Recently at the Olympics, handball goalkeeper Katharina Filter was seen live on public TV several times. Much more national reach is hardly possible. “We gained a few fans,” says the 25-year-old from Hamburg with certainty. It was just two years ago that Filter became world champion with the national beach handball team and her grandmother called the local Hamburg newspaper to ask if it was worth an article. And that was it.
Filter has won the European Championships twice, the World Championships once and the World Games once with the national beach team within three years. Many more medals are hardly possible, but if the proud grandma still has to do public relations work without being asked, then you can roughly guess the media significance of sandy handball.
So it’s not entirely incomprehensible that Filter is now focusing entirely on the hall. She took a break from beach handball this summer so that she could take part in the Olympics indoors, and she has already canceled the 2025 sand season. After the 2024 Olympics and before the home World Cup at the end of 2025, Filter will play with the national indoor team at the European Championships in Austria, Hungary and Switzerland starting next week. Since Monday, national coach Markus Gaugisch’s team has been preparing in Garching near Munich for its European Championship games in Innsbruck and Vienna. The dress rehearsal against Austria will also take place in Innsbruck this Sunday (3:15 p.m., Handball.net).
At the beginning of 2021, Filter made her debut in the national indoor team as a goalkeeper for the Bundesliga club Buxtehuder SV. The World Cup at the end of 2021 was their first tournament. The German team came seventh at that World Cup, as well as at the European Championships in 2022 a year later; At the 2023 World Cup she made it to sixth place. You can see small progress there, but that doesn’t mean that the German handball players would be satisfied with fifth place this time. “We want to get better, perform better and reward ourselves,” says Filter. A fitting reward would be the long-awaited entry into the semi-finals, perhaps even a medal. It would be the first for German handball players at a major tournament since the 2007 World Cup.
“In order to make us interesting for the big broadcasters,” Filter suspects, “perhaps we need more than the previous placements.”
Filter has now played 61 international matches and is number one in Germany’s goal, ahead of Borussia Dortmund’s Katharina Wachter. Filter is playing her second season with French club Brest Bretagne. In the last Champions League season, she and Brest failed in the round of 16 against Ferencvaros Budapest with their German national teammate Emily Bölk. This time Brest is not only playing with the German goalkeeper Filter, but also with the German national player Annika Lott, 24, in the left back area, in the same Champions League group as the German champions HB Ludwigsburg with the five German national players Xenia Smits, Antje Döll, Jenny Behrend, Mareike Thomaier and Viola Leuchter. Ludwigsburg lost the first leg 26:33, the second leg in Brest is on January 25th. There is definitely a lot to discuss about this in the German EM camp in Garching.
The fact that Filter and Lott in Brest, Bölk in Budapest as well as Alina Grijseels (Bucharest) and Julia Maidhof (Ramnicu Valcea) in Romania have five national players playing abroad and another five national players with Ludwigsburg in the Champions League is a good sign for the national team the EM. “Experience at such a high level helps us all move forward,” says Filter, “and playing abroad helps me to develop personally.” Of the currently four dominant women’s handball nations Norway, France, Sweden and Denmark, Filter says, “ “We don’t feel so far away anymore.”
It’s hard to imagine that Filter’s grandmother would have to call the local newspaper again after the European Championship, but this time too there won’t be enough for public broadcasts of German European Championship games. The games in Austria are shown on the Internet by Sportdeutschland.tv. “In order to make us interesting for the big broadcasters,” Katharina Filter suspects, “perhaps we need more than the previous rankings.”
