North
https://youtube.com/live/TMpiESal7jk?feature=share

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Matchday 3, Game 1: (2:00PM – 4:00PM) – North vs West
https://youtube.com/live/I7TBKXFWBoc?feature=share

Matchday 3, Game 2: (4:00PM – 600PM) – East vs South
https://youtube.com/live/0TBo_FA4aUA?feature=share

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Matchday 4 — Bronze Medal Match
https://youtube.com/live/NdDLMy4e69U?feature=share

Matchday 4 — Gold Medal Match
https://youtube.com/live/gUjjBJMkFrc?feature=share

Same Gym Class, Different Regions: The Faulkner Sisters Head to the Festival

How two sisters from the same house ended up on opposite sides of the court — and what they’re hoping to find when they get there.

Hanna and Marissa Faulkner didn’t set out to become Team Handball players. The sport found them the way it finds a lot of American athletes — sideways, through a substitute teacher scouting gym class for the USATH Youth and Junior Women’s national teams. Hanna was in elementary school. Marissa was in middle school. Neither one had a plan. Both of them stayed.

That accident of timing turned into a shared sport, but not always a shared path. Marissa was invited to a tournament in Sweden after 7th or 8th grade that never quite came together for lack of players. She and Hanna both made the roster for the IHF NACHC Women’s Youth Qualifier Cup in Montreal — but school and a competing commitment to high-level soccer kept Marissa off that trip. Her first real game didn’t come until senior year of high school, three weeks before COVID shut everything down. She came off the bench not knowing the rules, never having practiced. It would be 2022 — when both sisters made the Junior Women’s National Team and went to Junior World Cup Qualifiers together — before Marissa was really playing.

Hanna’s start was its own kind of improvised. She joined a year after the group had already traveled to Sweden’s Partille Cup, brought in by teammates from her soccer and basketball squads. In 2019, that same group scraped together enough players to make the trip to Montreal. It was there — 7th grade, playing her first real game — that she also discovered what everyone eventually discovers about Team Handball: the glue.

Together, Then Apart

For most of their athletic lives, the age gap kept Hanna and Marissa off the same teams in every other sport. Handball was the exception — whenever their tournament schedules lined up, they played together. Hanna kept going even after Marissa aged out of the Junior Women’s National Team, picking up trips on her own while playing collegiately at Ohio State. Marissa stepped away during part of college and only recently returned to competition with Chicago Inter this past club season.

So when the rosters for the 2026 Handball Futures Festival came out, the sisters found themselves in a familiar-but-new position: selected together, assigned apart. Hanna will compete for North. Marissa will compete for South.

“We were a little surprised that we weren’t both on the North team, considering we’re from the same place,” Marissa said. “But we weren’t really that surprised that they put siblings on different teams.”

Marissa found out first.

Pushing Each Other

Outside of a handful of shared trainings, the sisters have never truly gone head-to-head. But even in practice, something changes when they’re on the same court. “We’ve always been able to push each other in a way that non-family members can’t do,” Marissa said, “and we’re excited to see how that translates to games when we possibly play against each other.”

Their mom is thrilled that both of them were selected to be part of this experience.

A Week for Just Handball

Both sisters point to the same thing when asked what they’re most looking forward to: time. A full week with nothing else on the calendar but the sport they’ve built their lives around — something neither has had since their last World Championship appearances. For Marissa, that’s 2022. For Hanna, 2024.

There’s also the chance to learn from the Olympians and National Team players joining the Festival as guests. “I’m most excited to meet and learn from the former Olympians who have played at the level I aspire to reach,” Marissa said. Hanna feels the same pull: “I want to learn as much as I can from the Olympians, as I aspire to represent the U.S. on the biggest world stage like they did.”

Win or lose, both sisters are already framing the week the same way — less about the scoreboard, more about what they’ll carry forward. “I hope to look back on this experience knowing that I gave it my all both on and off the court,” Marissa said. Hanna’s hoping for something similar: fond memories of the connections made, and a step closer to the international stage she’s chasing. “I am honored to be selected to participate in an event that will help the growth of handball throughout the US.”

Hanna and Marissa Faulkner will take the court for North and South when the Handball Futures Festival opens July 22 in Colorado Springs.

Tori Pitts was injured during practice ahead of friendly matches between the USA Team Handball Women’s Team and Puerto Rico. We wish her well and hope for a speedy recovery — get well soon, Tori!

Stepping up to represent the South Region Team is Rachel Walsh, whose skill and dedication throughout the selection process have earned her this opportunity to compete at the Festival.

