Ramat Hasharon

Alex Sitsenko arrived in 2008 under coach Reuben Islovski and, over the years that followed, became the player people in Ramat HaSharon point to when the club's name comes up: it was that squad, built around him, that reached the quarter-finals of the EHF Challenge Cup in the 2014/15 season, the furthest the club has gone in Europe.

Ramat HaSharon spent its first two decades as an amateur second-division side, until Avi Khalon took over the running of the team in 1992 and pushed it toward the professional game. Progress after that was steady rather than sudden: third place in the Israeli Premier League in 2014/15, then again in 2016/17, a level the club held for the best part of a decade before finally winning the title outright.

The squad that has carried that breakthrough leans heavily on imported Serbian talent — Ivan Mošić, Milan Pavlović, Mihajlo Radojković, Predrag Vejin and Đorđe Đekić have all worn the shirt — alongside Israeli players such as Daniel Shkalim and goalkeeper Gil Yaakov. In the Israeli top flight, the fixtures that matter most are against Maccabi Rishon LeZion and Hapoel Rishon LeZion.

The club plays out of the Oranim gymnasium, a small hall by the standards of European handball, and its youth section, known as Rame Ramat HaSharon, has picked up national championships of its own, feeding players through to the senior side.

Since 2024, Ramat HaSharon has won the Israeli Premier League and the State Cup in successive campaigns, doing the double both times — a run that has turned a club known for near-misses into the one the rest of the league now has to catch.