Ferndorf

Third division handball rarely produces a name that plays for a national team, but Ferndorf managed it twice inside a year: Gabriel da Rocha Viana earned his Portugal debut in May 2025 while still on the club's books, the first player in its history to be capped internationally straight out of Kreuztal, and within months he had moved on to Bundesliga side Bergischer HC. Goalkeeper Can Adanir followed a similar path, called up by Turkey in January 2026. The club itself sits in the 3. Liga West after missing out on promotion in 2023, when it finished runner-up and lost in the play-offs.

The Siegerlanders, as they are known locally, trace their best spell in the 2. Bundesliga to the 2019/20 season, when Julius Lindskog-Andersson was voted the division's most valuable player. His father, Robert Andersson, an Olympic and European champion as a player, took charge of the team himself between 2020 and 2023 before Ceven Klatt, once a Ferndorf player, succeeded him. Michael Lerscht, who wore the shirt himself before coaching it, came back to the club in 2025 as sporting director.

None of that touches the club's oldest silverware, won long before the Bundesliga pyramid existed: West German champions in field handball in 1970 and 1972, Westphalian champions before that. Ferndorf was founded in 1888 as a gymnastics and sports club in the Ferndorf district.