Mrs. Karimian, for how long have you been active in Handball?

I started on 1970 up to the Islamic revolution. I left handball for sometime and I started again on 1991. For five years I was both a coach and a player for women’s national team. But now, I am the head coach of both junior team and national team. I am also a member of Coaching committee.

Based on your long-term experiences with women’s handball in Iran, How do you evaluate the situation of this sport and women’s condition in it?

From the time that women’s handball joined Iran Handball Federation, everything got into an organized pace. In the recent years we have a clear progress on women’s handball. We need to work harder to get to the international level of this sport. Unfortunately we don’t have any practice plans for women’s national team right now. We are working to arrange our next games in order to organize preparatory camps. I hope to start the practices, with or without the upcoming international games, just to keep an eye on our players.

Don’t you think the team will fell out of shape without proper practice sessions?

That is not in our hands. We are in the executive level. We don’t make decisions. The head of the federation is very supportive. I am aware of these problems. Last year we had a shirt time to prepare for junior Asian games. We could do much better with more practices. Our players are very motivated and I am sure with one year of hard work we can improve a lot.

Why the women’s handball team doesn’t have the same resources that men’s team does have?

This is a sad reality: If the attention on men’s handball team is 100 percent, on women’s it will be 5 percent. In fact women only get the leftovers. We don’t have women’s specific budget. This is the sad situation of all women’s sports in Iran. Right now we are planning to hire a Russian or Tajik woman coach for the team. If we had our own budget we could decide much easier.

How much support did you get from the Athletic Education Organization?

Well, they supported us for all international games but overall I should say nothing special.

Do you have any future plans? And how do you assess this year’s league?

We are not sure yet. But we are planning to attend the nest year Asian games. We start practicing from Iranian New Year (in the middle of March). And maybe we invite over the Syria women’s handball team for a friendly game. About this year’s league: we had 6 teams. I believe it should have been 10 so we can have more games and see more players. We are going to invite 45 players to the national team qualification camp and among them we will chose 19 players for Asian games.

what is the place of Iran women’s handball team in Asia?

There is a lot of room for improvement. In my opinion we need to work harder and I am sure we can even win Korea team, the former handball Asian Champion.