Eugene O'Reilly represents DCU and Ireland at the 2005 USHA World Handball Collegiates
14 March 2005

Eugene O'Reilly, DCU, and Steve Buchanan

The University of Minnesota in Minneapolis/St. Paul was the setting for the 53rd Annual USHA World Handball Collegiates which were held from February 23-27 last, where DCU was represented in the form of Eugene O'Reilly.

An estimated 270 competitors from various colleges around the world attended the competition. O'Reilly departed for Minneapolis on Saturday, February 19th and arrived late that night. The first duty on Sunday was to inspect the courts and facilities in the University Recreation Center and to get some practice in, to help adjust to the slightly different ball which is used in the US. After this then there was time for some sightseeing and a chance to sample some American culture. The next few days were also spent getting acclimatised to the US courts and the competition began on Wednesday with the Doubles competition. O'Reilly took this as a chance to get a well earned rest, before the singles competition which was scheduled to start at 8am on the Thursday and also as a chance to see some of the top class handball which was on display.

O'Reilly was drawn in the top 64 of the Men's Division out of about 190 entries. His first match saw him come up against the number 13 seed Garrett Silviera of Lake Forest College and the result was an early defeat for the DCU man. This left O'Reilly with an 8pm match that night against Fort Scott Community College representative Donny Little. Despite a better showing on O'Reilly's part he was still defeated dropping him into the C division and setting up an 8am match against Jason Adams of Texas A&M University. This was where the turnabout started for O'Reilly; he defeated Adams in straight games 21-7, 21-12 and put him through to the last 16 where he played Josh Haverland, again of Texas A&M University, at 1pm. Again O'Reilly showed his form with a 21-7 win in the first and a hard earned 21-18 victory in the second. Friday saw another 6am start for O'Reilly to get down to the Rec Center to play the quarter-final match against Paul Quiriconi of Western Washington University, the nights rest proved its worth and O'Reilly wasted no time in dispatching the Washington man and booking his place in the semi-finals on Friday at 6pm. Here O'Reilly faced the tough challenge of Alex Mints from the University Of California & Berkley. Mints had taken a similar route to this stage of the competition as O'Reilly and in a closely fought match O'Reilly managed to come away the better, defeating Mints 21-15, 21-17. This presented O'Reilly with a final spot, scheduled for 8am on Sunday morning, where he was up against Steve Buchanan of California State University. In the first game Buchanan got the better start and was up 17-9 at one stage, O'Reilly fought back well and levelled at 17-17, but was unable to take advantage and lost the first 21-17. This was a big blow to O'Reilly's confidence and in the second Buchanan raced into an early lead. He was up 12-0 before O'Reilly put an ace on the board and it was all uphill from there. O'Reilly was unable to force the match to a tie-breaker and lost 21-11 in the second. Following this defeat O'Reilly was obviously very disappointed; however as a whole the 2005 World Collegiate Handball Championships were a huge success for the DCU engineering student.

Eugene would like to acknowledge the support from DCU SCC in particular Siobhan Byrne also Yvonne O'Connor from the Sports and Recreation Service and Mr. Tom O'Donnell, DCU GAA Development Officer, for without their help none of this would have been possible. Thank you.