Nothing quite like bridging the gap between today’s legends and the next generation: The EHF Respect Your Talent Women’s Camp 2025 is in the books.
Since 2019, Respect Your Talent—co-developed by the European Handball Federation and TWIN—pairs some of the globe’s best handball players with aspiring talents to help them navigate the demanding journey to professional sports. These established stars use their own exceptional experiences, alongside support from leading experts, to teach the next generation about all aspects of holistic personal development and the critical challenges of modern handball.
A mentorship masterclass
As one of the core programme formats, the Respect Your Talent Camp, which ran from 27 to 30 November, saw 24 different countries represented by 31 young female players who had received a Player of the Match award or were named in an All-star Team at an EHF Younger Age Category (YAC) event earlier this year.
Conceptualized by TWIN, this edition’s camp theme was “The players’ journey”, designed to help young athletes professionalise their approach as they transition to high-level handball and enhance their overall career management. Plus, to give aspiring players the necessary awareness, knowledge, and supplementary skills to become truly complete and successful athletes — unlocking their full potential, both on and off the court.
The camp called upon five programme ambassadors to inspire, instruct, and challenge the future of European handball: the returning Ana Gros (Slovenia), Jelena Bumbak (nee Grubisic, Croatia), Carmen Martin (Spain), and Barbara Arenhart (Brazil), as well as former Dutch world-class player Yvette Broch, who was making her first Respect Your Talent appearance.
“My main motivation: I’m here is to share my experiences, of course, but mostly to share my weaknesses. To be open. I think it’s very important to create a safe atmosphere, especially in this world, where it’s not easy to be open. It’s like, we have to perform, we have to be strong all the time. So sometimes it’s difficult, and still for me, to share all the hard things that I’ve been going through, but it’s my motivation to be here, to be as open as possible.”
Yvette Broch
Ambassador
Special focus on gender-specific support
The training sessions at the camp were structured to address the most critical challenges encountered during the move from the junior to the professional senior level:
- Navigating your journey (Dual Career: Get things done)
- Fueling your journey (Nutrition: Optimize game day nutrition and post-game recovery)
- Stabilizing your journey (Mental Fitness: Deal with pressure & Manage conflicts)
- Protecting your journey (Sports Law: Sign your first professional contract; Anti-Doping: Know forbidden substances and methods)
- Sharing your journey (Shine in interviews and on social media)
“I just learned that I’m not alone in some stuff, that they also had some problems that I’m currently facing. And just to share their experience with us, it’s amazing because at some point, they were us. So yeah, it’s great to learn from them.”
Anamarija Baric
Talented player, Croatia
As female athletes navigate unique personal and structural circumstances on their journey to the top, the camp thus focused on integrating concrete gender-specific aspects in the sessions. This focus is in line with both the latest EHF initiative, Her Playground, and TWIN’s European training course, HerForm.
“Up-and-coming female players face a specific set of challenges. Driven by our incredible ambassadors, the Respect Your Talent Women’s Camp demonstrates exactly how effective tailored support can be in overcoming them,”
Martin Hausleitner
EHF Secretary General
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