CS Minaur Baia Mare

Long before Baia Mare's handball players had a specialised club to call their own, the sport in the town lived inside other institutions, until Lascăr Pană set out to change that. On 15 May 1974 he brought HC Minaur into being, and it became the first club in Romania built exclusively around handball rather than treating it as one section among many. The women's side had its own path, formed in 1960 as HCM Baia Mare and only joining the men's club under the CS Minaur banner decades later, in 2015.

The men's team reached the top of the Liga Națională three times, in 1997–98, 1998–99 and 2014–15, and lifted the Cupa României on six occasions between 1977–78 and 2014–15. The women's team had its own peak in the mid-2010s, taking the national league in 2014 and the cup in three straight years from 2013 to 2015, having already reached a European final in 2003.

Matches against Steaua București carry the weight of what Romanian handball calls a derby de tradiție, and games with Dinamo București are treated the same way; closer to home, Potaissa Turda has grown into a rival that matters just as much on the table as on the calendar.

Among the players who came through the club, Ștefan Birtalan is the name still spoken of first in Baia Mare.