Festival · Coaches · Athletes · Announcement

A Coaching Staff
Built for This Moment

Meet the coaches and athletes of the 2026 Handball Futures Festival — four regional teams, 48 female athletes, and a coaching staff drawn from Olympians and national team legends. July 22–26, 2026 · Colorado Springs, CO

Published June 17, 2026

Region

East

Head Coach

Chris Cappelmann

Former USA Men’s National Team Captain · Multiple Pan American Games Coach · Olympic Festival Gold ×3

Assistant Coach

Meg Sanders

1988 Olympian · Founding Board Member, Handball Futures · 30+ Years College Basketball Coach

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Athletes (12)

Maegan Barkley

Bryn Boznanski

Leah Brennan

Ellie Brown

Mackenzie Dinelli GK

Devyn Holbrook

Kate Manley

Lauren Manville

Kendall Rose

Krista Seiden GK

Erika Smith

Heather Wetmore

Region

North

Head Coach

Dawn Allinger Lewis

1996 Olympian · 1995 Pan Am Games Gold · 111 International Appearances · NBC Olympic Analyst ×5

Assistant Coach

Lisa Eagen

1996 Olympian · 1995 Pan Am Games Gold · Four-Time USA National Team Captain · HF Mentorship Chair

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Athletes (12)

Haley Austin GK

Olivia Beattie

Madeleine Bjorkland

Hannah Faulkner

Sydney Gratz

Cassie Hoelzl GK

Callie Krueger

Kenna Payne

Nyala Pendergrass

Malia Sato

Katie Timmerman

Janell Williams

Region

West

Head Coach

Martin Bilello

USA Youth MNT Head Coach · 2022 USATH Coach of the Year · 2024 IHF Trophy Gold · IHF & NACHC Lecturer

Assistant Coach

NamSoo Lee

2000 Sydney Olympian · Two-Time Asian Games Gold · 10-Year South Korean National Team Veteran

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Athletes (12)

Gianna Aiello

Asha Franklin

Cassie Heinrichs

Amber Kaufman GK

Lauren McGuire

Luisa Miguel

Sophia Randolph

August Raskie

Jacqueline Sandoval

Becca Tobin

Rylee White

Aliyah Young GK

Region

South

Head Coach

Wade Sutton

UNC Women’s Team Handball · Multiple College National Championships · USA National Team Player 1999 & 2002

Assistant Coach

Stephanie Moreno

IHF-Certified Coach · NYC Team Handball Head Coach · Former National Team Athlete · Brooklyn Academy Founder

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Athletes (12)

Mary Arengo

Sofia Broadhead GK

Marissa Faulkner

Amanda Fields

Becky Gonzalez GK

Erin Jeong

Maggie Kowalik

Jessica Kuster

Meghan Murray

Rachel Walsh

Casey Swezey

Brigid Torpey

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Handball Futures announced the inaugural 2026 Handball Futures Festival, an Olympic-style showcase designed to bring together the women’s handball athletes in the United States. The Festival competition will take place July 22–25, 2026, at Fountain Valley School, a boarding and day school in Colorado Springs, Colorado — a stunning 1,100-acre campus at the base of the Rocky Mountains. The Opening Ceremony will be held on Wednesday, July 22, and all are welcome to attend. 

Modeled after the original Olympic Sports Festival, the Handball Futures Festival combines elite competition, community, and national-team exposure in one immersive experience. The event will also serve as a key talent identification opportunity, with athletes evaluated and scouted by the Women’s National Team Coach. 

More than just a tournament, the Festival is a celebration of women’s team handball in the United States — strengthening the national pipeline, fostering connections across regions, and helping define the future of the sport with LA 2028 on the horizon. 

Approximately 48 female athletes will be invited to participate, selected by the Handball Futures Festival Selection Committee. 

The 2026 Handball Futures Festival will feature four regional teams, each led by an experienced head coach and assistant coach. Handball Futures is proud to announce the coaching staff for the 2026 Festival—a standout group of leaders guiding each region:

Head Coach	Assistant Coach
Wade Sutton	Stephanie Moreno
Chris Cappelmann	Meg Sanders
Dawn Lewis	Lisa Eagen
Martin Bilello	NamSoo Lee

“This Festival is the culmination of everything we have been building. It is a world-class stage for elite women athletes — a real opportunity to be seen, developed, and connected to the national team pipeline. We are proud to bring this moment to Colorado Springs.” — Mike Cavanaugh, Handball Futures Tournament Director 

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About the Venue. Fountain Valley School provides an extraordinary setting for the Festival. Located on a 1,100-acre prairie campus at the base of the Rocky Mountains, this boarding and day school in the heart of the American West offers world-class facilities befitting an event of national significance. 

Known as “Olympic City USA,” Colorado Springs is home to the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee headquarters and the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center — making it the most fitting backdrop in the country for a Festival designed to elevate the next generation of elite women’s handball athletes. 

Acknowledgments. Handball Futures extends its sincere gratitude to our founding supporters, Circle of Champions and partners whose belief in this vision has made the Handball Futures Festival possible. 

For sponsorship inquiries, please contact: Karen Rosolowski, Executive Director, Handball Futures, winningperf@gmail.com. 

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About Handball Futures 

Handball Futures, Inc. is a non-profit organization dedicated to the growth and development of women’s team handball in the United States. Through sanctioned events, athlete development programs, and national partnerships, Handball Futures is building the pipeline that will carry American women’s handball into the future. 

Handball Futures Festival 

For competition schedule and Festival updates, visit: https://www.handballfutures.org/handball-futures-festival/ 

MEDIA CONTACT
Lindalisa Severo
Communications Director, Handball Futures 
lindalisa@handballfutures.org

SPONSORSHIP INQUIRIES
Karen Rosolowski 
Executive Director, Handball Futures 
winningperf@gmail.com

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