Dunkerque

Chambéry has been the team standing across the table whenever the French title mattered most in the years around 2013 and 2014, and it is against that name, not against the calendar, that Dunkirk's own run is measured. The Coupe de la Ligue in 2012–2013 and the league championship the following season came in that stretch, alongside a Trophée des Champions in 2012 and a Coupe de France in 2010–2011.

Vincent Gérard kept goal for Dunkirk through that title-winning period, from 2010 to 2015.

The women's section reached the same heights first, taking the French championship in 1981–1982 and the Coupe de France the year after, a period the men's side would not match until three decades later. Beyond France, the club has twice come within one round of a European trophy without taking it: runner-up in the EHF Cup in 2011–2012, and runner-up in the Challenge Cup back in 2003–2004.

Players still leave Dunkirk for bigger stages — Florian Boulogne went through the academy before moving on to Cesson-Rennes — a reminder that the club has long worked as a producer as much as a collector of talent. It traces back to a modest starting point, a team called Amicale Laïque de l'Esplanade, formed on 3 September 1958, long before USDK became the name attached to the run of titles that followed.