Andy Schmid on his childhood, his name and a matter of the heart

Schmid's real name, by the way, is André. “That's my real name. But I couldn't pronounce it when I was a little kid because I couldn't roll the “r”. And my mother has always called me 'Andy' for as long as I can remember,” says Andy Schmid, who today also signs his contracts as “Andy Schmid.”

As a Swiss, the middle back player loves the country-specific order in many things - especially when it comes to paperwork. “But this side of him is a complete antithesis to order in our room - there's a lot of clutter,” reveals Patrick Groetzki, with whom he shared a room on away trips.

“I can only confirm it 100 per cent,” says Andy's wife Therese. He is definitely a thinking person, but is sometimes guided by his emotions. “I'm unaffected by stress when it comes to the sporting stuff, but if I have too much on my to-do list next to the pitch, then it gets chaotic at times,” admits Andy Schmid.

The Swiss met his wife Therese 13 years ago through a former teammate - a holiday fling in Sandefjord became more and she visited him in Switzerland. “At the end of those ten vacation days, I said to her: If you want, you can move to Switzerland with me” - as said as done.

The two children, Lio (9) and Levi (5), therefore grow up multilingual in Mannheim. The handball player speaks Swiss German with his sons, mum Therese speaks Norwegian to them. To bring his sport closer to his sons, Schmid became a writer: his children's book “Mein Sprungwurf” (My jump shot) is about respect, justice, friendship and the best sport in the world.

“A matter of the heart,” says Andy Schmid. “I read a lot with my kids. And one night when I was going to bed, my biggest boy asked me why there were books about kids playing football, but none about handball.” After all, he could not read the story of “Fuchsi”, the mascot of Füchse Berlin, to his son - so he decided to write a book himself.

Bringing the handball closer to children is his passion. Therefore, Andy Schmid also invests a lot of time in the project “Learn Handball”, which his friend Bjarte Myrhol launched. With over 600 workout videos, the founders of the app want to give young coaches of all ages and performance classes inspiration for their training everyday to get even more children and young people excited about handball.

“I think it's a bit outdated to just prepare your workout on paper,” explains Andy Schmid. 'You can't reinvent the handball, but I think some things can be presented much better and conveyed in new ways to appeal to a wide audience in an entertaining way. '

Source: Sascha Klahn, https://www.handball-world.news/o.red.r/news-1-1-1-136473.html