Handball Is One Game Flaherty Was Quick to Pick Up

Father Flaherty may have a nice ring to it, but Tim Flaherty didn’t hear the calling. After some heavy soul-searching, the young man chose huddles over hymnals, passing over preaching, completions over communions.

The 25-year-old Occidental College junior, having used up all his NCAA college football eligibility--which consisted of 10 semesters played at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, Moorpark College and Occidental--has found another athletic endeavor to pursue: team handball.

Flaherty, an alternate on the U.S. national handball team, was introduced to the sport in 1983 while attending Moorpark. He heard about player-coach Scott Rosmaier’s team tryouts from a friend and ended up playing in the first game he ever saw. He was immediately, and inexorably, hooked.

“It’s just the challenge of the whole thing, of beating an opponent and trying to throw a ball past a goalie,” Flaherty said.

“I also like the back-and-fourth action of it. It’s really like hand-to-hand combat. It takes a lot of running ability and agility, all the things that I don’t necessarily have but am working on acquiring.”

Although he has never seen his ex-quarterback play team handball, Occidental football Coach Dale Widolff expressed confidence that the 6-3, 195-pound Flaherty will succeed at it.

“There’s something about him that allows him to pick up things quicker than most,” Widolff said. “It’s not like he’s particularly fast or has an unbelievable arm, but I think there’s something about being an athlete that’s a lot more than athletic ability. It’s the intangibles and the motor skills that he has. He’s a tremendous leader and the kids really like him.”

Flaherty admits that he initially was awkward at the international sport. But as a right backcourt player, his left-handed shot provided him with a wider scoring angle, giving him a built-in advantage.

He credits Rosmaier, a former team handball player at UCLA and the initiating force behind the Ventura County Condors, with leading him through those early instructional days.

These days, Flaherty and Rosmaier are the only two players left from the Condors’ original 1983 squad.

“I’m not sure I’m even pretty good at it now, compared to (the players on) the national team or the world championships that I went to,” said Flaherty.

“I think I’m holding my own on defense, and I guess I have the potential of a shot. It’s just going to take a lot more playing time. I still haven’t learned all the technical stuff, all the moves and such, but I’ll get that down.”

Most of the Condors have played as a unit for just one year. Rosmaier started out with 10 players and is now up to 15, including two goalkeepers and six backcourt, five wing and two circle players.

Their workouts are held on Monday and Thursday nights at the Camarillo Boys and Girls Club and are open to the public. The Condors compete in the seven-team California Handball Assn. league, whose tournament schedule runs from October through April.

“Scott’s basically what’s keeping the team going up in Ventura County,” said Flaherty, who grew up in Simi Valley. “He just keeps believing and trying to bring people in. It’s hard to get athletes involved and to stay interested.

“You try to keep recruiting people. Some people take to it just like that--like I did.”

Throughout their 1984-85 season (7-14), Flaherty has been the Condors’ showcase player, and the most closely guarded one, because of his association with the U.S. national team.

“It’s a pretty big deal for us,” said Kurt Stone, the Condors assistant coach and the physical education director at Camarillo Boys and Girls Club. “We know his ability. He’s a superb athlete. Just having a national team player on your team brings more respect and more ability to our team.”

Flaherty, who worked at last summer’s Olympic team handball events as a Youth Venue Coordinator, traveled to the Olympic Training center in Colorado Springs last December to try out for Coach Javier Garcia Cuesta’s national team. Just nine players from the ninth-place Olympic squad returned, leaving five positions open.

Flaherty was one of four substitutes chosen to accompany the 12 regulars on the team’s recent 2 1/2-week trip to Norway for the Men’s B World Team Handball Championships, which East Germany won. After four plane rides and a bus ride totaling 24 hours, he didn’t even dress for any of the team’s seven games. Instead, he worked with the camera crew that videotaped each game of the U.S. team’s 2-5 trip.

“From what the coaches tell me, we’re still a little ways behind the East Germans, but we’ve reached a point where we’re not getting blown out anymore,” said Flaherty, who expects to join the team in Germany June 14 for the student world championships.

In August, the national team will start making preparations for the 1988 Olympics, and Flaherty is hoping to get an invitation to try out again.

As in team handball, Flaherty also got a late start with football. Because of his ecumenical studies, which began in parochial school, he did not play the quarterback position until he got to Moorpark.

He attended Chaminade for the ninth grade and the Queen of Angels and St. John’s seminaries. The priesthood appealed to Flaherty for a while, but he eventually gave it up because of other interests that he wasn’t prepared to sacrifice.

“I’d still be in there now, but I needed to get out and work with people,” said Flaherty, who worked at the Simi Valley Boys and Girls Club for more than two years before coming to Occidental. He hopes to become a social worker.

“I enjoy sports a lot and being with people. I didn’t feel my talents were used to the best ability. I didn’t want to go through the priesthood without checking out these other things,”

And football, indeed, was one of them. He hadn’t touched one in a game situation until he was a high school sophomore.

Flaherty began last season as Occidental’s second-string quarterback because, as Widolff recalled, “He didn’t have a whole lot of experience; he was pretty raw.”

Halfway through the season’s third game, Flaherty was inserted into the lineup. He proceeded to throw four touchdown passes over a four-week period. The Tigers continued undefeated with Flaherty, until Pat Guthrie returned in the second half of the sixth game to throw three touchdown passes and regain his starting status for the remainder of the season.

The Tigers were 10-0 but lost their NCAA Division III Western Regional playoff game, 22-21, to Central College of Iowa on a failed two-point conversion attempt in the final minute of a game Flaherty spent on the bench.

Although Flaherty’s is not eligible to play football for him next fall, Widolff would like to have him contribute as an assistant coach during his senior year. Flaherty, however, remains uncertain about his plans.