St. Gallen

Handball in St. Gallen grew out of a Catholic youth group, and by 1942 that youth work had turned into a club of its own, taking the name of St. Otmar, the city's patron. Indoor handball came later, in 1950, and it was in that code that the club built the record still attached to its name: seven Swiss indoor championships between 1971 and 2001. The field game had its own run first, five national titles between 1964 and 1971, before the sport moved indoors for good.

The high point came in 1982, when St. Otmar reached the final of the European Champions Cup and lost to VfL Gummersbach. The domestic game brought a second wave of success around the turn of the millennium, when the club paired the 2000 and 2001 championships with the cup and the Supercup in the same two years. The women's section did not survive at all; money problems shut it down in 2010.

Severin Kaiser is the name the club's recent history is built around, 684 goals in 219 games before he moved on in 2024, and Ondřej Zdráhala passed through St. Gallen on his way to becoming president of the Czech Handball Association. The team now plays out of Kreuzbleiche.

Those nights still mean Kreuzlingen above all. The two sides sit close enough across the Swiss east that their meetings carry their own name, the Ostschweizer Derby, and a St. Gallen team without a claim on the derby is not one the city recognises.